Five myths about getting recommended by ChatGPT

Myth 1: You can pay ChatGPT to recommend your store

This one doesn't hold up. ChatGPT does have ads now. OpenAI's help centre says ad testing started in the United States on 9 February 2026, and OpenAI said in September 2026 that ads had already launched in Australia and New Zealand. They appear on the Free and Go plans, not on Plus, Pro or business accounts.

The ads sit apart from the answer. OpenAI's help centre says: "advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." Ads appear below the end of a response and are labelled as sponsored. OpenAI's January 2026 advertising principles call this "answer independence". So you can buy an ad near the answer, but the products named inside the answer have to be earned.

Google is different. Google Ads Help says ads can show "above, below or within AI Overviews", and Australia and New Zealand are on the list of countries. That is still a labelled ad slot, not the AI choosing your product. Buying links or paying for fake reviews to sway AI is a different thing again: it breaks the platforms' rules and hurts the store when it is found.

• ChatGPT ads: below the answer, labelled, no say over what the answer recommends (OpenAI, 2026).
• Google: ads can appear inside AI Overviews in Australia and New Zealand (Google Ads Help, read October 2026).
• The recommendation itself: earned, not bought.

Myth 2: Stuffing keywords onto your pages gets AI to name you

This doesn't hold up either. Vercel wrote on its blog in June 2025 that AI tools favour the clearest, most complete explanation, not the page that repeats a keyword most. Keyword stuffing is also against Google's rules, and Google's search sits underneath its AI Overviews, so it can hurt the store twice.

What tends to help is being exact. Name the product, the materials or ingredients, the sizes and who it suits. A line like "unscented beard oil for sensitive skin, 30 ml" gives an AI assistant something it can quote. A line like "best beard oil beard oil Australia" gives it nothing. Put who the product is for and its key facts in the first lines of the description, and give each section of a page one clear idea so it makes sense if quoted alone.

Myth 3: One good answer means you've made it

It doesn't. Getting named once, for one question, on one assistant, is a good sign but a small one. Each assistant leans on different websites. In Ahrefs' own research, only 7 of the top 50 most-cited sites appeared on all three lists for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity. Google's AI Overviews lean on YouTube, Reddit and Quora, ChatGPT more on publishers and news, and Perplexity on niche and regional sites.

AI assistants also split one shopper's prompt into many smaller searches and build the answer from several sources. So a store needs to be relevant across a whole topic, not one phrase. Winning "best beard oil" on ChatGPT tells you little about "beard oil for a teenager" on Gemini. Track a spread of real buying questions on each assistant, not just the one you're proud of.

Myth 4: Once AI answers a question, the answer stays the same

This is false. Ask ChatGPT the same question twice and you can get different brands. That's why any honest check asks each question more than once and looks at the trend over weeks, not a single screenshot. GEO's free AI Visibility Checker shows whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity name your product and who they pick instead, which is a quick way to see your starting point.

Answers also shift as the web changes. In Ahrefs' research on millions of AI citations, content that AI cited was 25.7% fresher than content in normal Google results. That's why keeping important pages up to date, with current prices, stock and facts, tends to help. It also works the other way: a rival can overtake you if their pages and mentions get newer and better than yours.

• Check the same questions regularly, not once.
• Refresh key pages every 2 to 3 months with real updates.
• Expect new mentions on other sites to take weeks to months to show up.

Myth 5: Only big brands get named by AI

This doesn't hold up, although big brands do start with an advantage. Brands that are mentioned on lots of credible sites tend to show up more in AI answers, and well-known brands naturally have more mentions. That's a head start, not a lock.

Small stores do get named. TechCabal reported in October 2025 that Nigerian leather brand Hingees got a first-time order of over ₦250,000 from a shopper who asked ChatGPT for Nigerian leather brands. It's one order, not a trend, but the founder had spent years on tidy product details and tagged photos. California wine shop Argaux went from no AI sales in 2024 to $11,304.81 attributed to ChatGPT in 2025 up to November, according to its agency, Volume Nine. That is the agency's own case study.

Long, specific questions are where smaller stores tend to have the best chance, because fewer big brands have pages that answer them well.

What does hold up: the channel is real and growing

Behind the myths, the shift is real. Shopify's president, Harley Finkelstein, said in February 2026 that orders AI searches bring to Shopify were 15 times higher than in January 2025, calling it a really big jump in 12 months. Adobe data reported by Digital Commerce 360 in August 2026 found AI visitors to US retail sites converted 60% better than other visitors in July 2026. That is US data, not Australian, and results vary from store to store.