Getting recommended by ChatGPT: what we learned from a client who came through AI
A founder preparing his store asked ChatGPT who to turn to, and became a client. What he asked before signing, how prospects check a provider with AI, and what we changed on our own site.
The short answer
To be recommended by ChatGPT, your site must be readable by its crawlers and answer clearly the questions your clients ask before choosing. Your name must also appear elsewhere on the web. In our case, the founder who came through ChatGPT had several names in mind. He asked in writing what was included, what was optional and what would be billed every month.
What does a prospect coming from ChatGPT ask?
He arrives while comparing. The AI gave him several names and he goes through them. Of the two prospects who came from a search, one was torn between two agencies, the other was waiting for a competing quote by the end of the week.
The brief we received next asked for three things in writing: what is included, what is optional, what will be billed every month. The founder also wanted to avoid stacking app subscriptions. Most prospects ask these questions out loud; he asked them in writing, to put the agencies’ answers side by side.
The table lists the questions our prospects ask before signing, and what your site must show to answer them. If an AI finds the answer nowhere, it cannot use it. If the prospect does not find it, he moves to the next name on his list. To compare two quotes on these criteria, the grid in our guide to comparing two Shopify agencies starts from the same questions.
| Prospect’s question | What the site must show | Where to put it |
|---|---|---|
| Who will do the work, and how many of you are there? | Names, roles, photos of the team | About page, author page |
| What is included, optional, recurring? | What a typical engagement contains, line by line | Service page, FAQ |
| Have you worked in my field? | Projects with a link to the live site | Projects page |
| How long does it take? | The steps and how long each takes | Service page, method guide |
| What happens after delivery? | Who holds the access, what you edit yourself | FAQ, service page |
| Do you use AI, and for what? | What is done with it, what is done by hand | FAQ, method page |
Will your prospect have ChatGPT analyse your site?
It happened to us. A partner at a law firm, who came through a referral, asked ChatGPT to analyse the site of a client we cited as an example, then sent us six technical criticisms. In another exchange, a wrong figure on a number of Google reviews was enough to end the conversation.
AI does not stop at your site: it also reads the sites you show as proof. Anything wrong or outdated becomes an argument against you, in an answer you will never see.
Run the exercise before your prospects do. Paste your site’s address into ChatGPT, then the addresses of two projects you cite, and ask what is wrong. Then check the points our prospects raised or asked about:
- Figures. Number of reviews, years, clients, projects: every figure must be accurate on the day it is read, or be removed.
- The team. A firm that still lists partners who have left loses credibility at the first check.
- Contact. We saw a highly rated firm whose phone number could not be found on its site. Contact details should be one click from every page.
- Projects. A prospect felt our former portfolio looked like mock-ups. A link to the live site lets people check what an image cannot show.
- The basics. Pages that load fast on a phone, links that work, an up-to-date legal notice.
Why can’t ChatGPT see some pages of your site?
OpenAI’s crawlers read the text the server sends, without running the page’s JavaScript. Vercel measured it on its network in December 2024: none of the major AI crawlers, including OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot, executed JavaScript (Vercel, reported by Search Engine Journal). Text that only appears once a script has loaded, such as a tab, a reviews carousel or a block added by an app, may stay invisible to them.
The test takes a minute. Open the page, right-click, choose “View page source” and search for a sentence from your text. If it is not there, the crawler does not read it either.
The sites and stores we build send their text in the page on the first load: that is how Next.js works by default for websites, and Shopify themes for stores. The other prerequisites, letting OAI-SearchBot in and being indexed on Bing, are covered in our guide to being visible on ChatGPT.
How do you know a client found you through ChatGPT?
Your analytics show part of it. When ChatGPT cites a page, it usually adds `utm_source=chatgpt.com` to the link, which lets analytics tools tell that visit apart from a direct one (Clickport, Profound).
This tag is not 100% reliable. Between October 8 and 16, 2026, most ChatGPT links arrived without it, and those visits were counted as direct (Profound, Relevant Audience). A prospect may also write down your name and type it into Google: the visit then keeps no trace of ChatGPT.
The most reliable source is still the question you ask the prospect. Since October 2026, we ask it at the end of every first call: how did you come across us, what did you type, and where? We write down the exact wording. Going back over our last 38 prospects, we found the question had almost never been asked: part of our breakdown by channel still rests on guesswork.
A store can do the same with an optional question after checkout: “How did you hear about us?”, with ChatGPT among the choices and a free-text field. Set it up before a sales peak such as Black Friday, when answers come in large numbers; our guide to getting a Shopify store ready for Black Friday gives the timeline.
What did we change on our own site after this client?
We applied to sonhoagency.com what we do for our clients, starting from prospects’ questions rather than from a keyword list.
- A direct answer under the title of every service page, 50 to 60 words: what we do, for whom, and how the budget is set.
- Guides written from questions asked on calls, with headings phrased as those questions and an FAQ marked up for search engines.
- An author page linking every guide to Simon de Carlan and his public profiles.
- A reindexing request on the day of every publication, sent to Bing and other engines through the IndexNow protocol.
- A Monday report of the searches that make the site appear in Google, taken from Search Console.
Where do you start so that ChatGPT recommends your business?
Write down the five questions your prospects ask before signing, in their own words. Check that each one has its written answer on your site, at the top of a page, and that this page shows up in the page source. Then fix the figures, the team and the projects, because the prospect will check.
This is the work we do on our clients’ sites, from the audit to the written pages. It is described on our Google and ChatGPT search page.
Frequently asked questions
- Does a prospect who comes from ChatGPT sign more easily?
- Not necessarily. He arrives better prepared, but while comparing. The founder who came through ChatGPT had several names in mind, and the other prospect who came from a search was waiting for a competing quote. The AI’s recommendation gets you onto a short list: it replaces neither the call, nor the quote, nor the proof. What makes the difference next is the written answers to the questions he is asking himself: what is included, the options, the monthly costs, who does the work, what happens after delivery. A prospect who finds these answers on your site before the call arrives with sharper questions, and the conversation moves faster. Keep it in proportion: two prospects are not a statistic. Of our last 38 contacts, only one came from ChatGPT for certain, and nearly half came from our network or a referral.
- Do you need to rebuild your site to be recommended by ChatGPT?
- Rarely from scratch. Start with three checks. Does the text of your pages appear in the page source, without depending on a script? Are your important pages indexed on Bing, one of the engines ChatGPT’s search relies on? Does your robots.txt file let OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI’s search crawler, in? If all three answers are yes, the work is about content: a direct answer at the top of each page, headings that repeat your clients’ questions, accurate and dated figures. A rebuild becomes useful when your site does not let you edit these pages, when its text only shows after a script loads, or when every change goes through a provider. Choosing the technology in that case is covered in our guide to rebuilding a website.
- How do you ask a client how they found you?
- At the end of the first call, an open question is enough: “How did you come across us?” If the answer is “online”, add: “What did you type, and where?” Write down the exact wording. “Shopify partner to launch a premium brand” tells you more than “ChatGPT”: it is the question your pages need to answer. An online store can ask the same question after checkout, as an optional field, with a list of choices (social media, Google, ChatGPT or another assistant, word of mouth) and a free-text field for the rest. Read the answers once a month and compare them with your analytics. The `utm_source=chatgpt.com` tag only appears on visits that went through a ChatGPT link. Some of the people who discovered you through an AI then type your name into Google or write to you directly.
- Can ChatGPT recommend a small business over better-known competitors?
- Yes, on a specific question. ChatGPT cited Sonho, a small Paris team, to a founder looking for a Shopify partner to launch a premium brand. On a question that names a sector, a need or a city, a page that covers exactly that case can be picked up even if your name is not well known. On a broad question, such as “best web agency in France”, the businesses most talked about elsewhere on the web have the edge: press, comparisons, reviews, forums. A small business is therefore better off writing one page per real case it handles well, with its clients’ questions as headings, than a general page about everything it can do. Mentions on other sites still matter: our guide to being visible on ChatGPT details the ones that weigh most, with figures.
How does a client end up finding you by asking ChatGPT?
At the end of summer 2026, the founder of a young skincare brand preparing his Shopify store got in touch. He had asked ChatGPT which Shopify partner to turn to for launching a premium brand, and Sonho was among the names suggested. He became a client.
We do not know word for word what ChatGPT told him, nor which pages it read. We know what the founder told us and what he asked next. His question was about choosing a provider, along the lines of “who should I choose?”. A question about choosing calls for names in the answer: that is the kind of question where a service business can be cited.
Of the 38 prospects who contacted us between November 2025 and October 2026, two came from a confirmed search: this one through ChatGPT, another through Google with the query “agence Shopify” (Shopify agency). A third had probably searched online. Nearly half came from our network or a referral. AI remains a small channel for us, but both prospects who came from a search had a ready project and a budget.