By BotView · Updated
First, distinguish an omission from a failed test
A completed answer that recommends other companies is a valid observation. A timeout or unsuccessful search is not evidence that your company is invisible. A name match without enough identifying information may refer to another business.
BotView separates these cases and keeps discovery questions apart from prompts that explicitly name you. Inspect the original answer before changing your site.
Check access without confusing training and search
A robots.txt rule or firewall challenge may prevent a search crawler from retrieving a relevant page. Check OAI-SearchBot rules, HTTP responses and whether the important business information is present in initial HTML.
Blocking GPTBot is a training-policy choice; it is not the same as blocking OAI-SearchBot. Common Crawl inclusion is not a prerequisite you can use to prove or disprove ChatGPT Search visibility.
OpenAI documentation: search, training and user-requested crawlers
Check the source and company identity
Does the cited page describe your current offering? Is the location correct? Does an old directory listing use a former name? Is the answer talking about a different company with the same name?
Correct facts on pages you control and use the normal correction process for inaccurate third-party listings. Do not treat every missing citation as a reason to add schema or rewrite your whole site.
Check the question and repeat the observation
A very broad question may not be a useful test for a specialist local business. Use genuine customer constraints, then keep the question unchanged when comparing runs. Do not keep adding unique features until the answer is forced to name you.
BotView’s AI Answer Check can produce a report of selected questions, company mentions, citations and evidence-linked next steps. Use the report to decide what needs verification, then pair it with the free crawler check. The API result is not a recording of consumer ChatGPT.
Your next step · Pro
Get your AI business analysis
Find out how LLMs describe your business and who they recommend for services like yours. We test questions based on your business and services, with web search.
- Your business: what AI gets right, misses or gets wrong.
- Your competitors: who appears instead, and the reasons the answer gives.
- Your next steps: answers and sources to help you improve your site.
$9/month · 20 AI checks + 50 crawler scans · Cancel anytime
Start with a five-question analysis (5 checks). Rerun a question for 1 check. Currently powered by OpenAI with web search; results are sampled answers, not measured rankings.
Common questions
My crawler scan passed. Why was my company not mentioned?
Successful crawler access does not guarantee selection in an AI answer. The question, available sources, company relevance and model variation can affect the result. Inspect the answer and sources instead of assuming another technical fix is needed.
Will BotView fix my website automatically?
No. The report provides crawler findings and evidence-linked investigation steps. You decide which changes are appropriate after verifying the evidence.
Can BotView guarantee that ChatGPT will cite me?
No. BotView measures selected API answers and website diagnostics. It cannot guarantee organic recommendations, citations or indexing.