How to Claim Your Business in ChatGPT (I Did It This Morning)

There may already be a profile of your business inside ChatGPT. You did not write it. OpenAI built it from whatever it found about you on the internet, and support will not delete it, unpublish it or hide it.

Your only move is to claim your business in ChatGPT and take the pen off the machine.

I set mine up on Thursday morning. Fifteen minutes of work, one limit nobody is writing about, and then a wait of several days that every guide forgets to mention.

What opened on November 10

Businesses in ChatGPT, in beta, run from a dashboard called Business Hub. Free.

Claim the profile and you write the description, the logo and your policies. You also get numbers: mentions, clicks to your website, and the topics people were asking about when ChatGPT named you, over a rolling 7 or 28 days.

That last one is the reason to care. It is the first report anybody has handed you on what you get recommended for inside an AI answer.

Go look right now

Open ChatGPT and ask it about your business by name and town. Then ask it to recommend someone in your category in your area.

Read it cold. Is the phone number right? The service area? Does it describe what you sold three years ago? Does it name a competitor instead of you?

Whatever it says is what your buyers are being told. Today. While you read this.

The walkthrough

1. Open Business Hub

chatgpt.com/business-hub, signed in. A free account works.

Search for your business. If OpenAI already made a listing, claim it. If there is nothing, you may be able to create one, and I could, as a service business with a website.

The guides all say local businesses can only claim an existing listing and cannot create one. I cannot confirm that either way for a restaurant or a storefront. I can tell you it was not true for me.

2. Verify the domain, and start the clock

I used the DNS route. OpenAI gave me thirty minutes. Not a day, which is what you will read elsewhere. Thirty minutes.

So do not open this step until your DNS is already open in another tab and you know the login. If you have to go hunting for who hosts the domain, you will run out of time and start over.

The record:

Field	Value
Type	TXT
Name	openai-business-profile
Content	openai-business-profile= plus your token
TTL	Auto
Proxy	DNS only. TXT records cannot be proxied.

This is where it goes wrong, and it fails silently. The record goes on a subdomain, not the root. In Cloudflare you type the short prefix and Cloudflare adds your domain for you. Paste the whole thing and you create openai-business-profile.yoursite.com.yoursite.com, which resolves to nothing and tells you nothing.

I had a dead OpenAI record sitting on my domain from an earlier attempt, with the entire verification string pasted into the Name field. It had been there for months, verifying nothing, and I never knew.

Check it from outside before you hit verify. Seeing the record in your DNS panel proves you saved it. It does not prove the world can see it. Paste this into your browser with your own record in place of the name:

https://dns.google/resolve?name=openai-business-profile.YOURSITE.com&type=TXT

If your token comes back, OpenAI will see it too. Mine showed up within minutes.

3. Category: you get one

A dropdown, then OpenAI suggests two more underneath with plus signs next to them.

The plus signs lie. Tapping one swaps your category, it does not add to it. You get one.

So pick the words a customer uses for their problem, not the words on your business card. Mine offered Business consultant, Marketing agency and Advertising agency. Nobody opens ChatGPT and types "I need a business consultant."

4. The description: 300 characters

Here is the one nobody is telling you.

The description field caps at about 300 characters. I pasted a good one and watched it cut off mid-word. Every guide published this week says to write a detailed description of your business. You cannot. You get two sentences.

Which changes the job. At 300 characters you do not list services, you do not tell your story and you do not fit your credentials. You name the problem you solve and who you solve it for, because that is what a model matches a question against.

Mine:

Fractional CMO and brand growth strategist. Builds organic social and SEO systems that bring real estate teams, home service contractors and local business owners leads without paid ads. Best known for Instagram trial reels. Also builds websites, Google Business Profiles and GoHighLevel automation.

Count yours before you paste it.

5. Identity: a face scan, not a form

The confirmation says "saved as a draft." A verified domain and a blue check mark, and it is still a draft.

Persona is the real gate, and it is more than uploading a licence. The first screen asks you to centre yourself in the camera and turn your head side to side. A liveness scan. If that is a thing you would rather know about before you start, now you know.

Do it on your phone. There is a "continue on another device" option, and a front camera you can hold beats a laptop webcam that makes you lean around.

6. Then you wait

Submitting it returns "Application in review. Status updates will appear in your organization settings over the next few days."

Two things in that sentence.

Days. Every guide reads like you finish this in an afternoon. You start it in an afternoon. My whole run from create to submitted was fifteen minutes, and then it stops.

Organization settings, which is not where you have been working. Nothing on your profile page will change, so if you sit there refreshing it you will think it failed.

And because identity verification gates editing business info, everything stays frozen while you wait. My profile currently shows my name in lowercase, because OpenAI normalised it rather than taking what I typed, and I cannot correct it until review clears. Same for the policy lines below. Set it up right the first time, because you do not get to tidy it tomorrow.

Three things on the screen the guides have not mentioned

$500 in advertising credit. The confirmation screen offers it, for ChatGPT Ads. The free profile is the front door and the ad product is behind it. Worth knowing which business you are being invited into.

Delivery unavailable. Returns not accepted. My public card says both. I did not choose either. They are ecommerce fields defaulting to a negative and then displaying it on a marketing consultant's profile. Services are being fitted into a storefront shape and it shows.

Agent builder was in my sidebar. Every guide says Business Agents are for US ecommerce and online services only. I am a fractional CMO and the builder is there. Either consultancies count, or the restriction is looser than reported.

What I would do if you are local

Less than the headlines suggest, and I would rather say so than sell you a sprint.

Find out whether a listing exists. Claim or create it. Fix what it says. Get the ID check done. Watch the topics report for a month and see what you are being recommended for.

That is worth a morning. It is not a strategy.

And if the DNS step is the bit that stopped you, that is the normal outcome. Most business owners do not have their DNS login, do not know what a TXT record is, and have thirty minutes to work it out. For my clients I do that part for them. If you have someone who handles your website, this is the week to send them one email.

What this changes about AI search, and what it does not

Three weeks ago I wrote that the AI-citation argument for entity markup had no controlled evidence behind it, and that everybody making it was selling entity audits. I stand on that.

This is different, and here is why rather than me quietly changing position. This is a first-party surface with a claim process and a report. You are not guessing whether some markup nudged a model. You are filling in a profile OpenAI will show and reading the numbers back.

What has not changed: my pages got cited by Google AI 22,600 times in a month when I wrote that up, and it is past 32,000 now. Not one of those came from a profile. They came from content built to answer the question someone asked.

A claimed profile is a fence around your facts. It is not a traffic strategy, and anybody selling it as one this week is guessing along with the rest of us.

Claim it because the alternative is a machine describing your business to your buyers. Then go back to the work that earns the mention.

One honest caveat

This launched two days before I wrote this and it is in beta. Verification options, eligibility and agent access are all moving, and the guides already contradict each other and me.

Everything above is what was on my screen on November 12. Check OpenAI's own Business Hub on the day you sit down to do it.

Want to know what AI is telling people about you?

Book a call. Bring your business name and your town and we will look at what ChatGPT, Google AI and Perplexity each say about you right now, side by side. Most people have never seen all three at once, and it usually changes what they work on next.

Book a strategy call

Frequently asked questions

How do I claim my business in ChatGPT? Go to chatgpt.com/business-hub, sign in, find or create your listing, verify that you represent the business by phone, business email, a DNS TXT record or a connected Shopify store, then complete the Persona identity check with a government-issued ID.

How long is the DNS verification window? Mine was thirty minutes. Several guides say about a day. Do not start the step until you have your DNS login open.

Where exactly does the TXT record go? On the subdomain openai-business-profile, not the root. In Cloudflare enter the short prefix and let it append your domain. Entering the full name creates a doubled subdomain that never resolves.

How do I check the record is live? Open https://dns.google/resolve?name=openai-business-profile.YOURSITE.com&type=TXT in a browser. If your token comes back, the record is visible to the world and not only to your DNS panel.

How long can the description be? About 300 characters. Roughly two sentences. Write the problem you solve and who for, and leave everything else out.

Can I pick more than one business category? No. The suggested categories appear with plus signs but tapping one replaces your choice.

Does it cost anything? Claiming is free at launch. The confirmation screen offers $500 of credit toward ChatGPT Ads, which is a separate paid product.

Can I delete my ChatGPT business listing? No. Support cannot delete, unpublish or hide a published profile. Claiming it is how you control what it says.

Does ChatGPT list my business even if I never claim it? Yes. OpenAI may create and show a listing whether or not you claim it, and may add to, edit or replace what you submit using other sources.

Does claiming make me show up more? OpenAI says claiming a profile does not change its visibility. Claim it to control the facts, not to buy reach.

Why can I not edit my business name? Editing business info is blocked until the Persona identity check clears. Mine rendered in lowercase and I could not correct it until then.

What does Persona ask for? A government-issued ID. It is required before editing business info or publishing a business agent.

Can a local business create a listing from scratch? I created one as a service business with a website. Reporting says storefronts and restaurants can only claim an existing listing, which I cannot confirm either way.

Can a service business build a Business Agent? Agent builder appeared in my sidebar as a fractional CMO, which does not match the widely reported ecommerce-only limit. Check your own account rather than trusting either claim.

What analytics do I get? Brand insights and Agent insights, with mentions and website clicks over 7 or 28 days. The tabs are visible before identity verification clears. The data is not.

Should my Google Business Profile match? Yes, exactly. Name, address and phone. Conflicting details across profiles is the fastest way to make every system that reads them trust none of them.