ChatGPT is the conversational AI product from OpenAI, launched in November 2022. It runs on the GPT family of large language models (GPT-4o, GPT-5). It is now used by over 800 million people for research, writing, coding, customer support, and increasingly, finding local businesses.

Is ChatGPT the same as GPT?

No. GPT is the underlying model series (GPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-5). ChatGPT is the product wrapper that lets you have a conversation with GPT. Other products also use GPT models through the OpenAI API.

How does ChatGPT find businesses?

When asked a local-business question, ChatGPT calls its internal browsing tool, which scrapes the web in real time, retrieves relevant pages, and cites them in the answer. The crawler is called GPTBot for indexed crawling and ChatGPT-User for live browsing. Both respect robots.txt.

Does my business need to do anything to be findable in ChatGPT?

Yes. Three things move the needle: allow GPTBot and ChatGPT-User in your robots.txt, add JSON-LD structured data to every page, and publish Q&A-formatted content that matches real customer queries. See our AEO guide at /blog/what-is-aeo-complete-guide.

How is ChatGPT different from Google search?

Google returns a list of links you click. ChatGPT returns a written answer that names two or three sources inline. Different surface, different optimization. Both matter for a serious local business in 2026.

AI engines

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is the conversational AI product from OpenAI. In 2026, it is the single most-used AI engine for product research and local business discovery.

ChatGPT launched in November 2022 as a research preview and became the fastest-adopted consumer product in history. By 2026, it has roughly 800 million weekly users and answers an estimated 4 billion queries per day, a meaningful share of what used to go to Google.

The pieces of ChatGPT

The model. GPT-4o for the free tier, GPT-5 (and the o-series reasoning models) for paid tiers. These are the underlying LLMs trained by OpenAI.
The product wrapper. The chat interface, conversation memory, file uploads, voice mode, the mobile app. All built on top of the model.
The tools. Web browsing, image generation, code interpreter, data analysis, custom GPTs. The model uses these to do work, not just talk.

The crawlers

OpenAI runs two different web crawlers for ChatGPT:

GPTBot: indexed crawling. Fetches pages on a schedule, stores them, uses them when generating answers.
ChatGPT-User: live browsing. Fetches a page in real time when a user asks a question that needs current info.
OAI-SearchBot: for SearchGPT, OpenAI's search product.

All three respect robots.txt. To be cited in ChatGPT answers, your site needs to allow them explicitly. See our llms.txt for a working example.

What it means for a local business

When a customer asks ChatGPT "best HVAC near me" or "AI receptionist for plumbers," ChatGPT runs a search, fetches a few pages, and writes a paragraph naming two or three businesses. If yours is one of them, the lead comes to you.

The work to get cited is concrete: clean HTML, structured data, Q&A content, citations from high-trust sources. We call it Answer Engine Optimization and we run it as a service in our Visibility tier.

Tracking your ChatGPT visibility

The basic version: open ChatGPT, ask the prompts your customers use, write down whether your business gets named. Daily, for the same 14 to 20 prompts. The advanced version is automated and runs inside the Traccion dashboard. Either way, you have to track to know what is working.

Run a free Visibility audit against your URL to see your current ChatGPT citation rate.

Common questions

What is ChatGPT?: ChatGPT is the conversational AI product from OpenAI, launched in November 2022. It runs on the GPT family of large language models (GPT-4o, GPT-5). It is now used by over 800 million people for research, writing, coding, customer support, and increasingly, finding local businesses.
Is ChatGPT the same as GPT?: No. GPT is the underlying model series (GPT-3, GPT-4, GPT-4o, GPT-5). ChatGPT is the product wrapper that lets you have a conversation with GPT. Other products also use GPT models through the OpenAI API.
How does ChatGPT find businesses?: When asked a local-business question, ChatGPT calls its internal browsing tool, which scrapes the web in real time, retrieves relevant pages, and cites them in the answer. The crawler is called GPTBot for indexed crawling and ChatGPT-User for live browsing. Both respect robots.txt.
Does my business need to do anything to be findable in ChatGPT?: Yes. Three things move the needle: allow GPTBot and ChatGPT-User in your robots.txt, add JSON-LD structured data to every page, and publish Q&A-formatted content that matches real customer queries. See our AEO guide at /blog/what-is-aeo-complete-guide.
How is ChatGPT different from Google search?: Google returns a list of links you click. ChatGPT returns a written answer that names two or three sources inline. Different surface, different optimization. Both matter for a serious local business in 2026.