Businesses in ChatGPT: what it means for small businesses

Something has changed in how customers find businesses, and a lot of owners haven't noticed yet. More and more people don't start with a search engine anymore. They open ChatGPT and ask: "Where can I get a custom cake near me?" or "Which accounting software works for a three-person company?" ChatGPT answers, and it often names specific businesses.

Until now, if you ran one of those businesses, you had no say in what it said about you, and no way of knowing whether it mentioned you at all.

On November 10, OpenAI launched a beta called Businesses in ChatGPT, and it starts to change that. We went through the announcement and the early coverage, and here's our honest read for small business owners.

What OpenAI announced

There are three parts to it:

• A business profile you can claim. In a new tool called Business Hub, you verify that the business is yours and then correct the details ChatGPT uses: name, category, address or service area, hours, contact information and what you sell. Stores can upload a product feed with prices and availability. Claimed profiles get a blue check.
• Insights. Business Hub shows how often ChatGPT mentions you, how many clicks reach your website from ChatGPT, and "discovery topics": the common themes in conversations where your site gets cited.
• Business Agents. Eligible businesses can build their own agent inside ChatGPT. When someone sees your business in an answer, they can open your profile and start a separate, labeled conversation with your agent to ask about your products or services.

Businesses can also pay to make their agent the destination of a ChatGPT ad. OpenAI says sponsored placements are labeled and kept apart from ChatGPT's regular answers.

Why this matters for small businesses

Big brands have whole teams watching how they show up online. A family restaurant or a five-person agency doesn't. That's why this is worth paying attention to: for once, the tool is fairly simple and the cost of getting started is low.

1. Fix what ChatGPT gets wrong about you. Old hours, an address you moved from, a service you stopped offering two years ago. If ChatGPT repeats it, customers act on it. Claiming your profile is the first real chance to correct it at the source.

2. Find out whether you're in the conversation at all. Most owners have no idea if ChatGPT recommends them. Mentions and clicks give you a starting point. Discovery topics may be the most useful part: they show what people were asking about when your site came up, in their words rather than yours. That's market research you didn't have to pay for.

3. Answer customers at 11 p.m. A small team can't reply to every "Do you ship to my city?" or "Which one is right for me?" the moment it arrives. A Business Agent can take those questions while the customer is still interested, not the next morning after they've bought somewhere else.

4. Compete on information, not on budget. ChatGPT doesn't rank you by how much you spend on ads. A clear, complete profile and a good website help it understand what you do, and that's work a small business can do just as well as a large one.

5. Be where people are already asking. OpenAI says more than 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Even a small share of them asking about your kind of business adds up to a lot of potential customers.

What to keep in mind

It's a beta, and the limits are real:

• Business Agents are U.S.-only for now, and only for eligible ecommerce and online service businesses. Claiming a profile is open more widely, in markets where ChatGPT is available, but eligibility still depends on your industry, your location and OpenAI's verification checks. You also need a website.
• Claiming doesn't buy you a better spot. OpenAI says plainly that it doesn't guarantee higher placement or more sales. ChatGPT still makes its own recommendations.
• The numbers take time. Insights only appear once there's enough activity, and OpenAI hasn't said where that bar is. Early reports describe verified businesses that don't see any data yet.
• You won't see conversations. OpenAI says it doesn't share people's chats, or their chats with your agent, with businesses. Everything is aggregated. That's good for privacy, but it means no list of leads.
• Your agent is your responsibility. OpenAI's rules say the agent has to disclose that it's AI, can't use pressure or false urgency, can't ask for things like IDs, passwords or health information, can't give advice that requires a license, and can't complete a purchase or booking without the customer's explicit consent. Whatever you tell it to say, you own.
• There's no pricing yet for profiles or agents. Only the ad sponsorship is described as paid, and no prices have been published.

What we'd do this week

If you run a small business, here's a short list:

1. Ask ChatGPT about yourself. Try your business name, and then your category and city ("best [what you do] in [your city]"). Note what's right and what's wrong.
2. Tidy up your website. Hours, address, services, prices and contact details should be easy to find and the same everywhere. That's what ChatGPT learns from.
3. Claim your profile in Business Hub at chatgpt.com/business-hub, if you're eligible. You verify by a text or call to your main business number, or through your domain's DNS. If you sell on Shopify, connecting your store speeds this up.
4. Read your discovery topics once data comes in. Use them to write the pages and FAQs your customers are actually looking for.
5. If you're a U.S. online store or service, try a Business Agent. Start with the questions your team answers over and over: shipping, sizes, comparisons, returns. Test it well before you launch it.

Our take

For years, small businesses had to learn the rules of search engines and social media just to be found. AI assistants are the next place people go for recommendations, and until now businesses had no way in. This beta is a first version with clear limits, but the direction matters: how you show up in ChatGPT is becoming something you can work on, not just hope for.

Our advice is simple: claim your profile early, keep your information accurate, and treat the insights as a way to listen to your customers. If you'd like help getting your business ready, write to us at info@upsky.org.