How to Rank on ChatGPT: 2025 Research-Backed Guide

Almost every single Marketing leader or Founder we’re speaking with today asks us how to rank on ChatGPT. They’ve started receiving traffic with UTM Source = “chatgpt” and they want to know how to increase it.

So we did probably the most comprehensive data analysis by combining data from OpenAI API and DataForSEO API to understand how ChatGPT works when recommending products or sourcing answers.

Summary

We selected 200 commercial-intent keywords used to find SaaS solutions, asked Claude 3.7 Sonnet to create 5 questions per keyword that mimic questions asked by real users, and then asked those questions to ChatGPT 4o (Web Search) via API. This is a review and qualitative analysis of 890 answers by ChatGPT for those questions. (There were some instances where the API failed to respond).

TL;DR for SaaS Brands

To rank well on ChatGPT:

1. Get multiple brand mentions on high-authority websites in your niche (use DA/DR as a proxy for high-authority).
2. Target long-tail keywords where competition is less fierce and to get recommended for specific use cases (e.g., “marketing automation software for insurance companies”).
3. Create content that addresses the exact decision criteria ChatGPT recommends to users.
4. Generate positive reviews, case studies, and testimonials (ChatGPT understands sentiment).
5. Increase your brand mentions on Reddit and in top-ranking listicles on Google and Bing.
6. Focus on building genuine authority in your specific niche rather than only writing about your own product.
7. Optimize for GetApp listings, as ChatGPT references it significantly more than G2. Maybe because G2 blocks scrapers from its listings pages.

ChatGPT Behavior

1. When a user asks ChatGPT for a tool, solution or product recommendation, it attempts to act like a “Search Assistant” that quickly does research, figures out the most recommended relevant tools in credible websites or Reddit, and shows them as suggestions.
2. We didn’t find any instances of ChatGPT referring to Quora or Twitter.
3. Since the goal is to give results as quickly as possible, it falls back to its memory for generic questions even if “Web Search” is switched on.
4. It switches to Web Search when users ask for specific information, or updated information. Check the table below.
   

Keyword Type	Keyword	ChatGPT without Web Search	ChatGPT with Web Search
Generic	Best marketing automation software	Hubspot ActiveCampaign Klaviyo Omnisend Marketo Engage Pardot	Hubspot Pardot Mailchimp ActiveCampaign Brevo (Did NOT search the web)
Specific	Best marketing automation software for Insurance companies	Hubspot Active Campaign Agency Revolution Zywave InsuredMine Infusionsoft	Agency Revolution PathwayPort ActOn ClientCircle ActiveCampaign (Searched the web)

 

5. ChatGPT doesn’t seem to understand backlinks, website DA/DR, or any other SEO metrics. Instead, it acts like a Data Scientist. Therefore, simplistically speaking: 

1. 1. If a brand/website is mentioned positively by many other websites and has a lot of content about “Marketing Automation”, then it’s a High Authority website for “Marketing Automation”.
   2. If this high authority website mentions another marketing tool in a listicle, then that tool must be worth recommending.
   3. If multiple high authority “Marketing Tech” websites recommend this same tool, then the probability of this tool being recommended by GPT goes up.

 

To Rank On ChatGPT, Increase Your Brand Mentions

1. Get as many brand mentions from popular websites in your niche as possible. You can use DA/DR as a proxy for high authority or popularity.
2. Get brand mentions in the keyword-relevant, top ranking listicles of Bing and Google.
3. Increase brand mentions on Reddit.
4. If you’re mentioned more than twice in listicles or popular websites, you’re almost certainly going to see increased traffic coming from ChatGPT.
5. If you’re the only one writing about your own product and you’re not recognized as an authority in your niche, you’re unlikely to get traffic from ChatGPT.
6. Remember: it’s acting like a Search Assistant that’s trying to understand 
   1. Is your brand relevant to the question?
   2. How often is your brand mentioned on the web for the topic
   3. Is it mentioned by multiple high authority websites?
   4. Are the mentions positive or negative?

ChatGPT Web Search Behavior for Generic Keywords

1. When doing Web Search for generic questions like “what’s the best marketing automation software?” ChatGPT will first try to find high authority listicles updated (not necessarily created) in the past 60 days, so something like “The Top 10 Marketing Automation Software in 2025”.

ChatGPT (Web Search) Behavior for Specific Keywords

When trying to answer long tail questions, ChatGPT does a web search with the current year and tries to select recent listicles from high authority websites or high ranking search results.

If it can’t find recent articles for very specific keywords, then it picks up information from old listicles and brand pages. THIS IS AN OPPORTUNITY.

For SaaS brands, it’s important to create content for specific, long tail queries, for example “marketing automation software that integrates with Netsuite” or “best marketing automation software for Insurance companies”.

Another opportunity is to study how ChatGPT recommends users make a decision, and create content for those decision criteria. For example, here’s the recommendation for “best sales commission software”.

In this case, it would be beneficial for a Sales Commission SaaS to create detailed content around who they are best for, their integrations, features and benefits for Sales reps.

General Recommendations

1. Since an LLM like ChatGPT understands sentiment, it’s important to have positive reviews, case studies and testimonials.
2. In our data, G2 appeared in only 1.7% of all URLs cited by ChatGPT with Web Search across its responses. We assume that’s because G2 is actively blocking crawlers to its listing pages, and the G2 references that ChatGPT did make were from memory instead of Web Search.
3. GetApp was used as a source in 14% of answers, about 8 times more than G2.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How will ChatGPT and AI change search?
   ChatGPT and AI improve the relevance of answers, and we see Google responding by adding AI Answers on Search Results pages so that users don’t need to go to ChatGPT or Perplexity to get the answers they are looking for. Another timely response from Google was to remove the rankings of large content mills like Hubspot and G2 because they weren’t directly relevant to many of the keywords & topics they were covering.
2. Will SaaS SEO matter in 2027 or 2030?
   As long as humans need digital software, Search in some format will remain. It will become more personalized and relevant, where users won’t necessarily have to visit multiple websites to find SaaS tools for their specific needs.
3. What will matter in 2030 for SaaS and B2B tech?
   If an AI system can read & process vast amounts of data across multiple websites, then here’s what we think will become more important:
   1. Customer reviews and testimonials
   2. Therefore, Business Outcomes instead of Software (Outcomes as a Service)
   3. Customer Support
   4. Deep subject matter expertise
   5. Deep, industry-specific product features and content highlighting those features
   6. Case studies

How can Enfra help with ChatGPT ranking?

Enfra can help you by

1. Understanding the questions users ask ChatGPT for your commercial-intent keywords
2. Recommending long tail content titles so that your content is referenced by ChatGPT
3. Executing this process at scale for 100s of keywords and questions
4. Tracking your brand’s AI visibility across 100s of keywords & questions