Is ChatGPT Becoming a New Customer Acquisition Channel?
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For years, search engines have been one of the powerful sources for customer acquisition. But now, a quiet revolution is happening. ChatGPT is beginning to guide purchasing decisions, recommend brands, and link users directly to websites.
And this trend isn’t dying soon. It’s the early phase of a shift where AI assistants (not just traditional search engines) are shaping what users discover, consider, and ultimately choose.
ChatGPT Is Now Recommending Products
In recent updates, ChatGPT has begun including product recommendations as part of its search experience.
When a user asks something like “best suits for wedding” or “gift ideas for a coffee lover,” ChatGPT doesn’t just give generic advice, it suggests real products and often links to specific websites.
These results aren’t ads. ChatGPT selects them independently based on what it finds across the web. That means any website or merchant, big or small, has a chance to be included. But only if they meet a few crucial criteria.
ChatGPT Can Only Recommend You If It Can Find You
To be considered in ChatGPT’s search layer, your site must be accessible to OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI’s crawler that works similarly to Googlebot. If your robots.txt file blocks this crawler, your content is invisible to ChatGPT.
Brands that want to capture this opportunity should make sure:
- Their site doesn’t block OAI-SearchBot
- Content is structured in a way that makes it easily quotable and linkable
- UTM tracking is in place to monitor traffic from ChatGPT, using the parameter utm_source=chatgpt.com
- Their site doesn’t block OAI-SearchBot
OpenAI makes it clear. This crawler isn’t used to train models, but only to help pull and cite sources inside ChatGPT’s responses. This offers a new source of referral traffic that marketers can measure just like any other channel.
How to Get Mentioned in ChatGPT?
Visibility in ChatGPT is reputation-based. It remembers patterns especially for the brands that consistently show up in credible online content.
If your brand is frequently mentioned in:
- “Top 10” style blog articles
- Review roundups from niche publishers
- Reddit threads, Quora discussions, and public product comparisons
- Media coverage and expert opinion pieces
- “Top 10” style blog articles
Then you’re far more likely to appear in AI answers.
This works similarly to how Google values E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust). ChatGPT relies on aggregate trust signals. Meaning, if many authoritative sources mention your brand, it assumes you’re worth mentioning too.
After studying 8,000 AI Citations, a research by Search Engine Land shows that Wikipedia (27%) and News Articles (27%) are cited the most by ChatGPT. After that Blog Articles (21%) get the most mentions. So, there’s no scope to undervalue Guest Posting, Link Building and Brand Mentions from other reputed publishers.
Brands Are Already Seeing Referral Traffic from ChatGPT
Some businesses are already tracking traffic from ChatGPT. In certain verticals, especially where informational queries lead to product discovery, ChatGPT mentions are driving measurable traffic, inquiries, and even sales.
Brands can easily identify which visits are coming directly from ChatGPT responses by looking at the “Traffic Acquisition” tab in Google Analytics. Early adopters are using this data to adjust content strategies, identify which products AI is surfacing, and build on what’s working.
So - is ChatGPT a Customer Acquisition Channel?
Not in the traditional sense yet. But it’s already playing a role in consumer awareness and consideration, especially in verticals like FMCG, tech gadgets, wellness, and home products.
Just like Google was once just a search engine, ChatGPT is quickly becoming a recommendation engine! And possibly the most convenient one for users to use and get consultation.
As AI-generated overviews expand and integrate with shopping tools, brands that are discoverable, well-cited, and frequently discussed will win.
If you’re still undermining the power of ChatGPT, you’re missing what could soon become one of the most important top-of-funnel discovery channels.
Want Your Brand to Appear in ChatGPT Answers?
At GEEKY Social, we help brands build content strategically, earn the right mentions, and appear in the places that AI tools pull answers from. Whether it’s digital PR, SEO, or content strategy, our team ensures your brand gets visibility in the AI era.
Talk to us and let’s start optimizing for the next phase of brand visibility.
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