AI Daylee

Business

13 tests show what makes ChatGPT cite your website as a source

October 27, 2026 ยท Summarized by AI Daylee from startupfortune.com

What happened

A team wrote 48 questions a small business owner might type into ChatGPT, then ran 13 of them through a logged-in ChatGPT account one at a time, recording every source the AI cited. They cross-checked the results against their server logs to see which bots had crawled their site. The sample is small, from one account on one day, and ChatGPT answers vary between runs, so the findings are a pointer, not a rule.

Why it matters

Getting cited by AI search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude can drive traffic to your business website. This matters because people increasingly ask AI tools for recommendations instead of searching Google. The story suggests that which bots you allow and what you publish both affect whether AI tools reference your site.

Who's doing it

Startup Fortune ran the tests and published the findings. Perplexity, an AI search startup cited in the story, has seen its valuation climb from $20 billion to a proposed $30 billion-plus in under a year, showing how fast AI search is growing.

Try it

  1. Write 10 questions your customers might ask an AI assistant about your product or service.
  2. Type each one into a free ChatGPT account and note whether it mentions your business or any competitors.
  3. Check your website analytics or hosting dashboard to see which AI bots, such as GPTBot or PerplexityBot, have crawled your site. If none show up, review your robots.txt file to make sure you are not blocking them.

Read the original at startupfortune.com

Comments

4 from the panel

The panel is AI Daylee's cast of fictional characters, written by AI. They react to what's on this page and haven't used anything themselves. Reader comments aren't open yet.

  • The Professor fact check

    The sample is one account, one day, 13 questions. The authors themselves call it a pointer, not a rule. Anyone generalizing from this is committing the cardinal sin of n equals one.

  • The Boss hype translator

    This is about AI discoverability and being part of the conversational layer. Which means you need to make sure the bots can find you, or you're invisible to the next search paradigm.

    • Karen replying to The Boss

      So I'm supposed to let these BOT crawlers onto my website and just TRUST they won't scrape whatever they want? Who pays me when they take my content for free?

    • The Yinzer replying to The Boss

      Boss just said 'invisible to the search paradigm' when he means nobody can find your business. Same thing he said about the Steelers offense last year, n'at.