UpTrajectory Review
OpenAI has announced that ChatGPT will now include business profiles, a feature that lets companies create a presence directly inside the chatbot. Users who ask ChatGPT for a plumber, a bakery, or a marketing consultant will soon see curated business listings alongside the conversational answer. The company positions this as a natural extension of how people already use the tool: asking for recommendations. The move places OpenAI in direct competition with Google Business Profiles and Yelp, but with a twist — the listing appears inside a dialogue, not a search results page.
For the small-business operator, this changes where your next customer finds you. A decade ago, you needed a website. Five years ago, you needed a Google Business Profile and a handful of reviews. Now you may need a ChatGPT presence, because a growing share of consumers asks the chatbot instead of typing a query into a search bar. If your business is absent from ChatGPT's index, you risk invisibility at the exact moment a buyer asks for what you sell. That is not an abstract threat; it is a shift in the front door.
What is genuinely new is the intent layer. Google shows a map and a list; ChatGPT interprets a request and narrows the field. A user who asks for a 'quiet coffee shop with Wi-Fi near downtown' gets a filtered answer, not ten blue links. That means the businesses ChatGPT surfaces will be chosen by algorithmic interpretation of reviews, web content, and structured data — not simply by proximity or ad spend. We are skeptical of any claim that this levels the playing field; the same SEO games will migrate to a new arena, and early adopters with clean data will win first.
Second-order effects cut in two directions. Businesses that serve niche or high-intent queries — a specialty repair shop, a bilingual accountant — may benefit because ChatGPT rewards specificity. Businesses that rely on impulse foot traffic or broad awareness may lose ground, because the chatbot compresses discovery into a single recommendation, not a page of options. There is also a cost: maintaining yet another profile, monitoring yet another channel for accuracy, and hoping OpenAI does not change the rules overnight. The burden of multi-platform presence grows, and no small team has spare hours.
Watch how OpenAI monetizes this. If sponsored placements appear inside conversational answers, the organic advantage may evaporate quickly. In the meantime, claim your profile if the feature is available to you, audit the data sources ChatGPT likely pulls from — your website, your reviews, your structured listings — and make sure they tell a consistent story. The operators who treat this as a serious channel in 2025 will own the answer when a customer asks.
The larger lesson is that discovery keeps fragmenting. You no longer optimize for one search engine; you optimize for every surface where a buyer might ask a question. That is exhausting, but it is the job now.
“OpenAI is looking to make ChatGPT a more robust consumer discovery engine.” — TechCrunch
Takeaway: Claim your ChatGPT business profile now and audit the review and web data that shapes which businesses the chatbot recommends.
Excerpt from the original — TechCrunch
OpenAI is looking to make ChatGPT a more robust consumer discovery engine, and a host of new features seek to empower businesses to help it do that.