Does ChatGPT read your website
Yes, in three ways, and only one of them is your site being read today.
OpenAI’s own page listing the programs it runs names two. One visits pages and keeps a copy of the words for ChatGPT’s search: “OAI-SearchBot”. Another fetches a page when someone pastes a link into a chat: “ChatGPT-User”. The third route is not your site. It is what other places say about you: your Google listing, the directories, somebody else’s page.
There is a fourth. It can answer from things it read long ago, old hours and all.
Now the trap. Your site can be blocked from ChatGPT’s search and still load fine when you paste the link in yourself. OpenAI says its robots.txt rules may not apply to a visit a person asked for. So a good answer from your own pasted link proves nothing.
What it can read on your page, and what it cannot
Words typed as text come through. Words baked into a picture mostly do not.
- Text on the page. Read, in full.
- A price list saved as a JPEG, or a phone number inside your logo. Google’s page on images says it works out the subject from the words around it and the description you write. That tells it a price list is there, not what you charge.
- Prices in a PDF. A second file the machine has to open, and nobody publishes whether it does.
- Text that only appears after the page runs a program in the browser. As of Vercel’s December 2024 measurement, the major AI programs downloaded page code and did not run it. That text never showed up. It may be different now.
In the month Vercel measured, OpenAI’s program made 569 million fetches, about 58 percent of it plain page text. It reads words in bulk. It is not looking at your design.
Blank picture descriptions are normal: WebAIM checked one million home pages in February 2026 and found 16.2 percent had none, about 11 a page. WCAG rule 1.4.5 has said it since 2008. Put information in text, not in a picture of it.
Every page we build is a finished file of plain words.
Your hours are where most sites lose
The site says 7 to 5. The listing says 8 to 4. A person shrugs and calls anyway. A machine reads two answers, trusts neither, and names the business whose story is straight.
Your name spelled two ways does the same damage. So does a number that rings a phone nobody carries. Google’s rules for business listings say your name should be the one you use “consistently” on your storefront, website and stationery. The address has to be your real location.
Pick one set of facts. Write them on the page in plain words. Make the listing match word for word. The listing is free: Google’s own business profile page says creating one and listing your business costs nothing. There is a set way to write hours in the code, so a machine reads them once instead of guessing.
Matching hours everywhere will not get you named. Disagreeing hours can get you skipped.
Nobody can buy a place in the answer
Google says it flat about its unpaid results: “Nobody can pay us to do so.” OpenAI publishes no way to buy placement either.
There is no magic file. Google’s page on its AI features says you do not need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup, and there is “no special markup you need to add”. That is why we do not sell you one.
Answers move, too. Ask the same question twice in fresh chats and you can get different names. OpenAI does not publish a rule book we could show you.
What is left is smaller, and real.
Pages a machine can read give it something to quote. That is the work we do on visibility, and it is all we will promise. An old theme can undo it by leaving “noindex” or “nosnippet” on your pages. Google’s page on those tags says that keeps your words out of its AI answers.
The ten minute check you can run on your own site
- Read your home page as words only. If your prices, hours and town are not there in text, a machine has nothing to quote.
- Try to highlight your prices and hours with the mouse. If it will not select, it is a picture, and a machine cannot read it.
- Right click, choose View Page Source, and search for noindex, nosnippet and max-snippet. Any of those on a page you want found tells Google to keep your words out of its AI answers.
- In a browser, type your address followed by /robots.txt. Look for OAI-SearchBot next to the word Disallow. That line keeps you out of ChatGPT’s search results.
- Put your site and your Google listing side by side. Check name, phone, address, hours and services. Write down which is wrong.
- Ask ChatGPT about your business without pasting your link, using your name and town. Anything else runs into the trap above. Our post on what AI says about your business has the questions.
What to fix first
First, make the disagreements go away. One set of hours, one phone number, one spelling of your name, on the site and on the listing.
Second, get your prices, hours and service area onto the page as words you can highlight. Everything else waits until those two are done.
Neither puts you in an answer by next week. We cannot tell you when it will, or whether it will.
If you would rather we ran it, the check is free. We ask the questions your customers ask, write down who gets named, and tell you what to fix first. A person reviews it, then replies by email. Ask for a scan.