Ask ChatGPT for "a tool like Notion for solo founders" and you get a short list of names. If your startup isn't on it, a buyer who never opens Google won't find you.
This guide explains where ChatGPT and other AI assistants get those names, how to check whether they know your startup, and what a small team can do about it.
How ChatGPT decides which products to mention
AI assistants answer in two ways.
The first is from memory. The model learned about products while it was trained, from pages that existed at that moment. A startup that launched after that point doesn't exist in its memory at all, and one that had a single landing page back then barely does.
The second is live search. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews search the web, read the top results and summarize them. ChatGPT search relies heavily on Bing's index, while AI Overviews use Google's.
In both cases, the assistant trusts what other sites say about you more than what you say about yourself. The pages it quotes most for product questions are reviews, "X vs Y" comparisons, "best X" lists and "alternatives to X" pages. Your own homepage tells it what you do. Other sites tell it whether you're worth recommending.
Check whether AI assistants know your startup
Before you change anything, find out where you stand. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google, and ask the questions a buyer would ask:
- "What is {your product}?"
- "What are the best alternatives to {your biggest competitor}?"
- "What's a good {category} tool for {your audience}?"
- "{your product} vs {competitor}"
Write down which sources the assistant links to. Those are the pages you want to be on.
Then check Bing. Search site:yourdomain.com on bing.com. If few of your pages show up, ChatGPT search probably can't find them either.
Why new startups don't show up
It's rarely about the product. A startup that launched three months ago usually has a homepage, a pricing page and maybe a blog post or two, all on its own domain. Nobody else has written about it yet.
So when someone asks for a recommendation, the assistant has plenty of reviews and comparisons of the established tools, and nothing about yours. It names the tools it can back up with sources.
What you can do about it
Make your own site easy to quote
Assistants still read your site to answer "what is {your product}". Help them get it right:
- Say in one sentence on your homepage what the product does and who it's for.
- Keep your pricing on a public page, with real numbers.
- Add an FAQ with the questions buyers ask, and mark it up with FAQ schema.
- Use your product name the same way everywhere, so the assistant doesn't split you into two products.
Get your site into Bing
Create a free account in Bing Webmaster Tools, verify your domain and submit your sitemap. You can also turn on IndexNow, which tells Bing about new and changed pages right away. It takes half an hour and it's the most direct way to become visible in ChatGPT search.
Get listed where people compare tools
Directories and "alternatives to X" pages are exactly the kind of source assistants quote for "what's a good tool for…" questions. List your startup on directories that are indexed by Google and Bing, and on the alternatives pages of the competitors buyers compare you with. On Huzzler, Launch Boost puts your product first on the alternatives pages of the competitors you pick.
Get reviews and comparisons on other sites
This is the biggest lever, and the slowest. A few ways to get there:
- Ask happy customers to review you on sites in your niche.
- Write a guest post for a blog your buyers read, and compare your product honestly with the tools they already know.
- Reach out to people who write "best X" lists in your category and ask them to try your product.
- Pay a site in your niche to review your product.
A comparison with a smaller competitor has a better chance than one with a big name. "{your product} vs Notion" competes with hundreds of pages. A comparison with a tool of your own size can rank on the first page, and assistants use it as a source either way.
Show up where founders talk
Assistants also read forum threads, like Reddit and Indie Hackers, where people ask for tool recommendations. Answer those threads when your product actually fits, say that you built it, and mention its drawbacks too. A thread that reads like an ad gets removed, and it doesn't help you anywhere.
How long it takes
Live search is fast. Once Bing and Google index a page about your product, ChatGPT search and AI Overviews can use it. For a small startup, that's often a matter of days or weeks.
Answers from memory are slow. They only change when a new model is trained, so it can take many months before the assistant knows your startup without searching. Everything you publish now counts for that next model.
Our AI visibility package
We sell this as a service, so take this section as the pitch it is. With AI visibility, we write a review of your startup and two comparisons with competitors you pick on the Huzzler blog. The articles have FAQ and product schema, and we submit them to Google and Bing. You fill in a form of about 15 minutes, and we decide what the articles say, including the drawbacks.
We don't promise that ChatGPT will mention you. We make sure there's a source it can quote when someone asks about your product.