3 things you can do today to show up in ChatGPT results

I get asked "how do I rank in ChatGPT?" about five times a week now. It's becoming the question that replaced "how do I rank on Google?" which replaced "how do I get on the first page of AltaVista?" (showing my age here).

Most of the advice out there is either too vague to act on ("build authority!") or too technical for someone who just wants to fix the problem and move on. Here are three things you can literally do this afternoon that make a measurable difference.

This is the quickest win and the one most people skip because structured data feels like a developer task. It's really not if you use any modern CMS.

AI models use structured data (Schema.org markup) to understand page content during training. FAQ and HowTo markup in particular gives them a clear signal that your page answers specific questions, which is exactly what people are asking AI models.

If your homepage has a section that answers common customer questions, wrap those in FAQPage schema. If you have any instructional content, use HowTo markup. This alone can bump you into the training data for relevant queries because the model can parse and store your content more accurately.

Tools like Google's Structured Data Markup Helper make this a copy-paste job. No developer needed.

Every brand publishes "Us vs. Competitor X" pages that read like sales brochures. The reason those don't get traction is that AI models can detect balance. They've been trained on enough content to recognize when something is pure marketing and devalue it accordingly.

Write one comparison page (or fix your existing one) that treats your competitors fairly. List their strengths honestly. Acknowledge where they might be better than you. Then make your case for why you're the right choice for a specific audience.

Here's why this works: AI models pull from training data that includes millions of comparison articles. The ones that get referenced most often are balanced, specific, and include concrete details (pricing, feature comparisons, use-case recommendations). A comparison page that admits your competitor does X better but argues that Y matters more for your customer is more useful to an AI model than one that pretends you're the best at everything.

This takes about two hours to write and it compounds. Once the page is in training data, every subsequent model version that trains on fresh data will include it.

This is the most underrated AI visibility tactic and also the simplest to explain.

AI models train on large text corpora that include review sites (G2, Capterra, Trustpilot), forums (Reddit, specialized communities), and editorial publications in each category. If your brand is discussed in those places, especially with specific, quotable language, the model stores that as part of its factual basis about your company.

Here's what to do: pick 3 places where your market discusses products like yours. Make sure your brand is present and accurately described. Not with fake reviews. With real outreach. Ask an actual customer to leave a review if they had a good experience. Reply to Reddit threads about your category with useful information. Not "check out my product!" but genuine help that includes your perspective as someone building in the space.

The value of being mentioned with specific, positive language in these sources accumulates over time. Every model retrain picks it up. And unlike Google rankings, which refresh constantly, AI training data updates on a cycle. The mentions you earn today will still be paying dividends six months from now.

Check your AI visibility before you start making changes. Write down how you appear in 10 queries across ChatGPT and Gemini. Note the position, sentiment, and which competitors are ahead of you. Then check again in two weeks.

You can do all three of these things in a single afternoon. And unlike most marketing advice I've seen over the years, this actually works because it targets how AI models acquire and structure information, not how search engines rank pages. Different game. Different rules.