Businesses in ChatGPT: The Complete Guide to Claiming Your Profile, Business Hub and Business Agents

For years, businesses that showed up in ChatGPT answers had no idea it was happening. No dashboard, no numbers, no way to fix a wrong opening hour or an outdated price. That changed on November 10, 2026, when OpenAI opened a beta program called Businesses in ChatGPT. This guide covers what it is, who can use it, how to claim your profile, what the analytics actually tell you, how Business Agents work, and what is still unclear.

The short version

Businesses in ChatGPT lets a verified business do three things:

• Claim a profile inside ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com/business-hub) and keep its details accurate.
• See aggregated analytics on how often ChatGPT mentions it and how many people click through to its website.
• Launch a Business Agent (eligible US ecommerce and online service businesses only), a branded chat assistant that answers customer questions using the business’s own information.

OpenAI positions the program as a way to reach the 1.2 billion people it says use ChatGPT each week. It is a beta, so expect changes.

What is Business Hub?

Business Hub is the portal where everything happens. Inside it you will find three sections: Overview, Agent Builder, and Products.

Once your business is verified, the Hub lets you:

1. Update key business details such as description, delivery and return terms.
2. Add self-service product feeds with pricing and availability.
3. View analytics on mentions, clicks, and discovery topics.
4. Build, test and publish a Business Agent (if eligible).

A note on the product feed: OpenAI’s own wording is cautious. ChatGPT may use the information you upload to answer customer questions. It has not promised that uploading a feed guarantees your products will appear.

Who is eligible?

Claiming a profile. OpenAI says any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim a listing. Eligibility depends on factors including your industry, location, and OpenAI’s verification and integrity checks. The person managing the profile must own the business or be authorized to represent it. OpenAI publishes a separate Businesses in ChatGPT policy and a Business Agents policy that list eligible categories, so read both before you start.

Business Agents. For now, these are limited to eligible e-commerce and online service businesses in the United States.

Fast lanes. Three groups get shortcuts:

• Existing OpenAI Enterprise customers and advertisers can work with their OpenAI representative to claim their business.
• Shopify merchants can connect their store from Business Hub or from the Shopify admin, which OpenAI says streamlines verification. Eligible Shopify products are already integrated into ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog.
• Everyone else goes through the standard claim flow below.

Reality check. Not everyone got in on day one. At least one business outside the US reported being placed on a waitlist, and some publishers asked whether they could sign up at all. OpenAI’s materials focus on businesses selling products and services and do not address publishers.

Important links every beginner needs

Four official OpenAI pages cover almost everything you need before listing your business. Read the two policy pages first, because they decide whether you qualify.

Useful third-party walkthroughs of the live Hub:

• Search Engine Roundtable’s launch-day look at Business Hub shows the claim screens and verification options.
• PPC Land’s detailed report covers analytics, agents and open questions.

Links and access you must have ready before you start

These are not OpenAI pages, but listing stalls without them:

• Your business website URL. It is the link ChatGPT sends people to, and the one the Hub checks for access.
• Access to your domain’s DNS settings (at your registrar or hosting provider) if you choose DNS verification.
• Your main business phone number, listed publicly, if you choose the text or call route.
• A government-issued ID for the person managing the profile.
• Your Shopify admin, if you sell on Shopify. You can connect the store from there for faster verification.
• Your OpenAI representative’s contact, if you are an existing Enterprise customer or advertiser.
• Your product feed or catalog source, with prices and stock levels, if you want products shown.

A tip for beginners: use the sign-up page above to enter Business Hub rather than a link from a social post or an unknown site, since claiming a business involves identity checks and you should only submit them on OpenAI’s own pages.

Step-by-step: how to claim or register your business on ChatGPT or OpenAI

Based on the flow documented by search marketers on launch day, here is what the process looks like.

Step 1: Search for your business

In Business Hub, type your business name. You will see a list of existing entries with street addresses. Pick yours, or create a new one if it is not listed.

Step 2: Review what you are signing up for

The next screen explains the three benefits: tracking mentions in ChatGPT conversations, a place to add products and keep details current, and an optional agent that answers customer questions using context you control.

Step 3: Prove you represent the business

Verification runs through one of these routes, according to reporting from Search Engine Roundtable:

• A text message or phone call to your main business number, or
• DNS verification on your domain.

Shopify merchants and OpenAI Enterprise customers and advertisers have the faster routes described above.

Step 4: Wait for review

Your claim moves through a “Claim received” stage and then “Review in progress.” The decision arrives by email, and you can withdraw the claim while it is under review.

Step 5: Verify your identity

Even after the business claim, the Hub asks you to verify your identity with a government-issued ID. OpenAI describes this as required before you can edit business information or publish a Business Agent.

Step 6: Get the blue checkmark

OpenAI’s example screens show a blue checkmark indicating that a profile is managed by the actual business.

A caution on similar names

OpenAI also sells ChatGPT Business, a workplace subscription. The Hub promotes upgrading to it, but it is a different product from Businesses in ChatGPT, the listings program. Do not confuse the two when you are searching for help or briefing your team.

Understanding the analytics

This is the part marketers have been waiting for. Business Hub splits reporting into two tabs, Brand insights and Agent insights, with seven-day and 28-day views.

What you see

• Mentions: how often ChatGPT mentions your business.
• Profile views: how often people open your ChatGPT profile. (This tile appeared in OpenAI’s example and in an empty dashboard, but was missing from some live dashboards. OpenAI has not explained why.)
• Website clicks: recorded clicks on links to your site in ChatGPT.
• Mentions trend chart: how mentions move over time.
• Top discovery topics: the five most common themes in conversations where your business appears or your website is cited.

What you do not see

OpenAI states that it does not share users’ conversations or Business Agent chats with businesses. Insights are aggregated and only appear once there are enough conversations or interactions to meet certain thresholds. OpenAI has not said what those thresholds are. New or small businesses may see blank tiles for a while.

Read the numbers carefully

The Hub’s own help text on the clicks tile says clicks do not confirm website visits or conversions. Treat clicks as a directional signal, not as sessions in your analytics platform.

There is also a definitional gap. One OpenAI description frames discovery topics as themes in conversations where your website is cited, while another frames them as conversations where the business appears. Those are not the same event, and OpenAI has not clarified which one drives the list.

What real dashboards looked like

OpenAI’s demo uses a fictional toy shop with 15,356 mentions, 1,234 profile views and 5,432 website clicks over seven days. That is a click rate of roughly 35% of mentions.

The first real dashboards shared publicly looked very different. One business showed 690 mentions and 24 clicks over 28 days. Another showed 28 mentions and a single click. Both work out to roughly 3.5% of mentions producing a click, about a tenth of the demo ratio. Two examples are anecdotes, not benchmarks, but they are a useful reminder not to plan around the glossy sample numbers.

Both live dashboards were labeled as having data through November 9 (UTC), a day before launch. That suggests reporting lags by at least a day and that the counts may include activity from before the businesses claimed their listings.

How it compares to other tools

It is tempting to call this a Search Console for ChatGPT, and some marketers did. Others argued it is closer to a brand listing dashboard, since you get topic groupings and click counts rather than actual prompts. A fair summary:

• Google’s Search Console AI reports show impressions but no clicks or queries.
• Bing’s Topics Portfolio beta groups queries into topics and shows where competitors are cited and you are not.
• OpenAI’s Hub gives you clicks and grouped themes, but no raw prompts and no competitive view.

Third-party AI visibility trackers estimate your presence by running prompts at scale. OpenAI’s numbers come from real usage, but without definitions or prompts. Using both together is the sensible approach.

Business Agents: what they are and how they work

After claiming, eligible organizations can build, test, and launch a Business Agent: a branded assistant that answers shopper questions with your product and policy information, following guidelines you set.

The customer journey

1. A user asks ChatGPT something, for example, comparing two products.
2. Your business appears in the answer.
3. The user opens your ChatGPT profile, which can show a short description, delivery and returns terms, and product cards with prices.
4. They tap Start chat to talk to your agent, or View website to leave ChatGPT.

OpenAI says the agent conversation is clearly labeled, kept separate from the customer’s original ChatGPT conversation, and distinct from ChatGPT’s own independent answers.

Building one

For Shopify merchants, OpenAI’s sign-up page boils this down to three steps: connect your store, review the product details, pricing and availability that flow in through Shopify’s catalog, then preview and publish your agent. Other businesses use the Agent builder section of the Hub.

Organic versus sponsored

The same agent can work two ways. Organically, it is what people reach from your profile. On the paid side, OpenAI says you can sponsor your agent and make it the destination for ChatGPT Ads. Sponsored placements are labeled and kept separate from ChatGPT’s responses. This builds on OpenAI’s earlier tests of Sponsored Agents with select US advertisers, and a card in the dashboard already invites you to reach more people with your agent.

One thing the announcement does not mention: payments. Agents are described as helping people ask questions, compare options and take a next step. OpenAI ended its in-chat Instant Checkout earlier this year, after Walmart reported that in-chat checkout converted at one-third the rate of click-out links.

Not the only Business Agent

OpenAI is the third big platform with a product by this name. Google launched its Business Agent for US retailers in Search in January, and Meta introduced one for WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram in June. The idea is the same, a branded assistant inside someone else’s platform, but the data, rules, and ad systems differ. If you sell online, you may end up managing all three.

Your action plan

Here is a practical checklist, in order:

1. Check eligibility. Read OpenAI’s Businesses in ChatGPT policy and Business Agents policy first.
2. Prepare your proof. Have access to your main business phone number or your DNS settings, plus a government-issued ID for the person who will manage the profile.
3. Audit your public information. Make sure descriptions, hours, delivery terms, and return policies on your website are accurate, since ChatGPT draws on what is out there.
4. Clean your product data. Have accurate prices and stock levels ready. If you use Shopify, check how your catalog data looks.
5. Claim your profile through Business Hub, or through your OpenAI representative or Shopify admin if you qualify.
6. Baseline your analytics. Record your first 28-day numbers and compare them against your own web analytics rather than treating clicks as visits.
7. Decide on an agent. If you are a US e-commerce or online service business, draft guidelines for tone, policies, and escalation before you publish.
8. Plan for paid carefully. If you sponsor an agent, track results independently. A working paper found a paid ChatGPT ad visit generated $0.89 in revenue for US shops versus $2.45 for a paid Google search ad visit, so test small first.
9. Review monthly. This is a beta. Features, thresholds, and eligibility will change.

Risks and open questions

Hijacked profiles. Verification is layered, but OpenAI has not described how to dispute a profile claimed by someone without authority. Google has dealt with this for years, having removed millions of fake Business Profiles, so it is a real concern.

Undefined metrics. OpenAI has not defined what counts as a mention, whether repeat appearances in one conversation count once or several times, or what the data thresholds are.

Does claiming help visibility? OpenAI says ChatGPT may use your information. It does not say claiming changes how often you are mentioned or ranked. Do not assume a boost.

Cost. OpenAI’s pages mention no fee for claiming or publishing an agent, and no new pricing for sponsorship beyond its existing ad formats.

Geography. Claiming is open wherever ChatGPT is available in principle, yet at least one claim outside the US was waitlisted, and agents are US-only.

Website access panel. One dashboard showed a Website access check reporting confirmed access. OpenAI has not explained what that check covers.

What comes next

OpenAI calls this an early step and says it plans to extend Businesses in ChatGPT and Business Agents to more markets and business categories, and to build tools for organizations with more complex needs. It also says it will explore more ways for businesses to connect with customers in ChatGPT and beyond. No dates were given.

Frequently asked questions

Is it free to claim my business? OpenAI’s pages mention no fee for claiming or for publishing a Business Agent. Paid promotion runs through ChatGPT Ads.

Can I see what people asked about my business? No. You get aggregated mentions, clicks and discovery topics, never the prompts or chats.

Do I need a Business Agent to claim a profile? No. The agent is optional and limited to eligible US ecommerce and online service businesses.

Are website clicks the same as visits? No. OpenAI’s own help text says clicks do not confirm visits or conversions.

Can publishers and media sites sign up? Unclear. The program is geared toward businesses selling products and services, and OpenAI has not addressed publishers.

Is ChatGPT Business the same thing? No. ChatGPT Business is a workplace subscription. Businesses in ChatGPT is the listings and agents program.

Final thoughts

Businesses in ChatGPT is the first time OpenAI has handed brands first-party data on their unpaid appearances in ChatGPT answers, and the first time it has given them a say in how they are represented. That alone makes it worth claiming your profile early, especially if you sell online in the US. But keep your expectations grounded: the analytics are aggregated, the definitions are vague, early real-world numbers are modest, and the paid side is closely tied to OpenAI’s ad business. Claim, verify, baseline, and measure against your own data.