How ChatGPT Decides What to Recommend (and Why It Picks Your Competitor)

Between 11 September and 9 October 2026, someone typed this into Google:

“chatgpt is telling people outdated things about our product. how do we correct that?”

Google showed them this page.

Fair question. Here is the honest answer.

You can’t edit ChatGPT.

You can fix what it reads.

The short version

ChatGPT answers from two places. What it learned in training, and what it finds when it searches the live web. A wrong answer comes from one of them, and the live web is the only one you can move quickly, so the work starts there.

Five steps:

• Write down the exact wrong sentence
• Make sure ChatGPT can reach your site
• Fix the page it is reading
• Fix the copies of you on other sites
• Make the correct version more common than the wrong one

If ChatGPT gets your facts right but recommends a competitor, that is a different problem. Read how ChatGPT decides what to recommend instead.

First, two people who tried the legal route

In early 2023, Brian Hood, mayor of Hepburn Shire near Melbourne, found out ChatGPT was telling people he was guilty in a bribery case and had served prison time.

He was the whistleblower. He was never charged.

His lawyers sent OpenAI a letter and gave it 28 days to correct the errors. When Fortune reported the story on 5 April 2023, OpenAI had not replied.

Then Mark Walters, a US radio host. ChatGPT told a journalist that Walters was accused of embezzling money from the Second Amendment Foundation. It was invented. Walters sued.

On 19 May 2025, a Georgia court ruled for OpenAI. Part of the reasoning: the journalist knew ChatGPT can make things up, so he didn’t take the answer as fact. He recognised it as false within 90 minutes.

A legal letter. A lawsuit.

Neither one is a fast way to change an answer.

Your business is not a mayor or a radio host. But the lesson is the same. The fast road is the sources.

Step 1: Write down the exact wrong sentence

“ChatGPT is wrong about us” is a feeling. You can’t fix a feeling.

Open ChatGPT. Turn search on. Ask the questions your buyers ask, in their words:

• What does [your firm] do?
• Who are the best [service] firms in [city]?
• How much does [your firm] charge?
• Who runs [your firm]?

Copy every wrong sentence into a sheet, and next to each one write which type it is, because the type tells you where to look.

What it said	Type	Where it usually comes from
Old price, closed office, a partner who left	Outdated	An old page or an old directory listing
A service you don’t offer	Wrong detail	Vague service pages, broad directory categories
Facts from a firm with a similar name	Mix-up	Name, address or description that changes from site to site
Something nobody ever wrote	Invented	Too little written about you, so it guessed

Then click the source links under the answer. Since ChatGPT search launched on 31 October 2024, OpenAI shows links to the sources it used.

Those links are your worklist.

Step 2: Make sure ChatGPT can reach your site

Five minutes. Do it first.

OpenAI’s crawler documentation is direct about this. Sites that opt out of its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links.”

Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt. If it disallows OAI-SearchBot, by name or through a blanket rule under User-agent: *, your pages won’t appear in ChatGPT search answers. If you use Cloudflare or a security plugin, check its bot settings as well, because some of them have a switch that blocks AI crawlers.

If ChatGPT can’t read your pages, your own site can’t correct the answer. The full crawler list is on our ChatGPT SEO page.

Step 3: Fix the page it is reading

Your own site is the one source you fully control, so give ChatGPT one page that states the facts plainly. Usually the About page.

Plain text only:

• Your exact business name, plus any old name you traded under
• What you do, in one sentence a stranger would understand
• Where you work: cities, regions, or remote
• Who runs it, with current titles
• Services you don’t offer, if ChatGPT keeps saying you do
• The date you last updated the page

That “don’t offer” line feels strange to write. Write it anyway. If ChatGPT keeps telling people you handle conveyancing and you don’t, one plain sentence saying “We don’t handle conveyancing” can give it something to read instead of something to guess.

Then fix the pages that feed the wrong answer. The pricing page from 2023. The team page with the partner who left. The news post about the office you closed.

Update them, or redirect them to the current page.

Step 4: Fix the copies of you on other sites

Go back to the source links from Step 1. If they point to a directory or an old article, this step likely matters more than anything on your own site.

List every place that describes you. For a service business it usually looks like this:

• Google Business Profile
• LinkedIn company page
• Directories and associations in your field (your law society listing, Clutch, the local chamber, whichever apply)
• Review sites
• Old press releases and partner pages

Same name.

Same one-line description.

Same address and same services. Everywhere.

Where you can’t edit a listing, email the owner with the correct facts and a link to your About page. Keep a log of who you contacted, and when.

Step 5: Make the correct version more common than the wrong one

Some wrong answers survive Steps 3 and 4, because the wrong version lives on sites you don’t control. Usually it can’t be deleted. The practical move is to make the correct version far more common.

Get the correct fact written on independent sites that ChatGPT search is likely to find: an interview in a trade publication, a podcast guest page, a partner’s case study, a mention in local news.

This part is my reasoning. OpenAI hasn’t published how it weighs sources.

Every new page that states the right fact is one more vote against the old one. When the sources ChatGPT finds mostly agree, it has less room to guess. When they disagree, you get blended answers or wrong ones.

What you can’t fix, and how long it takes

Answers that come from live search can change once the pages it finds are fixed. Answers that come from training memory can stay until OpenAI releases a newer model, and nobody outside OpenAI decides that date.

So there is no guaranteed timeline. If someone promises “fixed in 7 days,” they are guessing.

What you can do is run the same questions every month and track the answers. Same questions, same sheet, one new column each month.

Wrong. Then partly right. Then right.

That is the movement you are looking for.

The checklist

• Every wrong sentence copied into a sheet, with its type
• Source links under each answer clicked and logged
• OAI-SearchBot allowed in robots.txt, and in Cloudflare or security plugin settings
• One facts page, in plain text, with a date on it
• Old pricing, team and news pages updated or redirected
• Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories saying the same thing, word for word
• Owners of listings you can’t edit contacted, and the contact logged
• Correct fact published on new independent sites
• Same questions re-run every month

Where Intelitune fits

Most of this you can do yourself. It takes patience.

It gets harder when the wrong answer is costing you enquiries and you need to know which fix will move that number. That is the work we do. We agree the number first, move what matters, then review what moved at day 30, 60 and 90.

Can’t show the client names. Can show the screen.

889 form submits in 9 months · 95 phone calls + 22 bookings. Numbers pulled from GA4 and Search Console. See the evidence

No clear opportunity, no plan. If we look and there is nothing worth fixing, we will tell you.

Want to see what ChatGPT says about your business? Request the AI Visibility Diagnostic. Written diagnostic in 3 business days. Complimentary. No sales call.

Request diagnostic →

Frequently asked questions

Can I edit what ChatGPT says about my brand?

No. There is no edit button. Correcting it inside your own chat doesn’t change what your buyers see in theirs. What you can change is what it reads, on your site and on other sites.

How long does it take to fix what ChatGPT gets wrong?

It depends where the wrong answer comes from. If it comes from live search, it can change after the pages it reads are fixed. If it comes from training memory, it can last until a newer model is released. Nobody can honestly promise a date.

Why does ChatGPT mix my business up with another one?

Usually because the two of you look alike on paper. Similar name, same city, same category, and details that change from one listing to the next. Make your name, address and one-line description identical everywhere, and say plainly what makes you different. If Google doesn’t know you as a separate business either, start with why Google doesn’t recognise your brand as an entity.

Should I send OpenAI a legal letter?

Ask your lawyer about that one. What I can say is that the two well-known cases, Brian Hood in 2023 and Mark Walters in 2025, show it is a slow road. Fix the sources either way.

Sources

• Fortune reported Brian Hood’s dispute with OpenAI on 5 April 2023.
• Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Law Blog covers the May 2025 ruling in Walters v. OpenAI.
• OpenAI announced ChatGPT search and its source links on 31 October 2024.
• OpenAI crawler documentation explains OAI-SearchBot and how robots.txt affects ChatGPT search.