OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT today, in beta. It is the closest thing ChatGPT has had to Google Search Console and Google Business Profile combined. It solves part of the biggest problem in AI search right now: how to track what is going on. It does not solve the second problem: how to influence the answer. That still depends on the record about your business across the web, not on the profile you claim.
What launched
Business Hub, at chatgpt.com/business-hub, is where a business claims its profile, verifies it, and manages what ChatGPT shows about it. It is free for now. OpenAI's VP of monetization, Benji Shomair, did not rule out a paid model later.
| Part | What it does |
|---|---|
| Profile | Website, description, category, logo, cover photo, and delivery and return policies. OpenAI reviews each change. |
| Verification | Ownership through Shopify, DNS, phone, or email, then identity verification with a government ID. |
| Product feed | Products, prices, and availability through a file upload or Shopify. |
| Insights | Mentions, website clicks, and discovery topics over 7 or 28 days. |
| Business Agent | A labeled chat that speaks for the brand, built from its instructions and product feed. |
Who can use it now
When you start a claim, ChatGPT asks how customers interact with your business. There are three choices.
| Business type | Status |
|---|---|
| Online store | Open. Business Agents are limited to eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. |
| Physical location | Limited. Local businesses in the US can claim existing listings. Some testers were placed on a waitlist. |
| Service (B2B, SaaS, agencies, consultancies) | Coming soon. No date. |
The focus right now is ecommerce, with Shopify built in. B2B and SaaS companies cannot claim a profile yet. Do not choose "online store" to get in early. OpenAI's policy requires you to represent your business accurately, and it can decline a listing or restrict access when it finds a problem.
Not being able to claim does not mean you are not listed. Under OpenAI's terms, OpenAI may create and display a listing for your business from other sources whether or not you claim it. Check what ChatGPT says about your company now.
Measurement: what it answers
For the first time, ChatGPT gives businesses its own data for unpaid answers. That matters because third-party tools have been estimating.
Our view at Camino5 is that ChatGPT is relying more on its own index every day, and less on live searches it sends out to other sites (fan-out queries). As it does, it shows fewer referral sources, and prompt-tracking tools see less of what drives an answer. They see one part of the picture. This view is well supported by what we and others see in practice, though no study has confirmed it yet.
Others in the industry are saying the same thing. Farhad Divecha, CEO of the agency Accuracast, told Digiday that the tools his team uses estimate visibility from proxy data, with no access to ChatGPT's own data. He said his team may rethink paying for them if the estimates prove "wildly erroneous." Debra Aho Williamson of Sonata Insights said OpenAI's data "will take some of the power away from the third-party companies," though she expects demand for them to stay strong.
Measurement: what it does not answer
| Metric | What counts | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Mentions | ChatGPT cites your website. "Just naming the brand doesn't count," per OpenAI. | No prompts, so you cannot see what question led to the mention. |
| Website clicks | Clicks on links to your site from ChatGPT. | Not confirmed visits or purchases. |
| Discovery topics | Themes in conversations where ChatGPT cites your site. | No individual chats. No share of voice. |
Other limits:
- It covers ChatGPT only, not Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, or Google AI Overviews.
- There are no competitor comparisons.
- Low-volume data may be withheld for privacy. OpenAI has not said where the threshold is.
- It is a dashboard. We have seen nothing about an API or export.
- OpenAI's terms treat Insight Data as confidential. Agencies can use a client's data for that client, but not to build cross-client benchmarks without OpenAI's permission.
PPC Land compared the reported feature set with a 2025 wish list of twelve features for an AI search console. By its count, the early version covered three. The right setup uses both: Business Hub as the baseline for ChatGPT, and your own tracking for prompts, competitors, and other engines.
Influence: the open question
The second big question in AI search is how to influence the answer and make sure it says what you want. Business Hub does not change that much.
- Shomair told Digiday that claiming a business "should not have an impact on how frequently it appears."
- OpenAI says ChatGPT keeps making independent recommendations and comparisons, and may use the information you submit. It does not promise to.
- Under the terms, OpenAI can add to, edit, or replace what you submit with information from other sources.
So the profile is one input among several. What decides whether you are in the answer is the record about your business across the web: your own pages, your structured data, how consistently your company is described, and the third-party sites that cite you. Research cited by PPC Land found that brands named in ChatGPT's internal search queries reached the final answer 68.9% of the time, compared with 2.1% for brands whose pages were fetched but not named. Being part of how ChatGPT defines a category matters more than being in its index.
That is where the work is now. Business Hub needs that context to work well, and it cannot create it. Tools and services that build and verify a company's record across sources support Business Hub. They do not compete with it.
The agents
The agent is the part getting less attention, and it may matter most over time.
- A shopper sees your brand in an answer, opens your profile, and chooses to start a conversation. The agent is labeled as your brand's AI.
- OpenAI began testing a paid version, Sponsored Agents, with select US advertisers in September. Shomair described today's free agent as "the organic experience" and the sponsored one as "the paid experience," with the same agent behind both. Organic and paid now meet in one place.
- Brands cannot bring their own agents. The agent is built from the brand's instructions and product feed, so its answers are only as accurate as that data.
- Brands do not see the conversations, only themes.
- Under the terms, the brand is responsible for everything the agent says, including answers it never reviewed, and indemnifies OpenAI for claims like false advertising.
- The Business Agents Policy bans invented prices, false urgency, pressure after a user declines, and advice that requires a professional license.
ChatGPT ads passed a $1 billion annualized run rate in August, according to OpenAI. The agent gives OpenAI a free product that leads directly to a paid one.
The trade-offs in the terms
The launch coverage presents Business Hub as a free visibility tool. The terms show what businesses give in return. Have counsel review them before you claim. This is not legal advice.
| Term | What it says |
|---|---|
| Listings (Section 4.1) | OpenAI may create and display your listing whether or not you claim it. Claiming does not give you full control. |
| Basic business information (Section 4.2) | The license for your name, address, hours, category, and website is perpetual and irrevocable. |
| Product feeds (Section 3) | You must allow OpenAI's crawlers and give up AI training opt-outs against OpenAI, for your company and its affiliates. |
| Claims (Section 10) | You agree not to sue OpenAI over content on your sites, past or present, and waive injunctions. |
| Insight Data (Section 6) | Confidential. Use it only to measure your own performance. |
| No guarantees (Section 8) | No promise of placement, traffic, or sales. |
Publishers should read Sections 3 and 10 closely. For a publisher, the feed terms and the release cover the content the business is built on.
Other engines
Google already has Search Console and Business Profile, though neither reports on ChatGPT. Anthropic launched agentic commerce tools in September 2026: prebuilt shopper and merchant agents for retailers to run on their own sites. Nothing public shows a business listing or brand analytics product from Anthropic yet. We have heard that Anthropic plans to launch its own version soon. Treat that as a rumor until it is announced.
What to do now, by business type
| Business type | What to do now |
|---|---|
| Ecommerce | Have legal review the terms. Claim, verify, and connect your feed before Black Friday. Build an agent if eligible and test it first. See our Black Friday guide. |
| Local businesses | Check whether your listing exists and is accurate. Claim it if you can, or join the waitlist. |
| B2B, SaaS, and services | Do not misclassify to get in. Check what ChatGPT says about you now. Work on the record across the web: your site, structured data, and third-party citations. Watch for the service option to open. |
| Publishers | Read Sections 3 and 10 with counsel before claiming anything. |
| Everyone | Track ChatGPT as its own channel in GA4 using utm_source=chatgpt.com. Keep your third-party tracking for prompts, competitors, and other engines. |
What this means over the next 6 to 18 months
OpenAI has said more markets, more business types, and tools for more complex organizations are coming, with no dates. When the service option opens, B2B companies will face the same choices ecommerce brands face today.
Measurement in AI search will get better. First-party data from ChatGPT, and possibly from other engines, will replace some of the estimating. That will make the influence problem easier to see and no easier to solve. The companies that do best will be the ones whose record across the web already defines them clearly and accurately when the data arrives.
Sources
- OpenAI, "Introducing Businesses in ChatGPT", November 10, 2026.
- OpenAI, Businesses in ChatGPT Terms, updated November 9, 2026.
- OpenAI, Business Agents Policy.
- Digiday, Krystal Scanlon, "OpenAI's new business agents give brands a free way into the conversation it's also selling as an ad", November 10, 2026.
- Search Engine Roundtable, Barry Schwartz, "Businesses in ChatGPT Business Hub Live With Click Data", November 10, 2026.
- Citeme, Alexandre Teillet, "Businesses in ChatGPT", November 10, 2026.
- Flavio Copes, "A deep dive into Businesses in ChatGPT", November 10, 2026.
- PPC Land, Luis Rijo, "ChatGPT builds mention and click charts for verified businesses", November 6, 2026.
- Trending Topics, Jakob Steinschaden, "A new rival for GEO startups", November 10, 2026.
- Digital Commerce 360, Brian Warmoth, "Anthropic debuts Claude features focused on agentic commerce", September 2, 2026.