OpenAI’s new Business Hub lets companies shape how they appear in ChatGPT. For brands with hundreds of stores, branches or dealers, the real work starts with the data underneath.
Ask ChatGPT where to get your car serviced this Saturday and you won’t get a page of links. You’ll get one answer. For brands with hundreds of locations, the question now is simple: when a customer asks, is your store the one that comes back?
On 10 November, OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT. For the first time, a brand can claim a verified profile inside ChatGPT and supply its own business and product information. (This is different from ChatGPT Business, OpenAI’s paid workspace for teams.)
Through a new tool called Business Hub, a verified business can:
Verification takes two steps, a phone check and a document upload. OpenAI is also piloting a Business Agent for some US ecommerce and online service businesses, which answers customer questions on the brand’s behalf. It’s an early sign of where this is heading: AI that helps customers buy, not just choose.
The first release is focused on the US, with other markets to follow. For brands in India and elsewhere, now is the time to prepare.
Customers can now discover, compare, check and decide inside a single AI conversation. Being named in that answer is critical: up to half of buyers go on to buy a brand the assistant names.
The trouble is, the information AI relies on is often wrong. In a SingleInterface study, up to 44% of the facts that third-party sources listed about brands were inaccurate or outdated. ChatGPT draws heavily on sources like these, including maps, search and social listings, and repeats what it finds with confidence. A claimed profile gives ChatGPT the correct facts straight from the brand, but only if the data behind it is accurate everywhere.
Claiming one profile is easy. Claiming 500 is not. The first release has no bulk upload, no API and no partner feeds, so a brand would need to claim, verify and maintain each location one at a time.
We expect this to change. Google, Meta and Apple all started with tools for single businesses and added bulk options for large brands later. OpenAI has said tools for more complex organisations are planned, though it hasn’t shared a timeline.
SingleInterface manages the local digital presence of more than 500,000 locations across India, South-East Asia, the Middle East, South Africa and Australia. OpenAI hasn’t released bulk tools yet, and we’re actively working on how to close that gap for our clients.
AI assistants may be the biggest shift in local discovery in over a decade. The brands that prepare now will be the ones AI recommends tomorrow.
Want to know how ChatGPT sees your brand today? Get in touch with the SingleInterface team at singleinterface.com for a free AI visibility check, or speak to your SingleInterface account manager.
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