How to show up in ChatGPT if you are a manufacturer
What to check so AI assistants describe your industrial company well: a clear definition, structured data, useful content and external mentions.
More and more buyers ask an AI assistant (“which manufacturers of X are there in Spain?”, “who offers Y?”) before they search on Google. If your company is industrial, the question is: what does an assistant say about you, and where does it get it from? Nobody can guarantee you will appear in a specific answer, but you can reduce the most common reasons why you are described badly or not named.
1. Ask them first
Before changing anything, run the test. With or without an account, ask several assistants (for example ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot):
- “What is [your company] and what does it do?”
- “Which manufacturers of [your product] are there in [your region]?”
- “What is the best supplier of [your product] for [your customer]?”
Note whether they name you, whether what they say is correct and which sources they cite. Repeat every few weeks: answers change.
2. Say who you are in one clear sentence
Models summarise what they find. If your website says vague things, the summary will be vague. Put a definition like this somewhere easy to find on your site: “X is a company [from where] that manufactures [what] for [whom]”. And add concrete answers on one page (“About us” or FAQ): what you do, for whom, where, and what you do not do.
3. Data a machine can understand
- Structured data (schema.org) for organisation, product and FAQ: it helps to understand what each thing is.
- One idea per page: one for each product, one for each sector.
- Consistent data everywhere: same name, address, phone and description on your site, profiles and directories.
- The llms.txt file, a proposed convention for presenting your site to models.
4. Content worth citing
Assistants cite what answers a specific question well. In industry that is usually:
- Practical guides (“how to choose X depending on Y”).
- Your own data: lead times, capacities, tolerances, standards you meet.
- Real cases, with the client's permission.
- FAQs answered without detours.
5. Other sites talking about you
An assistant trusts more what several independent sources say. Take care of:
- Sector directories and those of the fairs where you exhibit.
- Company profiles (LinkedIn, Google, the business register).
- Trade press, collaborations and association mentions.
6. The technical basics that must not fail
- Your site should be readable without JavaScript for the essentials.
- robots.txt should not block the crawlers you care about.
- An up-to-date sitemap and fast pages.
What to expect
There is no button to appear in ChatGPT, and results change. The reasonable approach is to improve the basics (clarity, data, content, mentions) and measure every month with the same questions. It is the same logic as good SEO, with the nuance that the answer must make sense on its own.
What you can do and what we can do
Many of these steps are an afternoon's work. If you want us to review how you are described today and what your website lacks, write to us: we have applied it to our own website and can do it for yours. If you manufacture, this is how we approach customer acquisition for manufacturers.