ChatGPT Business Hub: The Complete Guide for Brands

Key takeaways

• What it is. Business Hub lives at chatgpt.com/business-hub and in the ChatGPT sidebar. It has three areas: Overview (with Insights), Agent builder and Products.
• What it changes. You supply the facts ChatGPT can draw on: category, description, contact details, logo, delivery and returns policy, and a product feed.
• What it does not change. OpenAI states that claiming a business does not guarantee more visibility and gives no direct control over ChatGPT's recommendations.
• How mentions are counted. For an online business, a mention is recorded when ChatGPT references your website. Per OpenAI's help center, the brand name alone does not count.
• How much data you get. Insights shows mentions, website clicks and five discovery topics, over 7 or 28 days. It shows no prompts, no conversations and nothing about competitors.
• Who gets Business Agents. Eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. In our region, Agent builder showed "isn't available yet".

What is ChatGPT Business Hub?

ChatGPT Business Hub, also referred to as the OpenAI Business Hub, is the place where a company manages how it appears in ChatGPT. A verified representative can claim the business, edit its public profile, upload product data and see aggregate engagement numbers. OpenAI says the program gives businesses a way to reach the 1.2 billion people who use ChatGPT each week.

When a business appears in a ChatGPT answer, people can click through to its ChatGPT business profile. The profile shows the name, category, logo, cover photo, contact details, and delivery and returns information the business supplied. If the business has published a Business Agent, people can also start a chat with it from there.

Business Hub, Businesses in ChatGPT, ChatGPT Business: which is which?

The names are close enough to confuse search results, so here is the difference.

Who can use Business Hub?

Any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim a profile, according to OpenAI's help center. You must own the business or be authorized to represent it. Four conditions apply:

• A website. Claiming is initially available to businesses with a website.
• Eligibility checks. OpenAI's Businesses in ChatGPT policy says eligibility depends on industry, location, and verification and integrity checks, and that not every business can claim a profile.
• Local businesses. Local stores and restaurants can currently claim only an existing US listing. Eligible online businesses may see an option to add a new one.
• No ad spend required. You don't need an Ads account or a ChatGPT Enterprise agreement. Existing Enterprise customers and advertisers can claim through their OpenAI representative instead.

ChatGPT Business Hub features

Business Hub has six features today. Four are open to any claimed and verified business. Product feeds and Business Agents carry extra conditions.

Overview: your home screen

Opening a business lands you on Overview. A left menu lists Overview, Agent builder and Products. The page shows three Get started cards, then Insights with two tabs, Brand insights and Agent insights, and a 7D / 28D switch.

Business profile editor

Select Edit business info to open the editor. It has five tabs, and a live preview on the right shows the profile card as customers will see it.

The description box matters most for brands. Its placeholder says ChatGPT can share what you write "in conversations when helpful or relevant". Treat it as source material for answers, and write plain facts a model can quote.

OpenAI reviews and publishes profile changes. Its help center notes that updates can take time to appear and that ChatGPT may also use other sources when it answers questions about your business.

Product feeds

The Products area has three tabs: Feeds, Upload history and Issues. A feed can be a CSV file that follows OpenAI's product feed specification, a hosted feed URL, or a connected Shopify store. Products then become eligible to appear in ChatGPT's responses and in the business's side panel.

Two limits apply. In our account the Add products button was disabled, with the note "Verify your business domain before adding products". And OpenAI says connecting a feed does not guarantee that ChatGPT recommends your products.

Team and agency access

The Invite button opens an "Invite business admins" dialog where the admin adds people by email. OpenAI says the admin who claimed the business can also grant an agency access to manage the business or its agent. For a business claimed inside a ChatGPT workspace, invitees may need to be members of that workspace.

Insights and Business Agents each get their own section below.

How to claim your business in ChatGPT

To claim your business in ChatGPT, open Business Hub, search for the business, prove your connection to it, wait for OpenAI's approval, then pass an identity check with Persona, the identity-verification provider OpenAI uses. The claim gets you into Business Hub. The Persona check is what lets you publish changes, see Insights and earn the verified badge.

Before you start, have these ready:

• A ChatGPT account you will use to manage the business. Pick it deliberately: later invitations can depend on this account.
• Access to one proof of connection: the business phone, a business email address, your domain's DNS settings, or your Shopify store.
• For Persona, you may be asked for a government-issued ID, business registration information, and proof that you are authorized to represent the business.

Steps:

1. Open Business Hub. Sign in to ChatGPT and open Business Hub from the sidebar, or go to chatgpt.com/business-hub. Select Add business, which the business list labels Add.
2. Search for your business by name. Continuing past this screen means accepting OpenAI's Businesses in ChatGPT Terms.
3. Select the matching listing and confirm the ChatGPT account that will manage it.
4. Choose a verification method from the ones offered for your business (see the table below) and follow the prompts.
5. Wait for claim approval. OpenAI reviews the claim and emails a decision or a request for more information. You can cancel the claim while it is under review.
6. Complete identity verification with Persona. Select Verify with Persona and submit the requested documents. OpenAI reviews this too and emails its decision.
7. Update your business information in the editor, and connect a product feed if you sell products.
8. Open Insights on the Overview page once data is available.

Verification methods

Six things to know before you claim

• Claiming is not verification. The blue check appears only after Persona verification is approved. Until then you cannot publish changes, connect a feed, view Insights or create an agent.
• New profiles publish automatically. If you use Persona to create a new profile, OpenAI's approval publishes it. There is no separate publish step.
• Published profiles stay published. Only unpublished drafts can be deleted. OpenAI Support cannot delete, unpublish or hide a published profile as part of a setup or ownership request.
• Already claimed by someone else? Open the profile, select the more options menu, then Dispute ownership, and verify through Persona.
• Listing locked? If you see Contact support, the listing is locked and access goes through OpenAI Support.
• Claiming does not change visibility. OpenAI states that claiming a profile or disputing ownership does not change its visibility in ChatGPT.

Claiming for enterprise and multi-brand companies

Large companies should check the claim path before anyone self-serves. Each distinct brand is managed separately, and central management across a parent company's brands and locations is not available yet. Claiming the main brand does not claim its locations. For brands on a managed claim process, location profiles stay locked by default, so ask your OpenAI account contact which path applies.

ChatGPT Business Hub Insights: what the numbers mean

Business Hub Insights reports three things: how often ChatGPT mentioned your business, how often people clicked through to your website, and the top five themes of the conversations involved. The data is first-party: it comes from OpenAI's own logs of real conversations. It is also aggregate and narrow, and each number has a definition worth reading before you put it in a report.

What we saw in the Insights dashboard

• Two time ranges. A 7D and a 28D switch. The 7-day view also shows the change against the previous 7 days, as a count and a percentage.
• Two tiles, not three. Our dashboard showed Mentions and Website clicks. OpenAI's launch images also show a Profile views tile, which we did not see and which the help center does not list.
• A daily chart. One line, switchable between Mentions and Website clicks, in UTC. The caption notes that unknown counts appear as gaps.
• A reporting lag. When we checked on November 13, the chart was labeled "Data through Nov 11 (UTC)".
• A separate period for topics. The discovery topics table carried its own reporting period, which ended earlier than the chart, and stated how many days of that period the data covered.
• Topic counts that don't reconcile. The table lists five registered topics plus Other. In our account, those counts added up to far fewer mentions than the headline Mentions figure.

What Insights leaves out

• Prompts and conversations. Businesses never receive individual prompts or consumer conversations, including chats with their own Business Agent.
• Brand mentions without a link. For an online business, an answer that names your brand but does not reference your website records nothing. Anyone tracking brand mentions will see a different picture from this dashboard.
• Small numbers. Insights appear only when activity meets OpenAI's thresholds. A blank metric can mean the threshold wasn't reached, data is still being collected, or reporting is unavailable. It does not necessarily mean zero.
• Competitors. There is no share of voice and no view of which other businesses appeared in the same answers.
• How you were described. Insights counts appearances. It does not show sentiment, your position in the answer or whether the facts were right.
• Every other AI engine. The data covers ChatGPT only.

One wording gap is worth flagging. The tooltip on the Mentions tile defines it as the "number of times your business appeared in ChatGPT responses, including citations". The help center is stricter for online businesses: only website references count. When the two disagree, we would plan around the stricter definition.

Business Agents in ChatGPT

A Business Agent is an AI chat that represents one business inside ChatGPT. It answers customer questions from the product and policy information the business provides, following guidelines the business writes. OpenAI describes the conversation as clearly labeled, separate from the customer's original chat, and distinct from ChatGPT's independent answers.

Who can build one. Eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the United States with a website, subject to the industry requirements in OpenAI's Business Agents Policy. Business verification alone does not guarantee agent eligibility. In our region the Agent builder page read "Agent builder isn't available yet", and the Agent insights tab read "Agent insights aren't available for this business".

How customers reach it. Someone sees your business in an answer, opens your profile, and chooses to start a conversation with the agent.

How to publish one. After your claim and Persona verification are approved:

1. Open the business and go to Agent builder. Shopify merchants may find a draft agent already created.
2. Review the information the agent will use, such as product details and your returns policy.
3. Write the guidelines for how it should answer.
4. Preview it with questions customers really ask, such as "Can I return an item I bought on sale?" Fix the information or the guidelines and test again.
5. Select Publish. Customers can only chat with a published agent.

What a Business Agent cannot do

• Transact. It cannot complete purchases, make bookings or check an order. It explains products and policies and links to your website.
• Use your ChatGPT plugin. If your business also has a plugin in ChatGPT, the agent's chat does not use its data or capabilities.
• Pose as something else. The policy requires the agent to be clear that it is AI representing the business, not a human or an independent adviser.
• Pressure people. No false urgency, no pushing after someone declines, and no requests for high-risk personal information such as health details, government IDs or financial credentials.
• Give licensed advice. It may explain offerings but must not give advice that legally requires a professional license.

Sponsored Business Agents and ChatGPT Ads

A business can also promote an agent through ChatGPT Ads. OpenAI's Ads Manager guide sets out how this works today:

• Separate builder. Sponsored agents are built in Agent builder inside Ads Manager, which is rolling out to eligible ad accounts. Settings do not yet sync with the agent you built in Business Hub.
• Campaign setup. The agent attaches to a campaign with the Conversion optimization objective, through a setting called Enable agent chats. People then see Start chat and Visit site options on the ad.
• Billing. There is no separate charge per agent conversation or message. The campaign's billing settings apply.
• Reporting. Advertisers get impressions and clicks, plus patterns across conversations where available. They do not get transcripts.

OpenAI states that ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers and that sponsored placements are labeled and kept separate from responses. For more on advertising in AI answers, see Brandlight's AI ads page.