OpenAI has taken the fight to Google, once again. The new ‘Businesses in ChatGPT’ program offers resources for businesses to make themselves visible in ChatGPT. Among other things, this includes Business Hub – a Google Business Profiles (GPB)-like tool to manage business profile info.
Part of this broader rollout also includes Business Agents, which are customer-facing chat agents that businesses can tune to interface with customers and answer their questions. Business Agents are also being productized as a ChatGPT ad unit, so businesses can amplify their agents’ customer interactions.
Taking those one at a time, Business Hub gives companies, including SMBs, the ability to claim their business profiles in ChatGPT. Once verified, they can update their info such as product details, pricing, media, and current inventory. They can also supply POS feeds to keep that information synced.
There’s also an analytics engine for additional incentive. Businesses can see how frequently they’re mentioned in ChatGPT, how many resulting clicks they get, and other variables like topics and queries that led to their mentions/citations. OpenAI is even throwing in a blue check mark to sweeten the deal.
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Carrot and Stick
As always, the larger question isn’t the what but the why. Why is OpenAI doing this? The answer is similar to the reason Google offers GBP, and Apple offers Apple Business Profiles (ABC). These are loss leaders to generate downstream activity where a share of businesses parlay their presence into paid ads.
Aside from driving paid campaigns, companies that offer free self-managed profile tools dangle them as a carrot (or in some cases a stick) for organic visibility. In that sense, the dirty little secret is that SEO is partly a game of incentives from Google to engage with them on several surfaces, such as GBP.
Once on GPB, the chance of any business turning into a paid advertiser is heightened. So these profile tools have become the tip of the spear, or a free Trojan Horse (choose your bad metaphor), for Google revenue. To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that… but let’s not be afraid to call it what it is.
Observing these moves from Google and Apple, OpenAI is simply following the established playbook rather than reinventing the wheel. And it’s differentiating itself with its own AI-native twist – drawing on what it does best – with Business Agents. Google offers similar agents but expect it to now up its game.
Add to the Pile
Stepping back, there’s another angle hidden in all of the above: the world of local business marketing continues to fragment. We already knew this, as options have emerged from ChatGPT ads, Apple Maps ads, and the rise of Amazon’s local services ads. ChatGPT’s Business Hub simply adds to the pile.
Practically, it means SMBs need to be present and optimized in GBP, ABC, and Business Hub, not to mention all the other places such as Yelp, vertically-specific authorities, and their own websites. These are all key sources and citations in SEO and AIO; and the list of places to plant oneself is getting longer.
All that fragmentation and chaos are bad news for local businesses, whose heads are already spinning, and who have finally mastered the now-seemingly-simple rules of good-old SEO. But it’s good news for the SMB SaaS players, ad managers, and marketing agencies… in other words, the Localogyverse.
These players’ value proposition has always been amplified in times of emerging- tech excitement, confusion, and fragmentation. And all those things are currently on steroids. OpenAI’s latest play underscores that trend and the momentum behind it. In other words, expect a lot more action.
