Can you pay to be recommended by ChatGPT? AI visibility guarantees and GEO packages

Partly true, in a narrow way. You can pay the platforms themselves to show a labelled ad next to some AI answers, and even then nobody guarantees the ad will appear. You cannot pay anyone to get your business named inside the answer, and nothing the AI companies publish leaves room for a guarantee that you will be. Some of what these packages do is ordinary work that genuinely helps. The guarantee is the part that does not hold up.

This is part of our series on marketing myths, checked, where every claim is tested against what the company running the system actually publishes.

What is being sold

The offers take a few shapes. A monthly retainer to get your business "mentioned" or "ranked" in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI answers. A report showing your "AI ranking" against competitors, updated monthly. A package called GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AEO (answer engine optimisation), sold as a separate discipline from SEO. And often a guarantee: be recommended within a set time, or reach a set position, or your money back.

We are describing what is sold, not who sells it. The question is whether the promise can be kept, and that depends on what the companies behind the assistants say.

How the assistants choose what to name

Google. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode are "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems", retrieving pages from its index and issuing several related searches ("query fan-out") to build an answer (Google's guide to generative AI features in Search, updated 10 July 2026). To be eligible, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Google also says a Business Profile can help a business appear in its AI responses.

OpenAI. OpenAI says "Any public website can appear in ChatGPT search", provided it does not block OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI publisher FAQ). OpenAI also says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers", and that when it does, it "typically rewrites your query into one or more targeted queries" that it sends to them (OpenAI help centre). So what ChatGPT can name can depend on what ordinary searches return.

Microsoft. Bing's guidelines say Bing and Copilot "rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search" (Bing Webmaster Guidelines). Microsoft also says that its grounding "powers nearly every major AI assistant in the market" (Bing Search blog, February 2026), which is Microsoft's own claim about its reach.

Anthropic and Perplexity. Both publish which crawlers they use for search: Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic) and PerplexityBot (Perplexity). Neither publishes how its assistant decides which businesses to name. For these two, the evidence is thin.

None of the five describes a way for a third party to change which business an answer names.

Can you pay to be in the answer?

This is where the claim is partly true. Three of the companies sell ads that appear alongside AI answers. All three sell them directly, mark them as ads, and say or show that the ad is separate from the answer.

• Google. Ads can appear above or below AI Overviews in every market where AI Overviews are available. Ads inside AI Overviews are currently available only in a listed set of countries, and on 26 September 2026 the UK was not among them. Even where they are available, advertisers "can't directly target ad placements in the AI Overviews"; ads win their place through the normal auction (Google Ads help).
• OpenAI. ChatGPT ads can appear below the end of a response and are "visually separated from ChatGPT's response" and marked as sponsored. OpenAI says: "Ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers. Ads run on separate systems from our chat model, and advertisers have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses." It adds that an ad does not mean OpenAI "endorses or recommends the advertiser" (OpenAI help centre). The UK is on OpenAI's list of countries where advertisers can buy through its Ads Manager (OpenAI help centre).
• Microsoft. Ads in Copilot are made automatically from existing Microsoft Advertising campaigns, and Microsoft says "there's no guarantee that their ads will be displayed in Copilot" (Microsoft Advertising help).

Perplexity said, when it began testing ads in the US in November 2024, that "the content of the answers you receive on Perplexity will not be influenced by advertisers", with ads shown as sponsored follow-up questions and media beside the answer (Perplexity, 12 November 2024). We could not find a current statement on whether it still runs them.

Anthropic says Claude "will remain ad-free", and that Claude's responses will not "be influenced by advertisers or include third-party product placements" (Anthropic, 4 February 2026).

OpenAI's shopping results are a related case. OpenAI says product results "are not ads, nor influenced by any OpenAI partnerships" (OpenAI help centre). Merchants who use its Instant Checkout pay a fee on completed purchases, and OpenAI says this "doesn't influence ChatGPT's product results" (OpenAI, 29 September 2025).

So the paid routes that exist are the platforms' own ads, bought from the platforms, shown as ads. None of them is a place in the answer, and none comes with a guarantee. If someone is selling you "guaranteed placement" and it is really an ad budget, you can buy the same ads yourself, and our guide to what Google Ads cost explains how that spending works.

What Google says about "GEO"

Google's position is that it is not a separate discipline. Its guide says that optimising for generative AI search is optimising for the search experience, "and thus still SEO" (Google's guide to generative AI features in Search). The same guide lists "hacks" you can ignore, including "LLMS.txt files and other 'special' markup", breaking content into small chunks, and "Seeking inauthentic 'mentions'", which it says "isn't as helpful as it might seem". It also warns: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems."

Google's June 2026 guidance on outside advice goes further. It names "AEO" and "GEO" tools directly, says Google "doesn't evaluate third-party services", and says of those tools: "They can't guarantee performance. Any predictions are their own and like predictions generally, may not happen" (Google, third-party SEO tools and advice, updated 5 June 2026).

Microsoft is different here. Its own blog uses the term GEO, describing it as "the practice of understanding how content participates in AI-driven experiences" (Bing Search blog, February 2026). We set out that disagreement in is SEO dead now that everyone uses AI? But its webmaster guidelines still say the same SEO foundations support Copilot. The name differs; the work described is the same.

Is a guarantee compatible with what the companies publish?

No. Put the published statements side by side:

• Google: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." Beware anyone claiming to guarantee rankings or alleging "a 'special relationship' with Google". If an SEO audit comes with a guarantee of first place, "find someone else" (Google, Do you need an SEO?).
• Google: third-party tools "can't guarantee performance" (Google, third-party SEO tools and advice).
• OpenAI: advertisers, who pay OpenAI directly, "have no ability to shape, rank, or alter ChatGPT's responses" (OpenAI help centre).
• Microsoft: even for paid ads, "there's no guarantee" they will show in Copilot (Microsoft Advertising help).
• Google: advertisers "can't directly target ad placements in the AI Overviews" (Google Ads help).

If the platform's own paying advertisers cannot secure a place, and the platform says no outside tool can see its systems, there is no published mechanism a third party could use to deliver the outcome. A "guarantee" of this kind can therefore only be a promise to refund you if it does not happen. That may be honest, if it is described as exactly that. It is not a promise about how the assistant will behave.

Answers also vary. Bing's own AI reporting describes its "citation share" measure as "an observational metric – not a ranking system", noting that citation patterns shift with changes in what people ask, in the models and in freshness signals, among other factors (Bing Search blog, 16 June 2026). A monthly "AI ranking" that treats one answer as a fixed position is measuring something the platform itself says moves.

Where it is partly true: the ordinary work

Much of what these packages do is real work that the companies say helps. It is the same work whatever it is called.

• Letting the search crawlers in. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" (OpenAI crawlers). Anthropic says blocking Claude-SearchBot "may reduce your site's visibility" (Anthropic), and Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot (Perplexity).
• Being indexed and eligible for a snippet on Google, which Google says is the requirement for its generative AI features (Google's guide). Our SEO audit checklist covers how to check.
• Writing so a page stands on its own. Bing asks that facts are explicit, key information comes early, and people, organisations and places are named consistently (Bing Webmaster Guidelines).
• Getting on Bing, including telling it when pages change with IndexNow, which Bing's guidelines ask for by name (Bing Webmaster Guidelines). We explain how in getting your business on Bing.
• A complete Business Profile, which Google says can help products and services appear in AI responses (Google's guide).
• Measuring what the platforms themselves report. Google Search Console's Generative AI performance report shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode (Search Console help), and Bing's AI Performance report shows where Copilot cites you, which we cover in Bing's AI Performance report.

What the companies say not to do is also part of the answer. Bing lists "Prompt Injection and AI Manipulation" and "artificial social promotion schemes that simulate popularity" as abuse that can lead to reduced visibility or removal (Bing Webmaster Guidelines). Google treats pages generated at scale to manipulate rankings or AI answers as scaled content abuse (Google's guide). A package built on made-up mentions, mass-produced pages or text aimed at AI systems risks the opposite of what it promises.

What the law says about an empty guarantee

It depends on who is buying.

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 bans misleading actions, including an "overall presentation which is likely to deceive the average consumer", but its unfair commercial practices rules protect consumers, meaning "an individual acting for purposes that are wholly or mainly outside the individual's business" (DMCC Act 2024, Part 4, Chapter 1). A business buying marketing services is usually not a consumer. The CMA's own guidance says a trader selling only to businesses "does not need to consider compliance" with those rules and "should however consider the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008" (CMA, Unfair commercial practices guidance, CMA207, 18 November 2025, in its examples of practices the rules do not cover).

Those regulations prohibit advertising that deceives the traders it reaches, and list "results to be expected from use of the product" among the things it can mislead about (Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008, regulation 3).

The advertising code applies too. The CAP Code defines a consumer as "anyone who is likely to see a given marketing communication, whether in the course of business or not", requires marketers to "hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective" before an advert goes out, says an advert "must not mislead by omitting significant limitations to an advertised guarantee", and requires marketers to "promptly refund consumers who make valid claims under an advertised money-back guarantee" (CAP Code, Edition 12, rules 3.7, 3.56 and 3.57).

We found no ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority, and no enforcement case, on a guarantee of AI visibility or search ranking specifically. So the evidence here is thin on how one would be judged. What the rules make clear is the question to ask: what evidence the seller holds for the result they promise.

Questions to ask before you sign

• Which platform's own documentation supports each thing you will do?
• Is the guarantee a refund, and what exactly triggers it?
• Which prompts, which assistants, how often, and from where will you measure?
• Are you buying ads for me, or doing organic work? If ads, why not buy them myself?
• Will you create reviews, listings, articles or mentions in my name anywhere?
• Will I own every account and every piece of content you create?

For the wider set, see our questions to ask a marketing agency.

Our interest

We sell AI search visibility work ourselves, so we have an interest in this. What we sell is the ordinary work above: finding what assistants get wrong or cannot find about a business, fixing it, and checking again afterwards. We do not guarantee that any assistant will name you, and our AI search visibility page says so. If you have been offered a package and want a second opinion, ask us.

Where the evidence is thin

• Anthropic and Perplexity publish which crawlers they use, but not how their assistants choose which businesses to name.
• We could not confirm whether Perplexity still runs the ads it began testing in November 2024, or whether Google shows ads in AI Mode in the UK.
• No UK ruling or enforcement case on an AI visibility guarantee has been published that we could find, so how the rules above would apply to a specific promise is untested.

More in the series

This piece is part of Marketing myths, checked, where each claim is tested against what the companies and regulators publish.