By Giacomo Perticara ·
On 10 November 2026, OpenAI announced Businesses in ChatGPT in beta. Through Business Hub, businesses can claim their profile, manage their business information and view aggregated insights into how people come across their business through ChatGPT, according to OpenAI.
In the announcement, OpenAI writes that 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT every week. Eligible businesses can claim their profile where ChatGPT is available and the required verification is supported, according to the OpenAI Help Center. Verification works through a business phone number, a business email address, the website domain or a Shopify store. After that, an identity check through Persona is needed to publish changes, see insights or create a Business Agent. You can also connect a product feed with prices and availability, but according to OpenAI, that doesn't guarantee a recommendation. Claiming doesn't change visibility, and advertising has no influence on independent answers. According to OpenAI, ads have also been available in the Netherlands since late August 2026.
Business Hub shows aggregated activity over the past 28 days: mentions, clicks to the website and discovery topics. For an online business, a mention only counts when ChatGPT references the website. Just naming the brand doesn't count, according to the OpenAI Help Center. Discovery topics are common themes in ChatGPT answers that mentioned or cited the business, without showing individual questions or conversations. Insights only appear above a minimum threshold, and an empty metric doesn't necessarily mean there was no activity. OpenAI doesn't say whether counting had already started before a business claims its profile, and it doesn't mention any way to look back further than 28 days. Local shops and restaurants can currently only claim an existing listing in the United States.
Alongside Business Hub, OpenAI is also introducing Business Agents. According to OpenAI, these are currently only available to eligible e-commerce businesses and online service providers in the United States with a website. For now, a Business Agent can't complete purchases, make bookings or look up orders.
What this means for you
I think it's worth claiming your business in any case, because it's already hard enough to get good insight right now. We mostly depend on external crawlers and external prompt trackers, which partly rely on suggestions or clickstream data. Direct insights from the platform itself are what SEO specialists have been asking for for some time, because they give you a clearer view of how to be more relevant and how to improve quality.
On 11 November 2026, I added GRP Digital to Business Hub from the Netherlands, with a Dutch-language interface. The business wasn't listed yet. Verifying the domain with a TXT record worked. Business Hub then asked for a category, a description, contact details (country code set to +1, the United States, by default), how you deliver and what your returns policy is. The profile is now a draft until the identity check through Persona, and Business Hub immediately offered $500 in advertising credit. I haven't done the Persona step, so I don't know yet whether the metrics are available for Dutch businesses. The Brand insights and Agent insights tabs, with a choice of 7 or 28 days, were already there.
Right now it's mainly aimed at online shops, which is also in line with the ads ChatGPT started with. Questions about returns policies aren't relevant to every type of business. The list of categories is already broad, though, with theme parks and very specific service providers, for example. I expect it to be set up better over time for service providers and other kinds of businesses.
A good first step in the right direction, and I'm personally pleased about it. I'm curious where this is heading in the long run, but I already see it as progress.
Source: OpenAI, 10 November 2026.
