OpenAI can show a listing for your business in ChatGPT whether or not you have heard of Business Hub. Claiming that listing, or creating one, gives you a say in what it tells people and a count of how often ChatGPT mentions you. This guide sets out why a UK business that trades online should do it, who cannot yet, and what you agree to.
The answer in brief
- OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta on 10 November 2026. Business Hub is the dashboard where a business claims or creates its profile, edits its details and reads its insights.
- Claim yours because the listing does not wait for you. OpenAI’s terms let it create and display a listing “regardless of whether you claim, manage, or cease managing it”.
- A verified profile gets a blue badge and OpenAI’s own counts of mentions and website clicks, which outside tools can only estimate.
- It is free for now. OpenAI has not ruled out charging later.
- A UK business that sells or takes enquiries through a website can do this today. UK shops and restaurants cannot: OpenAI’s setup guide says local stores and restaurants “can currently claim only an existing U.S. listing”. Business Agents are limited to the United States.
- Claiming does not move you up. OpenAI’s product page says: “Claiming does not guarantee higher placement or sales.”
What is ChatGPT Business Hub?
Business Hub is the management area for a business’s presence in ChatGPT. You open it at chatgpt.com/business-hub or from the ChatGPT sidebar. Once a claim is approved and your identity is verified, you can edit the public profile, connect a product feed and see how often ChatGPT mentioned your business and how often people clicked through.
Four OpenAI products now have “business” in or near the name, and they are easy to mix up.
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| Name | What it is |
|---|---|
| Businesses in ChatGPT | What it isThe programme: profiles, insights and agents for businesses that appear in ChatGPT. |
| Business Hub | What it isThe dashboard for that programme. |
| Business Agent | What it isA labelled chat that represents one business, separate from ChatGPT’s own answer. US only. |
| ChatGPT Business | What it isA paid workspace plan for staff who use ChatGPT at work. You do not need it to claim a profile. |
Advertising is separate again. A business can sponsor its agent and use it as the destination for ChatGPT Ads, and our ChatGPT Ads guide for UK businesses covers what UK advertisers can buy.
Why should a business claim or create its profile?
Because ChatGPT may already describe your business, and the profile is the one place OpenAI lets you correct it directly. Six reasons hold up against OpenAI’s own documents.
- A listing can exist without you. Section 4.1 of the Businesses in ChatGPT Terms says OpenAI may create and display a business listing “regardless of whether you claim, manage, or cease managing it”. If nobody at the business manages it, the details come from wherever OpenAI finds them.
- Your details get a direct route in. The product page says of the information a business adds: “ChatGPT may use this information to answer customer questions.” The setup guide adds that ChatGPT “may also use other sources”, so a profile improves the odds of an accurate answer without guaranteeing one.
- The badge shows who is behind the profile. A blue check appears once OpenAI has approved your identity check, which tells a customer the details came from the business.
- You get OpenAI’s own numbers. A verified business sees how often ChatGPT mentioned it, how often people clicked through to its website and which topics it came up under. Prompt-tracking tools sample a set of questions. This is the count from the source, under OpenAI’s own definition.
- It costs nothing for now. The only spend is the time to verify and to keep the details current.
- You are in place for what comes next. OpenAI’s announcement says it plans to expand Businesses in ChatGPT and Business Agents “to more markets and business categories”. An agent starts from a verified profile, so the business that has one is ready when agents and product feeds reach the UK.
A profile will not lift you in ChatGPT’s answers. The setup guide says claiming “doesn’t guarantee increased visibility or give you direct control over ChatGPT’s independent recommendations”. Treat it as getting your facts right at the source, and keep doing the work on your website.
Can UK businesses use Business Hub?
Some can. OpenAI’s announcement says any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim through Business Hub, and its product page adds that eligibility depends on industry, location and its own verification and integrity checks. The setup guide then narrows the local route to existing US listings.
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| Your business | Where you stand |
|---|---|
| Online retailer, agency or other business that sells or takes enquiries through a website | Where you standYou can claim an existing entry or create a new one. |
| Shop, cafe or restaurant in the UK | Where you standNot yet. Local claims need an existing US listing. |
| Business that visits customers, such as a trade | Where you standNo route of its own yet. On 12 November 2026 the create flow offered two choices, “At a physical location” and “Through a website”. Tilio, a UK agency, saw a third, service option marked “coming soon” on 10 November 2026. |
| Any UK business wanting a Business Agent | Where you standNot yet. |
The Agent builder page in a UK account says the same thing in plainer words: “Agent builder isn’t available yet. We’re gradually rolling out this feature to different regions.”
Describe the business as it is. Calling a consultancy an online shop to get through a form breaks OpenAI’s profile policy, which requires accurate information.
Is Business Hub free?
Yes, for now. Benji Shomair, OpenAI’s vice-president of monetisation, told Digiday at launch that Business Hub and Business Agents are free and did not rule out a paid model later. OpenAI’s setup guide says you need neither an Ads account nor a ChatGPT Enterprise agreement to claim.
A profile does not need a paid plan either. Business Hub works on a free ChatGPT account, and the upgrade to ChatGPT Business that the dashboard advertises is optional. OpenAI has published no price list for Business Hub, so do not budget on it staying free.
How do you claim or create a profile?
There are two approvals. OpenAI approves the claim, then Persona, its identity-check supplier, approves the person. Until Persona approves you, you cannot publish edits, connect a feed or see insights, and the blue badge appears only after that second approval.
- Search first. Sign in at Business Hub and search for the business. If it is listed, check the domain and claim it. If no match appears, the search offers to create the business; the setup guide limits that option to eligible online businesses. Searching from a UK account on 12 November 2026, a UK online retailer came up with its domain, while a Manchester restaurant and a New York restaurant both returned “No matching business”.
- Prove you control the business. OpenAI documents four methods: a code to the business phone, a code to a business email, a TXT record on the domain, or a Shopify login. You may not be offered all four. Contact details are checked separately: adding a phone number or an email address to the profile has its own verification step.
- Complete the Persona check. OpenAI says it may ask for government-issued ID, business registration details and evidence that you can act for the business. Have the registered company name and address to hand as they appear at Companies House. Enter the business name with care when you create the profile: on our Persona form it was carried over in a field we could not edit, with a second field for a trading name.
- Wait for the decision. Submitting is not approval. OpenAI emails its decision or a request for more information, and the setup guide says review time varies.
Get the public details right before you submit. When a new profile is approved it is published automatically, and the setup guide says OpenAI Support cannot delete, unpublish or hide a published profile. Only drafts can be removed.
What can you put in the profile?
Five tabs of details, most of them built for retail. This is what the editor held when we opened it on 12 November 2026:
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| Tab | What you can set |
|---|---|
| About | What you can setA business category, a second suggested category, and an optional description. |
| Contact | What you can setWebsite, phone number and business email. |
| Photos | What you can setA logo (300 x 300 px recommended) and an optional cover photo (1200 x 400 px recommended), as JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP. |
| Delivery | What you can setOne of three choices: “We don’t offer delivery”, “Paid delivery” or “Free delivery”. |
| Returns | What you can setOne of three choices: “Returns not accepted”, “Returns accepted, with fees” or “Free returns”. |
OpenAI reviews edits before it publishes them, and the setup guide warns that they can take time to appear.
Neither the Delivery tab nor the Returns tab has a “does not apply” choice, so the public profile of a service business reads “Delivery unavailable” and “Returns not accepted”, as ours does. If you sell services, read the preview as a customer would, and keep your cancellation and refund terms easy to find on your own site.
Can a team or an agency manage the profile?
Yes. The Invite button opens a dialog titled “Invite business admins” that takes an email address, and it offers that one role. OpenAI’s setup guide says the admin who claimed the business can add teammates and give an agency access, each person using their own ChatGPT account.
Two limits matter to groups and agencies. Each brand is managed separately, and the guide says central management across a parent company’s brands and locations “isn’t currently available”. If the business was claimed inside a ChatGPT workspace, invitees may need to be members of that workspace.
If someone else has already claimed your business, open its profile and choose Dispute ownership, which runs a Persona check on you. Do not create a second profile: the profile policy bans duplicates.
What do Business Hub insights measure?
Two numbers and a topic list. When we opened the dashboard on 12 November 2026, the Brand insights tab showed mentions, website clicks and the top five discovery topics, with a seven-day and a 28-day view and a note of the last day covered.
The definitions matter more than the totals:
- Mentions. The dashboard tooltip reads: “Number of times your business appeared in ChatGPT responses, including citations.” The setup guide is narrower for online businesses: a mention is counted when ChatGPT references your website, and “The brand name alone doesn’t count.” For a local business, a mention is ChatGPT showing its location.
- Website clicks. The tooltip reads: “Number of recorded clicks on links to your website in ChatGPT. Clicks don’t confirm website visits or conversions.”
- Discovery topics. Themes in ChatGPT answers that mentioned or cited the business. The tooltip warns that topic names may change. You never see prompts or chats.
You cannot publish the numbers. Section 6 of the terms bars a business from disclosing insight data “or its derivatives” without OpenAI’s written permission, which is why this guide shows none and why a dashboard screenshot does not belong in a pitch deck.
OpenAI withholds low counts for privacy, and a blank figure can mean the threshold was not met. It does not mean zero. Share of voice is not in the beta, according to Digiday.
Treat a Hub click, a GA4 session and an enquiry as three different events. Our guide to auditing ChatGPT traffic in GA4 shows how to check the middle one. The Hub’s mention is also a different measure from the brand mentions that prompt-tracking tools report, a distinction we set out in AI mentions versus citations.
What about Business Agents and product feeds?
UK businesses can prepare for both and use neither fully yet.
A Business Agent answers questions about one business’s products and services in a labelled chat. It answers from the product and policy information the business provides, and the business reviews it before publishing. The setup guide says agents cannot complete purchases, make bookings or look up orders, and the Business Agents Policy states that “Business verification alone does not guarantee agent eligibility.”
The paid version is the Sponsored Business Agent, which opens from an ad. OpenAI’s Ads Manager guide says it is rolling out to eligible advertisers, runs only on campaigns with the Conversion optimization objective, and carries no separate charge for agent chats. It also says settings “don’t sync” between Business Hub and Ads Manager, so an agent built in one has to be rebuilt in the other.
The dashboard in a UK account does have a Products page with an “Add products” button. OpenAI’s product feed specification is blunt about where a standard upload goes: “The standard OpenAI-format upload currently targets the US.” Other markets need OpenAI to confirm the integration and its allowed countries and currencies. A UK retailer should ask before building a feed for this purpose.
What do you sign up to?
More than a profile form suggests. The terms are short, and five points deserve a read by whoever signs contracts in your business:
- The listing is not yours alone (section 4.1). OpenAI may “supplement, edit, or replace information using other sources”, or decline to display what you submit.
- Basic details stay licensed (section 4.2). The display licence is “perpetual and irrevocable” for the name, address, contact details, category, opening hours and website you submit.
- A product feed opens your site (section 3). You agree to let OpenAI’s crawlers and agents access your websites, and not to rely on any text-and-data-mining opt-out against OpenAI for those websites. If your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers, as described in our post on robots.txt and AI crawlers, settle that conflict before you upload a feed.
- Insights are confidential (section 6). You may use them to measure and report on your own use, and share them only with service providers working for you under the same restrictions. An agency can see a client’s dashboard. It cannot put the numbers in a case study.
- You give up some claims (section 10). The terms include a covenant not to sue and a release covering claims about the data you submit and about content published on your websites, other than a claim that OpenAI breached these terms.
One default is easy to miss. Section 4.1 says that by using Business Hub “you agree OpenAI’s AI assistant may make calls to you on behalf of our users”, and links an opt-out. This is a summary of the terms and no substitute for legal advice.
Is it the same as Google Business Profile?
No, and for many UK businesses the two barely overlap.
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| Question | ChatGPT Business Hub | Google Business Profile |
|---|---|---|
| Online-only business | ChatGPT Business HubCan claim. | Google Business ProfileNot eligible. |
| UK shop or restaurant | ChatGPT Business HubCannot claim yet. | Google Business ProfileEligible. |
| Where it shows | ChatGPT Business HubChatGPT answers and profiles. | Google Business ProfileGoogle Search and Maps. |
| Cost | ChatGPT Business HubFree for now. | Google Business ProfileFree. |
Google’s eligibility rules require that a business “must make in-person contact with customers during its stated hours” and list online-only businesses as ineligible. So a UK cafe keeps working on Google and waits for OpenAI, while a UK online retailer gets a profile in ChatGPT that Google Business Profile never offered it.
What should a UK business do now?
If you trade online, claim or create the profile. It is free, it takes some paperwork, and the data it returns is OpenAI’s own count where you previously had only samples and estimates. Give the job to someone who can reach the business inbox or phone, and who will still be responsible for the profile in a year.
If you run a shop or restaurant, there is nothing to claim yet. Use the time to make sure your name, address, hours and services agree across your website and Google Business Profile, because OpenAI can build a listing from other sources before anyone claims it.
Either way, the profile is the smaller job. OpenAI says claiming does not buy placement, so the website work still applies, and it is the subject of our guide to optimising your website for ChatGPT.
If you want help with the claim, or with reading the numbers once you have them, talk to AIWIZ.