Businesses in ChatGPT Is Here. Why Your Google Business Profile Still Matters More (For Now)

This week I opened ChatGPT, clicked into the new Business Hub and typed Multimediax into the search box. Sure enough our business came up, right name, right address, the lot. So I hit Get started, expecting a verification code to land in my inbox.

Instead I got a message telling me we’re on the waitlist and OpenAI will email us once we’re in. No timeframe, no explanation of what happens next.

Now, if an agency that has been doing this since 2001 gets parked on a waitlist, you can imagine how a local business is going to feel when they try. So I wanted to write this one properly and explain what Businesses in ChatGPT actually is, how it stacks up against the Google Business Profile you’ve probably had for years, and what Australian businesses should obviously be doing while the doors are only half open.

What Is Businesses in ChatGPT?

Businesses in ChatGPT is a new beta from OpenAI that lets a business claim its profile inside ChatGPT, keep its information accurate and see how people engage with it. It launched on 10 November 2026 and everything is managed through a dashboard called Business Hub.

The simplest way to think about it is a listing. When your business comes up in a ChatGPT answer, people can click through to your profile, and that profile is the thing you now get some control over.

Once verified, OpenAI says businesses can:

• Update key details such as your website, description, category, logo and cover photo.
• Add product feeds with pricing and availability, so ChatGPT isn’t guessing what you sell or what it costs.
• See aggregated insights, including mentions, profile views and website clicks.
• Explore discovery topics, which OpenAI describes as the common themes across conversations where your website is cited.

The scale is why this matters. OpenAI puts ChatGPT at 1.2 billion weekly users, and it’s local usage had more than doubled in 12 months.

Also worth clearing up, because the naming is genuinely confusing. Businesses in ChatGPT is not ChatGPT Business, which is OpenAI’s paid workplace subscription. Different product, different purpose. You don’t need a paid plan or an Ads account to claim a profile, and at launch it costs nothing.

Who Can Claim a ChatGPT Business Profile in Australia Right Now?

Whether you can claim your business in ChatGPT from Australia today comes down to what kind of business you run. OpenAI’s announcement says any eligible business located where ChatGPT is available can claim, and Australia is on that list. The catch is the word eligible.

Here’s how it breaks down at the time of writing:

• Online stores with a website can start a claim now. Shopify merchants get a shortcut, since they can connect their store from Business Hub or the Shopify admin, and eligible products are already flowing into ChatGPT through Shopify Catalog.
• Online service businesses like agencies, consultants and software companies can start a claim now, but expect a waitlist. That’s exactly where we landed.
• Shopfronts, cafés and restaurants can’t claim yet. OpenAI’s help centre says local stores and restaurants can currently only claim an existing US listing.
• Trades and mobile service businesses are unclear. OpenAI hasn’t said whether a plumber who comes to your house counts as local or online. More on that below.
• Existing OpenAI Enterprise customers and advertisers can work directly with their OpenAI representative.

If you do get through, verification happens in two stages. First you prove you control the business, using a code sent to the business phone or email, a TXT record added to your domain’s DNS, or a Shopify login. Then the admin goes through identity checks with Persona, a US verification provider, which can ask for government ID, business registration details and proof you’re authorised to act for the business.

OpenAI says the business name, address and any registration or tax number you provide must match your official business records. In Australia that means your ABN details. Until Persona approves you, you can’t publish changes, see insights or connect a product feed.

ChatGPT Business Profile vs Google Business Profile: What’s Actually Different

A ChatGPT business profile is not a replacement for your Google Business Profile, at least not yet, and anyone telling you otherwise is getting ahead of themselves. The quickest way to see why is to put them side by side.

That last row was a little surprising. Maybe OpenAI will change this but for now it seems super important to get your details right before you publish, because there’s might not be an undo button.

The big point is that the two platforms don’t recommend the same businesses. In general, ChatGPT’s recommendations overlap with Google’s surfaces around 20% of the time. So ranking well in the Map Pack doesn’t mean ChatGPT will mention you. And why would it? It’s reading different sources and weighing them differently.

So where does that leave you? Google Business Profile is still the thing that makes the phone ring for most local businesses in Australia, and that won’t change this year. The ChatGPT profile is about making sure that when ChatGPT does talk about you, it gets your details right, and about finally being able to measure how often that happens.

Why Trades, Home Services and Hire Businesses Are Stuck in the Middle

This one is especially important for us as we have so many clients in this space. Trades and home services businesses probably have the most to gain from ChatGPT listings, but right now they’re the least served by them.

The problem is how OpenAI has split things up. At launch it’s online businesses on one side and local storefronts on the other. But an electrician, a pest controller or an equipment hire company doesn’t fit neatly into either bucket. They take bookings online, they do the work at your place, and some of them have a depot or yard that customers visit. Google worked this out years ago with service area settings that let you hide your address and list the suburbs you cover. ChatGPT hasn’t got there yet.

Meanwhile, the questions people are typing into ChatGPT are exactly the kind these businesses want to answer:

• “Who can fix a burst hot water system in the Sydney Eastern Suburbs today?”
• “What size excavator do I need to dig out a pool and where can I hire one near Balmain?”
• “Is it worth getting a licensed electrician to install an EV charger or can I buy a plug-in one?”

Right now ChatGPT builds those answers from your website, your reviews and whatever listings it can find. Which means, until local claims open up here, your website effectively is your ChatGPT profile.

The hire side is worth a special mention. Product feeds with pricing and availability are basically built for equipment hire, where the customer’s first two questions are always how much and is it available on Saturday. When that opens up for Australian local businesses, the hire companies with clean, structured data on their sites will be ready on day one and the rest will be scrambling.

Claiming Won’t Move You Up. Here’s What Actually Drives ChatGPT Visibility

OpenAI has been very clear that claiming your business doesn’t change your visibility in ChatGPT. It improves accuracy, which is great, but it won’t push you above a competitor. What gets you mentioned is the same stuff that has always mattered, just read by a different machine.

We’ve boiled it down to a seven-step check we call the MMX AI Listing Readiness Check:

1. Let OpenAI’s search crawler in. Check your robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot. This is the crawler ChatGPT uses for search, and it’s separate from GPTBot, which is used for model training. If you are blocking OAI-SearchBot then your site simply won’t show up in ChatGPT search answers.
2. Make your business details match everywhere. Same business name, address and phone number on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, industry directories and your ABN record. If any directories have old or incorrect addresses, fix it.
3. Build pages that answer real questions. One page per service, plus suburb or region pages where they make sense, each one answering the questions customers actually ask. ChatGPT quotes direct answers, not brochure copy.
4. Keep reviews coming on more than one platform. Google reviews are obviously the priority in Australia, but ChatGPT isn’t reading only Google.
5. Earn mentions on other sites. Industry associations, supplier pages, local news and trade publications all act as independent proof that you are who you say you are.
6. Find out who ChatGPT recommends instead of you. Ask ChatGPT the three questions your best customers usually ask before they pick up the phone. Note which competitors it names and which websites it cites. Those cited sites are the gaps you need to fill.
7. Start your claim anyway. Even if you end up on the waitlist like we did, you’re in the queue. And it means nobody else gets there first with your listing. One tip to follow, claim it under an account your business owns, not your web developer’s logins etc. The admin who claims the profile can add teammates and grant an agency access later, so there’s no reason to hand over the keys.

None of this is new to anyone who has done proper local SEO. The businesses that took their Google Business Profile and website seriously are already halfway there.

Business Agents and ChatGPT Ads: What’s Coming to Australia

The part of this launch that will really change things is Business Agents, but Australian businesses can’t use them yet.

A Business Agent is a chat with your business that sits inside ChatGPT. Someone sees you in an answer, clicks through to your profile and starts a conversation, and the agent answers using the product and policy information you’ve given it. The chat is clearly labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT’s own answers. It has to identify itself as AI, and at launch it can’t complete purchases or bookings, so it sends people to your website for that.

Right now, Business Agents are only available to eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. OpenAI says it plans to expand to more markets and categories over time, but no concrete dates have been given for Australia.

Then there’s is also the advertising angle. OpenAI says businesses can sponsor their Business Agent and use it as the destination for ChatGPT Ads. ChatGPT Ads have been running in Australia since April 2026, and we have already written about how they work and how to avoid wasting money on them. So you can see where this is heading. A claimed profile, a Business Agent and paid placement all joined up, the same way Google joined Business Profiles to Google Ads.

What should you do about it today? Get your FAQs, pricing, policies and service details written down clearly on your website. That’s the material an agent will eventually answer from, and the businesses with it ready will switch on in days rather than months.

Multimediax is a Sydney based digital marketing agency specialising in SEO, local search and AI search visibility. Founded in 2001, we work with businesses across Australia to build digital platforms and marketing systems that drive measurable results. If you want your business ready to show up properly in ChatGPT, get in touch with the team.