ChatGPT is testing a dashboard for businesses: what small business owners should know
OpenAI is reportedly testing a way to claim your business in ChatGPT and see how often it mentions you. Here is what is known, what it could mean for local businesses and what to do while you wait.
OpenAI is building a tool that would let a business claim its listing in ChatGPT and see how often ChatGPT mentions it and how many people click through to its website. Digiday reported on November 9, 2026 that the dashboard is in testing, and Search Engine Roundtable described the same tool on November 6. The feature was spotted by Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of the e-commerce research firm Marketplace Pulse, who shared a banner for it on LinkedIn. OpenAI declined to comment to Digiday, and the tool hasn't launched.
For a shop, a café or a law office, this matters for one simple reason. More customers now ask ChatGPT "where can I get my bike fixed near me" or "which accountant in San Jose handles small LLCs" instead of typing the question into Google. Until now, a business had no way to see whether it showed up in those answers. A dashboard would be the first official number.
The reported tool also includes a business agent that answers customer questions using information the business supplies. That is the same idea as an AI assistant on your own website, only inside OpenAI's product and on OpenAI's terms. If you want an assistant that knows your menu, prices and opening hours and lives on your own site, talk to your web developer or to a generative AI integration team at YuSMP Group about what it would take to build one on your own content.
What exactly is OpenAI testing?
Both reports describe the same set of features, all still unreleased:
- Claim your business. A business proves it has the right to represent the brand. Connecting a Shopify store is one verification method mentioned in the reports.
- Impressions and clicks. A daily chart of how often the business appears in ChatGPT answers and how many clicks those answers send to its website.
- Products and business details. A place to keep products and business information current.
- A business agent. An assistant that answers customer questions from information the business provides.
According to Digiday, the dashboard does not show the prompts people typed, any user data or how you rank against competitors. The tool sits inside a wider "Business Hub" that also hasn't launched. Search Engine Roundtable notes that Kaziukėnas first saw signs of the feature in August, so it has been in the works for a while.
Why does this matter for a small business?
Think of it as the early days of the Google Business Profile. Once Google gave owners a dashboard, it became normal to check calls, direction requests and reviews every month. A ChatGPT dashboard would do the same for AI answers: you would finally see whether the time you put into your website shows up there.
Digiday also points out the business angle for OpenAI. Google used free visibility data to bring businesses into its paid ads, and a dashboard like this could do the same for ChatGPT's ad products. Free numbers are useful; just expect paid offers to follow.
What should you do now?
- Make sure AI search can read your site. ChatGPT search uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler documentation explains how it works. Ask whoever runs your site to check that robots.txt doesn't block it by accident.
- Put the basics in plain text. Your name, address, phone, hours, services and prices should be readable on the page, not only inside images or PDFs. That helps every search tool, not just ChatGPT.
- Keep your listings in sync. AI answers pull from many places. The same details on your website and your Google profile reduce mistakes. Our guide to local SEO for small shops covers the checklist.
- Write down your current numbers. Note your monthly website visits and enquiries now, so you have a baseline when the dashboard arrives.
Should you add your own AI assistant?
Not just because of this news. An assistant on your own site makes sense when customers ask the same questions all day: Do you have it in stock? Are you open on Sunday? How much is a consultation? If that's your phone or inbox, an assistant trained on your own pages can answer the routine questions and pass the rest to you. If you get a handful of calls a week, a clear FAQ page and good search optimization will do more for less money.
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