Last Updated on September 22, 2026 by Amit Kakkar

Getting your SaaS included in ChatGPT’s “best software” recommendations isn’t about submitting your product to ChatGPT or adding a few AI-related keywords to your website.

If someone asks ChatGPT for the “best project management software for a 20-person agency” or “best CRM for a B2B SaaS startup,” your product needs to be relevant to that specific request. ChatGPT also needs enough information from your website and other sources to understand what your software does, who it is for, and where it fits against other options.

There is no guaranteed way to secure a recommendation. The better approach is to make your product easier for AI systems to understand, verify, compare, and recommend.

Here’s where to start.

1. Understand the Prompts You Want to Appear For

Before changing your website, identify the software recommendation prompts that actually matter to your business.

Don’t focus only on broad queries such as :

“What are the best CRM tools?”

Your potential customers may ask much more specific questions :

• “What is the best CRM for a 20-person B2B SaaS sales team?”

• “Which CRM is best for startups using Slack and Stripe?”

• “What are affordable HubSpot alternatives for a SaaS company?”

These prompts reveal much more about what the buyer wants.

A useful way to build your prompt list is :

Software category + audience + problem + feature + use case + alternative

An HR SaaS company, for example, shouldn’t track only “best HR software.” It should also consider prompts around :

• Remote teams

• Employee onboarding

• Payroll integrations

• Company size

• Pricing

• Alternatives to established competitors

This is one of the main principles behind GEO for SaaS. You want visibility for prompts that can influence discovery and buying decisions, not random brand mentions.

2. Make It Clear What Your Software Actually Does

AI systems can’t confidently recommend a product if its positioning is difficult to understand.

Look at your homepage and core product pages. Can someone quickly determine :

• What your product does

• Who should use it

• Which problems it solves

• Its main features

• Which tools it integrates with

• Which industries or teams it serves

• How it differs from competing products

Avoid vague positioning such as :

“Transforming how modern teams work.”

Compare that with :

“Customer support software for B2B SaaS teams that manages email, live chat, and support tickets from one workspace.”

The second version provides far more useful context.

Your feature, integration, pricing , use-case, and industry pages should reinforce the same positioning.

This is an important part of AI search optimization for SaaS.

Your website needs to clearly connect your product with the problems and use cases your buyers are asking about.

3. Get Mentioned on Relevant Third-Party Websites

Your own website tells AI platforms what you say about your product.

Third-party sources provide information about what others say about it.

That distinction becomes important for recommendation queries.

Search your target prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google and look at the sources that repeatedly appear.

Depending on your SaaS category, these may include :

• Industry publications

• Software comparison websites

• Review platforms

• Independent blogs

• Reddit discussions

• SaaS directories

• Expert roundups

• Alternatives articles

Don’t make the goal “get as many mentions as possible.”

A better question is :

Which sources already influence conversations around the prompts we want to appear for?

If certain publications, review platforms, or communities repeatedly appear around your target category, getting accurate and relevant coverage there can be more useful than collecting unrelated mentions.

This is why brand mentions should be considered alongside traditional link building.

We also explain the difference in our guide on brand mentions vs backlinks for AI search .

4. Build Content Around How Buyers Compare Software

Publishing informational content alone may not give AI systems enough information to understand where your product belongs in a buying decision.

Look at the questions customers ask when they’re evaluating software.

They often want to know :

• Which product is better for their use case?

• What are the alternatives?

• How much does each option cost?

• Which integrations are supported?

• What are the limitations?

• Which product is better for a small or enterprise team?

Your content should answer these questions.

Useful page types include :

• Your Product vs Competitor

• Best tools for a specific use case

• Competitor alternatives

• Software category comparisons

• Use-case-specific product pages

Comparison content should also be fair.

If your page claims your software beats every competitor on every feature, it isn’t particularly useful. Explain where products differ, what each option does well, and which type of customer each one suits.

This gives both buyers and AI systems better information for making comparisons.

5. Build a Presence Where SaaS Buyers Discuss Products

Software recommendations don’t happen only on company websites.

People discuss tools on communities, forums, review platforms, and social networks every day.

Reddit is a good example.

Potential buyers regularly ask questions such as :

• “What CRM are you actually using?”

• “Any good alternatives to Salesforce?”

• “Which project management tool works well for a small agency?”

These discussions create additional context around products and how people use them.

That doesn’t mean creating promotional Reddit posts about your SaaS.

Your brand should appear where it genuinely fits the conversation. Helpful discussions about use cases, alternatives, limitations, and experiences are more useful than forcing your product into unrelated threads.

We’ve covered this approach in our Reddit marketing for SaaS guide and our article on why SaaS brands need community mentions for AI search .

6. Make Sure ChatGPT Can Access Your Website

Content and brand mentions won’t help much if important parts of your website are difficult to crawl.

OpenAI provides OAI-SearchBot for websites that want to appear in ChatGPT search results. Check that your robots.txt, CDN settings, or other crawler controls aren’t accidentally blocking access.

The usual technical SEO fundamentals still matter too.

Your important pages should be :

• Crawlable

• Internally linked

• Easy to understand

• Accessible without heavy interaction

• Supported with appropriate structured data where relevant

Important product information also shouldn’t be hidden behind JavaScript or interactions that make the content difficult to access.

7. Track Recommendations at the Prompt Level

Don’t measure your AI visibility by asking :

“Does ChatGPT know my brand?”

Knowing your brand and recommending it during a buying conversation are very different things.

Build a fixed set of prompts based on how potential customers discover and compare products.

Then monitor :

• Whether your brand appears

• Which competitors appear

• How your product is described

• Which features are mentioned

• Which sources are cited

• Whether your recommendation changes for different use cases

You may find that your product appears for a broad category prompt but disappears when someone adds an industry, company size, integration, or specific requirement.

Those gaps tell you what to work on next.

8. Focus on Being Recommended for the Right Software Searches

Getting mentioned by ChatGPT shouldn’t be the end goal.

You could appear across dozens of low-value prompts without getting any closer to a potential customer.

The more useful goal is to make your SaaS visible when someone is actively :

• Discovering software

• Comparing products

• Looking for alternatives

• Evaluating features

• Shortlisting vendors

• Choosing a solution for a specific use case

Start with the prompts your buyers use. Make your product positioning clear. Build content around comparisons and use cases. Earn relevant third-party mentions. Participate in communities where your category is already being discussed. Then track whether your visibility improves for the prompts that matter.

The goal isn’t to appear in every ChatGPT answer.

It’s to appear when your potential customer is asking for software like yours.

Want Your SaaS to Show Up for the Right AI Search Prompts?

If your SaaS isn’t appearing when buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or Claude for products in your category, the first step is finding out why.

At Growthner, we help SaaS companies work on the areas that can affect their AI search visibility, including :

• Buyer prompt research and tracking

• Competitor AI visibility analysis

• Content optimization for AI search

• Brand mentions and citation outreach

• Reddit and community visibility

• AI visibility reporting

Our focus isn’t on getting your brand mentioned for random prompts. We look at the questions potential buyers use when discovering, comparing, shortlisting, and choosing software.