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ChatGPT Opens the Shop Window. Europe Waits for the Door.

From the editors

Berlin

OpenAI has opened a beta called Businesses in ChatGPT. Companies can claim a verified profile, correct what ChatGPT says about them, and see how often they are mentioned. Some can also run their own agent inside ChatGPT. For EU small firms, the split matters: the profile and the statistics are on offer, but the agent is for US businesses only.

FROM THE EDITORS

Think of ChatGPT as a new high street. More than a billion people walk down it every week, according to OpenAI, and until now you had no say over how your shop looked from the pavement. Businesses in ChatGPT changes that in two steps. The Business Hub gives you the shop window: your details, your prices, a blue check, and a count of how many people stopped to look. The Business Agent gives you the door: a conversation inside ChatGPT where customers can ask about your products. For now, Europe gets the window. The door stays shut.

The window: Business Hub. A business with a website can claim its profile and verify it, for example through a DNS record or a call or text to its main number. Once verified, it can update key details, add product feeds with prices and stock, and get a blue check. Shopify merchants can connect their store directly. The Hub then shows aggregated figures: how often ChatGPT mentions you, how many people click through to your site, and “discovery topics”, the themes of the conversations in which you come up. OpenAI says businesses never see individual chats, and that numbers are only shown once there are enough conversations to aggregate.

OpenAI says eligible businesses can claim a profile wherever ChatGPT is available, and the European tech site Trending Topics reports that this includes Europe. Some US coverage describes the beta as starting with US firms, so check whether your business is eligible when you try to claim it. The Hub is free at launch, but OpenAI has not ruled out charging later.

The door: Business Agents. Once a business has a profile, it can build its own agent. When the business turns up in a ChatGPT answer, a user can open the profile and chat with the agent about products, sizes or availability. The agent chat is labelled and kept separate from ChatGPT’s own answers. Agents must say they are AI, keep prices accurate and avoid pressure tactics, and any purchase or sharing of personal data needs the user’s explicit approval. For now, buyers are sent on to the brand’s own website.

This part is limited to eligible e-commerce and online-service businesses in the United States. OpenAI says more markets will follow, but gives no date.

Why the window still matters. For a small firm in Odense or Porto, the Hub is the useful part today. It is the first time you can see, with OpenAI’s own data instead of estimates, whether ChatGPT is sending you anyone at all. If a customer asks for “a reliable supplier of X in Denmark” and your firm never appears, you now have a way to find out, and a way to make sure your details are right when it does.

It also gives you something to fix. Wrong opening hours, an old address or last year’s prices are not just embarrassing on a search engine. On ChatGPT, they get repeated in a confident, helpful voice. Claiming your profile is the cheapest correction you will make this year.

The catch: one company owns the street, the window and the billboards. OpenAI also sells ads. Businesses can sponsor their agent as the landing page for ChatGPT ads, building on the Sponsored Agents test it began in September. OpenAI says paying does not change how often ChatGPT recommends a business, and that claiming a profile does not guarantee higher placement. That may be true. It is still the same company deciding what you are shown, what you can measure and what you can pay for, and critics have pointed out that this makes independent recommendations harder to tell apart from advertising.

The data is thin by design. The Hub does not show which prompts led to your mentions, and it offers no comparison with competitors. It also covers only ChatGPT, not Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google’s AI Overviews. European companies that sell AI-visibility reports, such as Peec AI in Berlin and OtterlyAI in Vienna, now face a free rival with real usage data, but they still cover the parts OpenAI leaves out. Google’s free Search Console did not make SEO tools pointless, and this is unlikely to either.

Trust and claims. Some observers worry about false claims, where someone else verifies your business first. OpenAI has not explained how it handles disputes. OpenAI also says it does not check every detail a business supplies. You remain responsible for what your profile says.

GDPR questions for later. OpenAI keeps the full agent transcripts, even though businesses only see themes. None of the coverage we found addresses how agent chats, or the personal data a customer may share with an agent, will be handled under GDPR when agents reach Europe. That is a question to ask before the door opens, not after.

Back on the high street. A shop window is not a sale, but a dirty window loses sales you never hear about. For now, Businesses in ChatGPT gives EU small firms the window and a footfall counter, and keeps the door for American shops. Clean the window, read the counter, and decide calmly whether you want the door when it comes. As with Spacefast’s rented stall, read the lease before you move anything valuable in.

What to do this month

  • Ask ChatGPT a few questions your customers would ask, and note whether and how your business appears.
  • Claim and verify your profile in the Business Hub before someone else does, and correct your address, hours, prices and product details.
  • Check the Hub’s mention and click figures monthly, alongside your normal web statistics, rather than paying for estimates you do not yet need.
  • Do not move your marketing budget into ChatGPT ads on the strength of a beta. Wait to see what the Hub data says first.
  • If you plan to use an agent once it reaches Europe, start a short note now on what customer data it might handle and what your privacy policy would need to say.

Sources

— FROM THE EDITORSSignaldigital

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