ChatGPT Rank Tracker

Where does ChatGPT get its information?

ChatGPT answers from two places. The first is what it learned during training, which has no sources you can check. The second is the web: when ChatGPT searches, it reads pages at the moment of the question, writes its answer from them, and links some of them as sources.

For a buyer who asks "what is the best tool for X", those linked pages decide which products get named. This tool shows you which pages they are.

How to check what ChatGPT cites for a question

With the tracker above. Type the question the way a buyer would ask it, and pick a country. The tracker asks ChatGPT with web search turned on and shows you four things: the answer, the pages it cites, every page it read during the search, and the Reddit threads among them. Each number in the answer matches a page in the source list. Add your domain to see if your site is cited or only read.

By hand. Open ChatGPT, turn on search, and ask the question. Click "Sources" under the answer to see the links. This shows the cited pages, but not the pages ChatGPT read without citing, and you have to repeat it for every question.

Cited, read or absent: what the result means

The tracker puts your site in one of three cases. A fourth case is about the question itself.

• Cited. ChatGPT links one of your pages in its answer. The position shows how early it appears in the source list.
• Read, but not cited. Your page came up in ChatGPT's search, but the answer links other pages. You are close: the search finds you, the answer prefers another source.
• Not read. None of your pages came up in the search for this question. Start with being findable for it.
• No page cited at all. ChatGPT searched but answered without links. It happens on simple questions. Try the question in a more specific form, such as "best X for Y".

Does ChatGPT use Reddit?

Yes. When it searches the web, ChatGPT reads Reddit threads often, because people there compare products and answer each other in plain words. How often it cites them in the answer changes over time, sometimes a lot within a few weeks.

That is why the tracker shows both lists. A Reddit thread that ChatGPT reads for your question still shapes the answer, even on a day it is not linked. And a thread is the one source in the list you can take part in: a helpful reply puts your product inside a page ChatGPT already reads.

How to rank in ChatGPT

ChatGPT has no ranking list like Google's top 10. "Ranking" means being among the pages it reads and cites. What helps:

1. Be findable by its search. ChatGPT searches the web through search engines, so pages that rank well for the question are read more often. Do not block OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, in your robots.txt.
2. Answer the question in one clear passage. A short paragraph or list that answers it directly is easier to cite than an answer spread over a long page.
3. Be named on the pages ChatGPT reads. Look at the cited and read pages for your questions: comparison articles, review sites, Reddit threads. Being mentioned there counts, even when your own site is not cited.
4. Check again. Answers change. Run the same questions every few weeks.

Why does ChatGPT give a different answer each time?

ChatGPT writes every answer fresh, and its web search can return different pages from one day to the next. Two people asking the same question can get different products named. One check is a snapshot. The pages that come back check after check are the ones that matter.

What this tool does not check

The tracker asks OpenAI's model with web search turned on, from the country you pick. It is close to ChatGPT, but not the ChatGPT app itself: the app can use another model, your chat history and your exact location. The tracker always makes ChatGPT search, while the app sometimes answers from memory. It checks one question at a time, and the result is kept for 7 days.

Follow the threads, not just one question

Your buyers ask ChatGPT many versions of the same question, and new Reddit threads start ranking every week. RedShip finds the Reddit threads that rank on Google and in AI answers for your keywords, and tells you which ones are worth a reply. Check a question here, and let RedShip watch the rest.