At a recent event we ran for the local tech community we had someone turn up who found out about the event by asking ChatGPT about tech meetups in the area. This outcome then prompted me to consider whether I can speed up the process of getting found by ChatGPT by providing the web page URL to ChatGPT.
I thought the most authoritative voice on the topic was likely to be ChatGPT so I asked:
"If I want a specific web page to get found by ChatGPT does it speed up the indexing process if I share urls with you?"
You may have noticed I used a search engine optimisation term of getting indexed and the reality is that getting found by AI is very similar to getting found in search engines such as Google.
The response from ChatGPT?
Short answer: No, sharing URLs directly with me (ChatGPT) doesn’t speed up indexing or improve discoverability.
ChatGPT can’t trigger crawling, indexing, or promote your content in search engines or OpenAI’s systems by being given a URL here.
Here’s how it actually works:
🔎 How ChatGPT "finds" information
ChatGPT doesn't crawl the web in real-time. Its core training is based on a snapshot of publicly available data and licensed sources.
When connected to a browsing tool (like the Bing integration), it can look up live pages, but this still depends on whether your page is indexed by search engines.
🧠 For your content to get referenced by ChatGPT:
It must be publicly available and well-indexed in search engines (especially Google and Bing).
It helps if it’s linked from other reputable websites, which increases its authority and likelihood of being included in AI training data or search engine results.
It should answer specific questions clearly, so it can be matched to user queries effectively.
✅ What does help speed up discovery:
Submit your URL to Google Search Console (free and fast indexing).
Ensure good SEO practices: clear page titles, meta descriptions, internal linking, and relevant content.
Share your content on social media, blogs, and directories to generate traffic and backlinks.
