For two years, marketers have been told AI search is the next big channel and given no official way to measure it. OpenAI just handed them a dashboard, built and run by OpenAI.

OpenAI launched Businesses in ChatGPT in beta at 10:06 a.m. PT on Tuesday. Companies can claim a profile in a new Business Hub, correct what ChatGPT says about them and track mentions, profile views and clicks to their website, Search Engine Roundtable reported. Eligible businesses can also build a Business Agent that answers customer questions inside ChatGPT. OpenAI's pitch is reach: it says 1.2 billion people use ChatGPT each week.

The launch was expected. Screenshots of a "Claim your business in ChatGPT" banner surfaced on Nov. 6, when our sister publication The State of AI wrote about them, and Digiday reported on the dashboard on Nov. 9. OpenAI declined to comment at the time. On Tuesday it made the product official, and the AI visibility industry got its first look at the numbers it has been estimating all along.

Brands can now correct what ChatGPT says about them

To claim a profile, a business verifies ownership with a text or call to its main phone number, or through DNS. After that it can edit its business details and upload product feeds with prices and availability. Shopify merchants can connect from the Business Hub or from Shopify admin, and existing OpenAI advertisers and Enterprise customers can go through an OpenAI representative.

This is the part brand teams should care about first. ChatGPT has been describing companies from whatever it could find on the web, including outdated product pages, old pricing, third-party reviews and the occasional stale Reddit thread. The only fix was to publish more and hope the model noticed. A verified profile gives a brand an official way to tell ChatGPT what's true about it.

The numbers are real, but thin

The dashboard reports mentions, profile views and website clicks. A view OpenAI calls discovery topics groups the recurring themes in conversations where a brand's website was cited.

OpenAI says it doesn't share user conversations or Business Agent chats with businesses. The data is aggregated and appears only once activity passes a minimum threshold, so smaller brands may have little to look at during the beta.

The prompts are still missing, and they're what marketers need most. The State of AI flagged that gap when the leak surfaced, and the launch didn't close it. A mention count tells a CMO the brand showed up. It can't say whether it showed up for "best CRM for small teams" or in a thread full of complaints, and that's the difference a budget meeting cares about. Brands paying for prompt tracking will keep paying for it.

Search Engine Roundtable's Barry Schwartz said he's worried about businesses getting hijacked on the platform. Phone and DNS checks are a start. Companies with franchise locations, resellers or a former agency that still has access will need to settle who owns the profile before someone else claims it. Nobody budgets for that kind of problem until it happens to them.

The agent is where OpenAI makes money

Business Agents launch first for eligible ecommerce and online service businesses in the US. A shopper can open a chat with the business inside ChatGPT, ask about its products and compare them. OpenAI hasn't spelled out which B2B companies count as online services, so most B2B brands should assume they're in the second wave.

The agent answers from information the business supplies, which gives brands something they haven't had in ChatGPT before: a say in their own answers. It also gives OpenAI something to sell. Businesses can sponsor their agent as the destination for labeled ChatGPT Ads, which turns the agent into a landing page for OpenAI's ad product.

Marketers have seen this before

Google Business Profile began as a free way for businesses to fix their listings. It turned into a profile every local marketer has to maintain, with ads sitting right next to it. OpenAI is following the same route, only faster. It attached the ads on launch day.

That changes how CMOs will budget for AI search. Until now, ChatGPT visibility lived in consultant decks and vendor estimates. Now there's first-party data, and anything with first-party data ends up in the channel report, with a target and an owner.

Our take

Claim the profile this week. Verification decides who controls the details ChatGPT and the Business Agent rely on, and a brand shouldn't leave that to a reseller, an old agency or an impostor.

Take a baseline now and review mentions and clicks next to organic search every month. The beta numbers will be rough, but they're the first ones that come from OpenAI, and rough first-party data beats a polished estimate.

Don't cancel your prompt tracking. OpenAI's dashboard will tell you that visibility moved. It won't tell you why.

And go in with your eyes open. Brands asked OpenAI for numbers, and they got them. They also got an ad product that sits behind the same login.