Want ChatGPT to Cite Your Business? Adding This 1 Element Could Boost Your Chances

A new study by SEO and GEO agency Nectiv just revealed that making one simple change—adding a table to your business’ website—could improve your chances of getting referenced by ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is 2.3 times more likely than Google to cite websites with tables, according to the study.

Nectiv uncovered this finding by analyzing more than 25,000 webpages indexed by Google and nearly 8,800 webpages referenced by ChatGPT for the same search query. One third of the ChatGPT citations included a table, per the study, compared to only 13 percent of the Google search results.

“So this definitely leads to some interesting insights,” Chris Long, the co-founder of Nectiv, writes in a recent blog post about the study. “ChatGPT definitely seems much more likely to [reward] content that’s included in some type of table format.”

Which means that “reformatting your content to table structures or adding them to your existing pages is certainly a worthwhile test for most companies,” he adds—especially “if you believe LLMs might already be having issues extracting your content.”

Examples of brands that are already using tables well, according to the study, include Software Connect, a software consultation business based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Cotocus, a tech company based in India which Long describes as “more spammy.” Each of their websites have a wide array of product recommendation-focused blog posts that feature tables prominently.

In his post, Long is careful to note that “correlation isn’t causation.” It’s possible that certain features of tables are causing large language models to gravitate towards them. For example, he writes, they’re “pretty dense from a contextual standpoint,” and “they appear more often on comparison content.”

Still, Long writes that “ exploring table structures for improved visibility in ChatGPT and other LLMs is certainly something for marketers to keep exploring.”

The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.