Press release · published on AGERPRES

How does a Romanian brand get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?

Q: How does a Romanian brand get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity?

A Romanian brand gets recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity when the assistant can read it, understands it without ambiguity and finds it confirmed in independent sources. ChatGPT ads, shown in Romania since 24 August 2026, only buy the space below the answer; the companies named in the answer itself get there through a clearly defined entity and through what others write about them. For many small businesses the first obstacle is technical: on some e-commerce platforms the merchant cannot edit robots.txt, and assistants see at most the product names. Appearing is measured on four separate levels: mention, citation with a link, accuracy, and recommendation for commercial questions.

by Cătălin Popa · updated 2026-09-16

On 16 September 2026, AGERPRES published the gr.AI press release on optimising for AI engines in its Business OTS section. This page is its website version: the same facts, with the source of every figure written next to it and links to the pages where you can check them.

The question it answers is one businesses ask us often: if more and more people ask an AI assistant instead of searching Google, how do you become the name the assistant gives?

The original press release

Optimizare pentru AI (GEO): cum ajută gr.AI brandurile românești să apară în ChatGPT, Gemini și Perplexity

Published by AGERPRES, Business OTS, 16 September 2026. The text is gr.AI's own, published for a fee in the press release section, not an article by the newsroom.

What has changed in search

The Digital Evolution study, wave 17, run by Exact Business Solutions between 29 June and 8 July 2026 among 1,338 urban internet users in Romania, shows that 85% of respondents know ChatGPT and 70% use artificial intelligence to search for information. Its use for health topics rose from 11% in 2024 to 27% in 2026.

Classic search was losing clicks even before assistants. According to the Zero-Click Search study published by SparkToro in July 2024, based on Datos data, 59.7% of Google searches in the European Union end without a single click to a website.

The practical consequence: a good position in Google no longer guarantees visibility in AI answers. A site can rank first and still be missing from the answer ChatGPT gives to the same question. These are two selection systems with different criteria.

What an ad in ChatGPT buys

Since 24 August 2026, ads in ChatGPT are shown in Romania too. They appear below the generated answer, labelled as ads, for users on the Free and Go plans. An ad therefore buys the space below the answer. The companies named in the answer itself get there another way.

On that route, the market runs at two speeds. At the first are the companies building integrations straight into ChatGPT: Autovit launched car search inside the assistant, and Sezamo, the Rohlik group's online grocery store, has its own shopping app in ChatGPT and its own MCP server, through which its services can connect to other assistants as well. These are projects with dedicated technical teams.

At the second are the small businesses that assistants cannot always read. On some e-commerce platforms, the robots.txt file, the one that tells crawlers what they may read, cannot be edited by the merchant. An AI assistant then sees at most the product name, not the price, the stock or the specifications.

Bike Stylish, the bicycle shop founded by Cătălin Popa, co-founder of gr.AI, hit exactly this block. The fix was a free public API with 5,437 products in 101 categories, published on GitHub, that assistants can read directly. Freerider.ro wrote about the case in August 2025. The agency grew out of that experiment.

What appearing in an AI answer actually means

There are four different things, measured separately.

Mention. The brand is named in the answer. It is the minimum threshold and guarantees nothing further.
Citation. The site is given as a source, with a link. This is where traffic can come from, not just awareness.
Accuracy. What the assistant says about the business is correct. A mention carrying wrong information does more harm than no mention.
Recommendation. The brand appears when the question is commercial, not only when it is informational. It is the difference between being named and being proposed.

A brand can be mentioned without being cited, or cited without being recommended. Each level needs a different fix, which is why they are not collapsed into a single number.

How we measure

Every engagement starts from a measurement, not from a proposal. The audit is called GEO SCAN.

1The questions. The set of questions the business should appear for: more than 15 commercial and informational prompts, written in the language real customers ask in.
2The runs. The same questions, on ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, with the date and model recorded. Answers change between runs, so each question runs several times and we report frequency, not just presence.
3The sources. Who appears, with what description and on the strength of which sources. The cited sources often say more than the order the companies appear in.
4The technical side. AI crawler access, what the server delivers without JavaScript, structured data, and how consistent the information about the business is across external sources.
5The competition. The same set of questions, for the direct competitors in the same category.
6The score and the order. A GEO score and the list of fixes, ordered by impact, not by how easy they are.

GEO SCAN delivers its findings in 5 to 7 days. The full rebuild plan for an existing site, RE-BUILD, is delivered in 7 to 14 days.

Who is behind it

gr.AI was founded in Bucharest in 2026 by Cătălin Popa and Gabriel Ștefănescu. Cătălin Popa holds the Google AI Professional Certificate, issued by Google through Coursera. Gabriel Ștefănescu has more than 15 years of experience in sales and B2B.

The agency profile, with the verifiable certificate

The pro bono projects

We use the same tools, meaning the audit, structured data and presence in AI answers, free of charge for two public-interest projects.

The Romanian Railways Museum. The museum on Calea Griviței in Bucharest, run by CENAFER. A site built so that Romania's railway history can be found and told accurately, by visitors and by AI assistants. muzeulcfr.ro
Coral Baby. A paediatric rehabilitation clinic in Tărtășești, Dâmbovița county, serving families from Dâmbovița, Ilfov and north Bucharest. A site built so that the Vojta, Schroth and MEDEK therapies are explained accurately by AI assistants, not approximated. coralbaby.ro

The second case shows why the problem is not only commercial. When an assistant gives an approximate description of a paediatric rehabilitation therapy, the cost is counted in misled parents, not in lost sales. Museums, non-governmental organisations and community initiatives can propose a project at contact@gr-ai.ro.

Where the data on this page comes from

The press release. AGERPRES, Business OTS section, 16 September 2026. agerpres.ro
AI use in Romania. Revista Biz, 1 September 2026, on the Digital Evolution study, wave 17, by Exact Business Solutions. revistabiz.ro
Zero-click searches. SparkToro, Rand Fishkin, 2 July 2024, based on Datos data: 59.7% in the EU, 58.5% in the US. sparktoro.com
ChatGPT ads in Romania. Revista Biz, 1 September 2026: ads shown since 24 August, below the answer, to the Free and Go plans. revistabiz.ro
Autovit in ChatGPT. Revista Biz, 20 April 2026. revistabiz.ro
Sezamo in ChatGPT. Revista Biz, 3 July 2026. revistabiz.ro
The Bike Stylish API. Freerider.ro, 6 August 2025. freerider.ro

The figures on AI use and on clicks come from the studies above, not from gr.AI measurements. The description of the audit and of the projects is ours.