Exporters in Turkey have well-known ways to find customers: trade fairs, B2B marketplaces, industry directories, Turkish commercial counsellor offices abroad, LinkedIn and direct email. These still work. But part of supplier research may now be starting somewhere else.
A purchasing manager in Germany may ask ChatGPT, "Which companies in Turkey make industrial valves with CE certification?" A few company names appear in the answer. If yours is not there, you may lose this buyer without ever seeing them. This article explains how manufacturers exporting from Turkey can appear in AI answers.
What does the foreign buyer ask, and how does the engine answer?
The buyer may ask in their own language: German, English, Arabic or Russian. The engine decides which sources the answer is built from.
OpenAI's web search help page sheds some light on this process. When ChatGPT works with search partners, it usually rewrites the question into one or more targeted queries and sends them to those partners. For local results, it may also use the approximate location derived from the user's IP address.
The takeaway: if you ask ChatGPT in Turkish from Turkey and see yourself, that does not mean the foreign buyer sees you too. Seen in the buyer's language, from the buyer's market, the picture may be different.
Step 1: Write the target market's questions
Prepare a separate question list for each market. Write the questions in that market's language. Use the sentences your sales team hears from foreign buyers.
A good export question usually includes:
- The name of the product or service, using the term the industry uses
- The source country ("Türkiye'den" in Turkish, "from Turkey")
- A condition that matters to the buyer: certification, minimum order quantity, custom manufacturing, delivery time
Example: "Which Turkish manufacturers produce custom stainless steel kitchen equipment for hotels?" Do not put your company name in the question. The goal is to see whether you show up for a buyer who does not know you.
Step 2: Measure each market separately
Ask the questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity separately. Do not rely on a single answer. Answers change even for the same question. We explained why you need to measure repeatedly in How to measure AI visibility.
In each answer, check: were you mentioned, which competitors were mentioned, are these competitors Turkish companies or from other countries, and which pages were cited as sources in the answer?
The last question matters. The cited pages tell you what the engine reads in the buyer's market.
Step 3: Review the foreign-language version of your site
For many exporters, the English site is a shortened translation of the Turkish site. Product pages are missing, and technical information sits inside PDF catalogs. In this situation, the engine may not be able to match you with the right product.
Google's multilingual sites documentation gives a few clear recommendations:
- Use separate URLs for each language version. Do not switch the language with cookies or browser settings.
- Google determines the page's language from the visible content. Keep the content and menu on each page in one language.
- Use `hreflang` annotations between language versions.
These recommendations are written for Google. But the shared logic applies to every engine: what the page sells should be written clearly, as text, in the buyer's language.
Checklist:
- Are technical specifications written as text on product pages, or only in a PDF?
- Are your certifications (ISO, CE and similar) and the regions you export to clearly stated on the page?
- Is the information the buyer will ask about first there, such as minimum order quantity, custom manufacturing options and delivery terms?
- Does your "About us" page say in the first paragraph what you make, where you manufacture and which industries you sell to?
Do not add claims to the page that cannot be verified. Write figures such as capacity, number of customers or export volume only with information you actually have and whose source you can show.
Step 4: Check that bots can access your site
On exporter sites, security settings sometimes block foreign traffic or bots all at once. This can also shut out AI search bots.
According to OpenAI's crawler documentation, sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers and may only appear as navigation links. Perplexity and Google have similar settings. Check your robots.txt file and firewall settings with this in mind.
Step 5: Are you on the sources in the buyer's market?
AI answers often cite list and guide pages as sources. In an Ahrefs study of ChatGPT covering 750 questions in the software, product and agency categories, 43.8 percent of the cited pages were "best X" style blog lists. The study is limited to these categories. The share may be different for industrial products. Still, the finding is a reminder: the engine reads not only your site but also what others write about you.
In exporting, these pages are usually:
- Industry directories and supplier lists in the target market's language
- Company profiles on international B2B marketplaces
- Supplier guides in trade magazines
- Trade fair exhibitor lists
Check that your profile on these pages is up to date and consistent with your site. If you describe the same product with different names in different places, the engine may match you with the wrong category. We explained how to find which pages are cited in Where does ChatGPT get its information.
Does this replace the other methods?
No. Trade fairs, B2B platforms and direct sales work continue. AI visibility is a channel added alongside them. The difference is this: an AI answer often gives the buyer a short list of a few companies. If you are not on that list, the buyer may continue their research without ever seeing you.
How do you track it?
In exporting, measurement has two dimensions: engine and market. For the same product, visibility in Turkey and in the target market may turn out different.
AIShortlist measures ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity separately. The Growth plan tracks 2 markets separately (for example Turkey and abroad), and the Pro plan goes up to 5 markets. Questions are suggested from your site, and measurement does not start until you approve them. The Sources screen shows which pages are cited in each market and which lists your brand is missing from. For each list page, the action plan includes a ready email draft in the page's language.
Is there a guarantee?
No. No tool or agency can guarantee that a foreign buyer will see you in AI. What you can do is provide accurate information in the buyer's language, remove barriers and measure each market regularly.
If you want to see where you stand today, you can run a 10-question measurement with the free trial. The trial includes 1 brand and 1 measurement, and no card is required.