How to get your site cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude

"What is the best language school in Austin?" More and more people ask this kind of question to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity instead of typing it into Google. The answer comes back ready-made, in a few lines, with a handful of names and links. The question every site owner now asks is: how does my business get on that list?

There is no guaranteed formula, and anyone promising one is overselling. AI companies do not disclose how they choose sources, and things change fast. But it is already possible to understand how these tools work and what clearly improves your chances. This field goes by names like GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). At heart, it is good SEO with a few extra precautions.

How an AI finds your site

An AI assistant answers in two ways:

1. From what it learned in training. The model read a huge amount of web text up to a certain date. If your business was widely mentioned, it may "remember" you, but that information can be outdated.
2. By searching on the spot. For questions about the present (prices, places, news), assistants search the web, read a few pages and summarize them. This is where you have the best chance to appear, with a link to your site.

To search, each tool uses a mix of partner search engines and its own crawlers:

• Google Gemini and AI Overviews in Google Search rely on Google's own index.
• ChatGPT uses its own search crawler (OAI-SearchBot) and also relies on partner search engines such as Bing.
• Claude and Perplexity have their own crawlers to fetch and read pages when someone asks a question.

Practical takeaway: if your site is not well indexed in Google and Bing, it is less likely to be found by AI tools.

Step 1: Make sure your site is in the search engines

• Google Search Console: add your site, submit your sitemap and check that important pages are indexed.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: often forgotten. It is free, and you can import your site straight from Search Console in a few clicks.
• Google Business Profile: for local businesses, it is one of the most-used sources when a question involves "near me" or a city.

Step 2: Let the right crawlers in

AI companies use different crawlers for different purposes, and you can decide on each one in your robots.txt file:

Many businesses want to appear in answers but prefer not to hand over their content for model training. You can do both: allow the search crawlers and block only the training ones. A robots.txt like this:

# Allowed: crawlers that search to answer questions
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

# Blocked: crawlers that collect content to train models
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

Check your firewall too. Some security services and CDNs block AI crawlers by default, even when robots.txt allows them. In Cloudflare, for example, this lives in the bot settings.

Crawler names change from time to time. Before blocking or allowing, check the current list in each company's documentation.

Step 3: Write the answers people are looking for

AI tools build answers from passages of web pages. The winner is whoever has the clearest, most complete and most quotable passage.

• Think about your customers' real questions. "How much does it cost?", "Do you take insurance?", "Do you deliver to my area?", "What is the difference between X and Y?". Each one deserves an answer on your site.
• Answer up front. Give the direct answer in one or two sentences first, then the details.
• Be concrete. Prices (or ranges), timelines, address, hours, numbers. "Affordable prices" is not quotable; "from $19 per month" is.
• One page per important topic. A "Services" page with everything mixed together is worse than one page per service.
• Keep it up to date. Visible update dates and accurate information build trust, for people and machines alike.

Step 4: Get mentioned outside your own site

This is the point that surprises people most. To recommend a business, AI tools look at what the web says about it, not just what it says about itself.

• Reviews on Google, Trustpilot, Yelp and sites specific to your industry.
• Lists and comparisons ("the 10 best...") on blogs and publications.
• Press coverage, interviews and partnerships.
• Directories and associations in your industry.
• Discussions on forums and social networks where people recommend you spontaneously.

And keep your name, address and phone number consistent everywhere. Mismatched information confuses machines.

Step 5: Help machines understand you

• Structured data (Schema.org): states precisely what your business, product, price and address are. See our JSON-LD and Schema.org guide.
• Content readable without JavaScript: if text only appears after scripts run, some crawlers cannot see it. We explain how to check in Does your site show up in ChatGPT answers?.
• A fast, stable site: crawlers also give up on slow or broken pages. Our Core Web Vitals guide shows what to improve.

How to measure whether it is working

• In Google Analytics, under Acquisition, look for visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and claude.ai. GA4 already groups some of them as AI assistant traffic.
• Ask the assistants yourself. Ask the questions your customers would ask, without naming your business, and note who shows up. Repeat every month.
• Track mentions. More reviews and more sites talking about you usually come before more AI citations.

Realistic expectations: this is months of work, much like SEO. You cannot "buy" a citation in ChatGPT. You can be the clearest, best-recommended answer on your topic, and that is exactly the kind of business AI tools tend to cite.

Where to start today

1. Add your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. Check robots.txt and your firewall: are AI search crawlers allowed?
3. List the 10 questions your customers ask most and make sure each one has a clear answer on your site.
4. Ask happy customers for reviews.
5. Run a test on Teste de Performance and check, in the AI visibility analysis, whether crawlers can read your page.