How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

The short answer

AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity answer questions using what they already know and, increasingly, what they find on the web. To be a candidate for a recommendation, your site needs to be crawlable, clear about what you do, and backed by real evidence. This is often called generative engine optimisation, or GEO. It overlaps heavily with ordinary good SEO.

What the platforms say themselves

• Google: to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Google says there are no extra requirements, no special optimisations, and no AI text files or special markup needed.¹
• OpenAI: its OAI-SearchBot is what surfaces sites in ChatGPT search. Sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.²
• Anthropic: Claude-SearchBot crawls the web to improve search quality, and Claude-User fetches pages when a person asks Claude a question. Blocking either may reduce your visibility.³
• Perplexity: to appear in its search results, you should allow PerplexityBot in your robots.txt file.⁴

The first step is therefore the unglamorous one: check that your robots.txt does not block these crawlers. Many sites block them by accident, and some block them on purpose, so look at yours.

What helps in practice

The platforms do not publish a recipe beyond the above, so these are judgement calls based on how search works, not guarantees:

1. Write answer-first. Open each page with the direct answer, then explain. Think of the question a customer would type and answer it in two sentences.
2. Add a real FAQ. Questions in the words customers use, with plain answers. Mine is here.
3. Keep your details consistent. Match your name, description and contact details across your website, Google Business Profile and LinkedIn.
4. Earn mentions. Reviews, testimonials, directory listings and articles on other sites are evidence that you exist and are good.
5. Publish specific, useful content. Guides for your niche, like this one, give assistants something worth citing.
6. Consider structured data. Google defines it as a standard way of giving information about a page, and recommends JSON-LD. It does not guarantee any special appearance in search, and Google says it is not needed for its AI features,¹⁵ but it makes your pages easier for search engines to read.

What about llms.txt?

An llms.txt file is a short summary of your site written for AI tools. Google's John Mueller compared it to the old keywords meta tag, and said none of the AI services had said they use it.⁶ It is cheap to add and I have one on this site, but treat it as a small extra and not a strategy.

How to check how you are doing

Ask the assistants directly. Try questions your customers would ask, such as "who helps New Zealand businesses with Google Ads?", across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity. Note whether you appear, what they say, and which sources they cite. Repeat monthly. Answers change, so look for the trend and not any single result.

Be realistic

GEO is new, the systems keep changing, and nobody controls what an AI says. The good news is that the fundamentals are the same ones that serve ordinary Google search and real visitors, so the work pays off either way. I build this into every website I make.

References

1. AI features and your website. Google Search Central. Accessed 5 October 2026.
2. Overview of OpenAI Crawlers. OpenAI. Accessed 5 October 2026.
3. Does Anthropic crawl data from the web, and how can site owners block the crawler?. Anthropic Help Center. Accessed 5 October 2026.
4. Perplexity Crawlers. Perplexity Docs. Accessed 5 October 2026.
5. Introduction to structured data markup in Google Search. Google Search Central. Accessed 5 October 2026.
6. Google Says LLMs.Txt Comparable To Keywords Meta Tag (Roger Montti, 17 April 2025). Search Engine Journal. Accessed 5 October 2026.