AI SEO: how to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI answers

AI SEO means making your pages easy for AI search tools such as ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews to find, understand and cite. There is no secret trick: the search crawlers must be able to reach you, your pages must give clear, well-sourced answers, and you need to measure the referral traffic to know whether it works.

GEO, AEO and other new names

You will see a few labels for the same idea:

• GEO (generative engine optimisation): getting your content used in answers written by AI models.
• AEO (answer engine optimisation): an older term for writing pages that answer questions directly, first used for featured snippets and voice search.
• LLM SEO or AI SEO: catch-all names for both.

The names are new, but most of the work is not. Google has said publicly that its AI features rely on the same ranking systems as normal search, and that no special markup is needed to appear in them. Other AI search tools are less open about how they choose sources. Treat anyone selling a guaranteed “AI ranking” formula with caution: nobody outside these companies knows exactly how sources are picked.

Step 1: let the right crawlers in

Each AI company runs several bots, and they do different jobs. The ones that matter for being cited are the search and user bots, not the training bots:

A common mistake is blocking everything with “AI” in its name. If you block OAI-SearchBot, OpenAI says your pages won’t be shown as sources in ChatGPT search answers. Blocking GPTBot (training) is a separate decision and doesn’t remove you from ChatGPT search. The OpenAI details are in GPTBot vs ChatGPT-User vs OAI-SearchBot.

Check three places:

1. robots.txt: make sure no rule blocks the search bots you want.
2. Firewall and CDN: some “block AI bots” switches block search bots too. Read what each setting covers.
3. Rendering: most AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript the way a browser does. If your main text only appears after scripts run, they may see an empty page. Serve the important content in the HTML.

Step 2: write answers that can be quoted

AI tools pull short passages from pages. A passage is easier to use when it stands on its own.

• Answer first. Put a direct, two or three sentence answer at the top of the page or section, then explain.
• One question per section. Use headings that match how people ask, such as “How long does a UK passport renewal take?”
• Be specific. Numbers, dates, steps, prices and named examples are more useful than general advice.
• Keep facts current. Show when the page was last updated, and actually update it.
• Use plain structure. Lists, short tables and short paragraphs are easy to read for people and parsers alike.

None of this is proven to work in a particular way for any one AI product. It is simply good writing, and it also helps normal search results.

Step 3: give them reasons to trust you

AI search tools tend to cite pages that look reliable. You can’t control their judgement, but you can make trust easy to see:

• Say who wrote the page and why they know the subject.
• Link to your sources: official documentation, original data, laws, standards.
• Publish original material: your own tests, screenshots, data or experience. A page that repeats what ten other pages say gives a model no reason to pick yours.
• Keep the basics clean: working links, one clear canonical URL per page, a fast site. A regular technical SEO audit catches most of these problems.

Step 4: make sure normal search engines index you

AI answers often draw on a search index. Google’s AI features use Google’s index, and Copilot uses Bing’s. If a page isn’t indexed, it is unlikely to be cited.

• Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
• Submit an XML sitemap to both.
• Use IndexNow so Bing and others hear about new pages quickly.

See the Bing Webmaster Tools guide for why Bing matters more than its market share suggests.

Step 5: measure AI traffic

You can’t see inside AI answers, but you can see two things on your own site.

Crawler visits

Your server logs show when OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and the others fetch your pages. Check that these visits are genuine, because fakes are common: the free bot checker tests any single visit. A page that search bots never fetch is unlikely to be cited.

Referral visits

When someone clicks a source link in an AI answer, your analytics usually record a referrer such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com or gemini.google.com. ChatGPT also adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to many links. Create a segment or channel for these sources so you can watch the trend.

Two caveats. Some apps don’t pass a referrer, so a share of AI visits shows up as “direct”. And clicks from Google’s AI Overviews are counted as ordinary Google search traffic, not reported separately. More on this in AI traffic analytics.

In short

• GEO and AEO are mostly good SEO plus clear writing.
• Allow the search bots (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Googlebot, bingbot), even if you block training bots.
• Serve main content in HTML, not only through JavaScript.
• Lead with direct answers, add specifics, cite sources, show authorship.
• Get indexed in both Google and Bing.
• Track verified crawler visits and AI referrers, and accept that the numbers are incomplete.