How to get your website recommended by AI

A practical, step-by-step guide to being recommended and cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews.

By the Citable Search team · Published October 17, 2026 · 9 min read

The short answer

To get your website recommended by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews: (1) let AI crawlers reach your pages and serve the content as plain HTML, (2) publish pages that directly answer the questions your buyers ask AI, (3) make that content easy to quote with specific facts, sources and clear structure, (4) describe your business consistently with structured data, (5) earn mentions on the third-party sites AI already trusts, (6) make sure Google and Bing index you, and (7) regularly ask the AI platforms your buyers' questions to measure whether they cite you — then fix the gaps.

Why AI recommends some websites and not others

When someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation, it either draws on what it learned in training or, increasingly, searches the web in real time, reads a handful of pages and writes an answer citing the ones it used. To be recommended you need to be in that handful: reachable by the AI's crawler, clearly relevant to the exact question, easy to quote, and backed up by other sources the AI trusts.

This is called generative engine optimization (GEO), or answer engine optimization (AEO). It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. The steps below are ordered the way we recommend tackling them: access first, then content, then reputation, then measurement.

1. Let AI crawlers reach your pages

Allow AI search crawlers in robots.txt and your firewall, and serve your key content as server-rendered HTML.

AI assistants can only recommend what they can read. Many sites block AI crawlers without knowing it — through an old robots.txt rule, a CDN "block AI bots" toggle or a bot-protection challenge — or hide their content behind JavaScript that most AI crawlers never run.

Allow the search crawlers in robots.txt: OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User (Perplexity), Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User (Claude), Googlebot (Google AI Overviews and AI Mode) and Bingbot (Bing and Copilot).
Blocking training is a separate choice: you can disallow GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended and still allow the search crawlers that decide whether you are cited in answers.
Check your CDN or firewall. Some, Cloudflare among them, offer one-click AI-bot blocking that silently overrides robots.txt.
Server-render the text that matters. If your page is empty until JavaScript runs, most AI crawlers see an empty page.
Keep an XML sitemap up to date and return fast, clean 200 responses. An llms.txt file is a cheap, optional extra summary for LLMs.

2. Answer the exact questions buyers ask AI

Publish a page for each important question buyers ask AI, with a direct answer in the first two or three sentences.

People ask AI full questions — "what is the best CRM for a 10-person agency?" — not two-word keywords. AI assistants look for a page that answers that question clearly and early. If no page on your site does, they recommend a site that does.

List the 10–20 questions a buyer would ask before choosing you: "best X for Y", "X vs Y", "how do I…", "how much does…".
Give each important question its own page or section, with the question (or close to it) as the heading.
Put a direct, self-contained answer in the first 40–60 words, then go deeper with steps, examples and trade-offs.
Say who you are for and who you are not for. AI recommendations are matched to the asker's situation.

3. Make your content easy to quote

Use specific facts, statistics, sources, definitions, lists and tables so AI can lift a precise, attributable answer.

AI answers are assembled from passages. Specific, well-sourced passages get used; vague marketing copy does not. Research on generative engine optimization (Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", Princeton and partners) found that adding citations, quotations and statistics to content raised its visibility in AI-generated answers by up to about 40%.

Replace claims with specifics: numbers, prices, timeframes, named methods and examples.
Cite your sources and link to them. Quote recognized experts where it helps.
Use definitions ("X is…"), numbered steps, comparison tables and short self-contained paragraphs.
Show when the page was published and last updated, and keep it current. Stale facts get dropped.

4. Describe your business consistently, with structured data

Use the same name, category and one-line description everywhere, and add Organization, Product, Article and FAQPage schema.

Before an AI can recommend you, it has to be sure what you are. If your site, your social profiles and directory listings describe you differently, the model has less confidence that you fit the question.

Pick one name and one plain-language description of what you do and for whom, and use it everywhere.
Add JSON-LD structured data: Organization (with sameAs links to your official profiles), Product or SoftwareApplication, Article or BlogPosting with dates, and FAQPage for real Q&A.
Have a real About page: who is behind the business, where you are and how to contact you.
Put named, credible authors on your expert content.

5. Earn mentions on sites AI already trusts

Get listed and discussed on review sites, "best of" lists, communities and industry publications that AI assistants cite.

When an AI recommends a product, it leans heavily on what other sites say: review platforms, comparison articles, Reddit threads, industry media, directories and YouTube. Your own site tells AI what you do; third-party mentions tell it you are a credible answer.

Find the pages AI cites for your target questions, and work to get included in them.
Collect reviews on the platforms that matter in your category (for example G2, Capterra, Trustpilot or Google Business Profile).
Take part genuinely in the communities where your buyers ask questions, such as Reddit, Quora and industry forums.
Pitch data, guides and expert commentary to industry publications and podcasts.

6. Get indexed by Google and Bing

Submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, because AI search features ground answers in web search results.

AI search features retrieve live web results before they answer. Google AI Overviews use Google's index, and several assistants rely on web search indexes, Bing's among them. A page that is not indexed has a much smaller chance of being cited.

Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and submit your sitemap to both.
Use IndexNow (supported by Bing and others) to get new and updated pages picked up quickly.
Fix the classic basics: canonical tags, no accidental noindex, internal links to every important page.

7. Measure whether AI actually cites you, and iterate

Regularly ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews your buyers' questions, track who gets cited, and fix the gaps.

You can't improve what you don't measure, and AI answers change often. Track the same set of questions over time: are you cited, which competitors are cited instead, and which pages do the AI platforms cite?

Keep a fixed list of buyer questions and check them on each major AI platform every week.
Record whether you are mentioned, whether your site is linked as a source, and who is cited instead.
Study the cited pages. They show you exactly what the AI considers a good answer.
Ship fixes, then re-check. Citable Search automates this loop: it asks the AI platforms your questions, shows who they cite and gives you a prioritized list of fixes.

What each AI platform reads

Each assistant finds sources a little differently, but the same fundamentals apply to all of them.

AI platform	Where answers come from	What to focus on
ChatGPT (search)	Live web results fetched by OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User	Allow both crawlers; get indexed in Bing; answer the question directly
Perplexity	Live web results fetched by PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User	Allow both crawlers; keep pages fresh and well-sourced
Google AI Overviews & AI Mode	Google's search index (Googlebot)	Classic SEO health plus direct answers and structured data
Gemini	Google Search grounding plus its training data	Same as Google, plus consistent brand mentions across the web
Claude	Web search (Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User) plus its training data	Allow both crawlers; earn mentions on trusted third-party sites

Check whether AI recommends your website

Citable Search asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews the questions your buyers ask, shows whether they cite you and who they cite instead, and gives you a prioritized list of fixes covering every step in this guide. The first report is free.

Get your free AI visibility report

Frequently asked questions

How do I get my website recommended by AI?

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your content more likely to be retrieved, quoted and cited in answers generated by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is a closely related term. Both build on SEO but focus on being the source an AI answer is built from, not only on ranking a blue link.

Is GEO different from SEO?

They overlap heavily: AI search features retrieve pages from web search indexes, so crawlability, indexing and authority still matter. GEO adds focus on answering conversational questions directly, writing quotable, well-sourced passages, describing your business consistently, and earning mentions on the third-party sites that AI assistants rely on.

Why does ChatGPT recommend my competitors and not me?

Usually because their pages answer the question more directly, they are mentioned on more of the sources the AI trusts (reviews, comparisons, communities, media), or the AI cannot crawl or understand your site. Checking which pages the AI cites for your buyers' questions shows you which of these it is.

How long does it take to get recommended by AI?

AI search features that browse the web live (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews) can pick up new or improved pages within days to weeks of them being crawled and indexed. Recommendations that depend on a model's training data, or on building third-party reputation, take months.

Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT or other AI assistants?

No. The organic answers of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude cannot be bought; any advertising is labeled separately. Being recommended comes from being crawlable, answering the question well and being trusted by other sources.

Should I block AI crawlers?

Block training if you want to, but keep search crawlers allowed. AI companies separate them: for example OpenAI uses GPTBot for training and OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User for search and browsing. Blocking the search crawlers removes you from the answers you want to appear in.

Does llms.txt help AI recommend my site?

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a plain-text summary of your site written for language models. It is cheap to add and can help tools that read it, but no major AI platform has confirmed using it for ranking. Treat it as a bonus, not a substitute for crawlable, well-structured pages.

How do I check whether AI recommends my website?

Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google the questions your buyers ask, and note whether you are mentioned and linked, and who is cited instead. Repeat it regularly, since answers change. Citable Search does this for you: it scans your questions on each AI platform, scores your visibility and gives you a prioritized action plan.