How to Get Your Business Mentioned by ChatGPT

Short answer: to appear in ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Gemini, let their search crawlers in, get indexed in both Google and Bing, and publish pages that answer one question each in the first two sentences. Then earn mentions on other sites that the engines already trust. No file, tag or tool guarantees a citation.

The steps below use the engines' own documentation, checked October 2026.

How do AI search engines choose what to cite?

AI answer engines run a search, read the top pages, and write a summary with links. A page can only be cited if the engine can crawl it, has indexed it, and judges it relevant to the question. Google states that to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, "a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet" (Google Search Central).

That means AI visibility starts with ordinary search visibility. The rest of this guide is about removing the blocks and making each page easy to quote.

Step 1: Check which crawlers your site allows

Each engine uses named crawlers. Some fetch pages for search answers. Others collect content for model training. Blocking the wrong one removes you from answers.

Sources: OpenAI crawlers, Perplexity crawlers, Google common crawlers. Checked October 2026.

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and read it, then check your firewall or CDN settings. Cloudflare announced on 1 July 2025 that new domains on its network block AI crawlers by default unless the owner allows them. OpenAI states that each setting is independent, so a site can allow OAI-SearchBot and disallow GPTBot. OpenAI also notes that changes take about 24 hours to reach ChatGPT search.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode use Googlebot, the normal search crawler. Blocking Google-Extended does not remove a page from AI Overviews in Search, because Google documents it as separate from Search inclusion.

Step 2: Get indexed in Google and Bing

AI engines cite pages they can find through search. Set up both consoles.

• Google Search Console: verify the domain, submit the sitemap, and open the Page indexing report to see which URLs are excluded and why.
• Bing Webmaster Tools: add the site at bing.com/webmasters and submit the same sitemap. OpenAI's help centre says ChatGPT search may share search queries with Bing and other third-party providers to return web results.
• IndexNow: a protocol that tells search engines when a page changes. IndexNow lists Microsoft Bing, Naver, Seznam.cz, Yandex and Yep as participants.

Submitting to Bing is free, and it covers the search route ChatGPT may use.

Step 3: Write answer-first pages

AI engines quote short passages. A page that answers in its first two sentences is easier to quote than one that opens with a company history.

• One question per page. "How much does a corporate secretary cost in Singapore?" is a page. "Our services" is not.
• Answer in the first paragraph. Give the number, the range or the yes or no, then explain.
• Use question headings. Match the words customers type, such as "How long does it take?"
• Give specifics. Prices, durations, locations, opening hours and named service areas. Vague copy gives an engine nothing to cite.
• Add a table. Comparisons and price lists in tables are easy to extract.
• Date the page. Show when it was last checked and update it when facts change.

Google's guidance is the same for AI features as for ordinary results. It asks for "people-first content", meaning content "created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings" (Google Search Central).

Step 4: Add structured data that matches the page

Schema.org markup tells search engines who you are, where you trade and what you sell. Useful types for a small business:

• Organization or LocalBusiness: name, address, opening hours, logo, social profiles.
• Service or Product: what you sell and, where stable, the price.
• FAQPage: question and answer pairs that already appear on the page.
• Article: author, date published and date modified on guides.

Be precise about what schema does. Google states there is "no special schema.org structured data that you need to add" to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that structured data should match the visible text. Treat schema as a clarity aid for every engine, not a switch for AI answers.

Step 5: Treat llms.txt as optional

llms.txt is a markdown file at the root of a site that lists its key pages for language models. Jeremy Howard proposed it on 3 September 2024, and the site still calls it a proposal.

No major AI search engine has confirmed it uses llms.txt to choose citations. Google goes further and states that you "don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup" to appear in its AI features. Adding the file takes under an hour and does no harm. Do it after Steps 1 to 4, not instead of them.

Step 6: Earn mentions on other sites

When a user asks "best accounting firm in Singapore for startups", engines often cite lists, directories, reviews and forums rather than the firms themselves. Your own site is one source. Third-party pages are the others.

• Directories and associations: industry bodies, chambers of commerce and government supplier lists.
• Google Business Profile: complete categories, services, hours and photos, and answer reviews.
• Review sites: the platforms your customers already use.
• Comparison and "best of" articles: ask to be included where you meet the criteria.
• Press and podcasts: local trade media and interviews that link to a specific page.
• Consistent details: the same business name, address and description everywhere.

Step 7: Check the answers every month

Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google the 10 to 20 questions your customers ask before buying. Record which businesses are named, which pages are cited and whether you appear. Answers vary between sessions, so run each question more than once and track the pattern, not a single result.

Google states that AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic is reported in the Search Console Performance report, within the "Web" search type (Google Search Central). For ChatGPT and Perplexity, look for their domains in your analytics referral data.

Common mistakes

• Blocking all bots in a firewall to stop spam, which also blocks OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
• Putting key facts inside images or PDFs only.
• One long home page instead of separate pages for each service.
• Prices and hours that differ between the site, Google Business Profile and directories.
• Adding llms.txt and schema while robots.txt still blocks the crawlers.

For how this work differs from traditional search optimisation, see GEO vs SEO.

How cense handles AI search

Every cense website ships with titles, schema and a sitemap, and the Marketing AI agent add-on checks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude answers and writes weekly articles. Details are on the AI search optimisation page and SEO and AI search. Request a free website analysis to see how your site appears in Google and AI answers, sent on WhatsApp within 2 working days.