AI SEO: how to get cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews

Key takeaways

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) aims to get AI assistants to cite and recommend your website.
• It doesn't replace SEO: AI tools with web search pick their sources from pages that are already well indexed.
• What works best: direct answers, original data, clear authorship, crawlable HTML and brand mentions on other sites.

What is GEO, or AI SEO?

GEO is the set of practices that make your content more likely to be selected, summarized and linked by AI answer engines: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude.

The difference from classic SEO is the outcome you're after. In traditional Google results, you compete for a position in a list of ten links. In an AI answer, you compete to be one of a handful of cited sources inside generated text. Less space, but more qualified traffic: someone who clicks a citation has already read a summary and arrives with intent.

How AI assistants choose which sources to cite

When an assistant needs current information, it does roughly this:

1. Rewrites the question into several searches (what Google calls query fan-out).
2. Queries a web index: Google's for Gemini and AI Overviews; for other assistants, their own index or third-party ones like Bing.
3. Reads passages from the best-ranked pages and extracts the ones that answer best.
4. Writes the answer and links to the sources it used.

The practical takeaway: if your page isn't indexed, can't be crawled or buries the answer in paragraph 14, AI won't use it.

9 actions to get AI to cite your website

1. Answer in the first two lines

Under each heading, give the direct answer in one or two sentences, then expand. Models extract passages; a paragraph that stands on its own, without depending on previous context, is far more likely to be cited.

2. Use question-style headings

Structure content with H2s and H3s that mirror how people ask: "How much does a small business website cost?", "Which hosting is best for WordPress?". This aligns your text with the sub-queries the AI generates.

3. Publish original data

AI already knows the generic stuff. What it can't invent is your real pricing, case studies, turnaround times, measurements or surveys. A concrete data point with context, such as "across the WordPress sites we optimized this year, load time dropped from X to Y seconds", is citable material.

4. Make authorship and expertise obvious

Sign your articles, publish a real About page and link your profiles. Google's quality guidelines (E-E-A-T: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust) remain the best guide to what systems consider a reliable source.

5. Add structured data

Mark up your content with Schema.org JSON-LD: Organization, LocalBusiness, Article, Product, BreadcrumbList. It doesn't guarantee citations, but it removes ambiguity about who you are, what you sell and what each page is about.

6. Let AI crawlers in

Check your robots.txt. Many sites block AI bots without realizing it (sometimes a plugin or CDN does it). The main agents are:

You can allow the search crawlers and block the training ones if you don't want your content used to train models. That's a business decision, not a technical one.

7. Register your site in Bing Webmaster Tools

Besides Google Search Console, add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools and enable IndexNow to notify new pages instantly. Several assistants rely on indexes other than Google's, and Bing is often the forgotten one.

8. Earn brand mentions beyond your site

Models learn which brands are authorities from how they're discussed online: reviews, directories, forums like Reddit, YouTube, podcasts, local press and partnerships. A brand that's mentioned consistently across many sites is more likely to show up in a recommendation.

9. Serve content as fast HTML

Many AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript: if your text only appears after a React app loads in the browser, the page is empty to them. Use server-side rendering or static HTML, and keep it fast (see our Core Web Vitals guide).

What about llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposal for giving models a Markdown summary of a site's most important pages. It isn't an official standard, and Google has said it doesn't use it. It takes five minutes and does no harm, but don't expect results from it alone: content and authority matter far more.

How to measure your AI visibility

• Google Analytics 4: create an "AI" channel group with the referrers chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, claude.ai and copilot.microsoft.com.
• Search Console: traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the web performance report. Watch pages with many impressions and few clicks (we explain how in our Search Console guide).
• Manual testing: each month, ask several assistants the 10 questions your ideal customer would ask ("best web designer for small businesses", "affordable WordPress developer") and note whether you appear.
• Tracking tools: platforms like Ahrefs and Semrush now report brand mentions in AI answers.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Publishing dozens of generic AI-written articles with no review and nothing original.
• Blocking every bot in robots.txt "for security" and then wondering why you don't show up.
• Hiding key information (pricing, hours, location) inside images or PDFs.
• Abandoning traditional SEO: without indexing and authority, there's no GEO.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

SEO isn't dead: it has a new storefront. Websites that answer clearly, share original data, are easy to crawl and have a recognizable brand are the ones AI recommends. Start with actions 1, 6 and 9, which are the quickest, and measure the impact over 60 days.