1. Access audit
We check robots.txt, firewall and CDN against the list of bots above, and that the content is in the served HTML rather than injected by JavaScript: many AI crawlers do not run JS.
SEO for AI · GEO
SEO for artificial intelligence
Make your business show up when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Claude. There is no trick and no magic file: assistants cite pages that already rank well, let their bot in and answer clearly. That is what we do.
What is SEO for artificial intelligence?
The direct answer, and how an assistant decides who to cite.
SEO for artificial intelligence, also called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or SEO for ChatGPT, means preparing a website so that AI assistants can find it, read it, understand it and cite it as a source when they answer a question. It builds on classic SEO and does not replace it: Google says in its documentation that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and in its AI optimisation guide (May 2026) that this "is still SEO".
What changes is the way of reading. A search engine shows ten links; an assistant reads a handful of pages and writes a single answer with two or three citations. Getting into those two or three citations is the goal of SEO for AI.
The user asks. "Which pastry shop in Málaga makes gluten-free cakes to order?"
The assistant turns the question into several searches. Google calls it query fan-out: related queries fired at the same time.
It queries an index. Google its own; ChatGPT and Copilot Bing's; Perplexity and Claude theirs.
It reads the best-placed pages its bot can open. If the bot is blocked, that page does not exist for it.
It writes and cites. It prefers the page that answers directly, with facts and an identifiable source.
Which index and which bot each assistant uses
The first check in any audit: can the bot get in, and is the website in the index that assistant uses?
| Assistant | Where it searches | Bot that must be allowed in | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT (OpenAI) | Bing's index plus its own crawl | OAI-SearchBot (index), ChatGPT-User (live visit) | OpenAI |
| Copilot (Microsoft) | Bing's index | bingbot | Bing |
| AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini (Google) | Google's index | Googlebot | |
| Perplexity | Own index | PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User | Perplexity |
| Claude (Anthropic) | Own search | Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User | Anthropic |
| Meta AI | Own index | Meta-WebIndexer | Meta |
| Alexa (Amazon) | Own index | Amzn-SearchBot | Amazon |
| Le Chat (Mistral) | Own index | MistralAI-Index, MistralAI-User | Mistral |
| Siri and Spotlight (Apple) | Own index | Applebot | Apple |
| DuckAssist (DuckDuckGo) | DuckDuckGo's index | DuckAssistBot | DuckDuckGo |
Practical conclusion: if you are not indexed in Bing, you do not appear in ChatGPT or Copilot. It is the part most websites have never done. We register the site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the sitemap and switch on IndexNow, the protocol Bing uses to receive every change instantly. Bing recommends it for its AI features too.
Training bots and search bots: which to block
There are two families of AI crawlers. Confusing them is expensive.
| Family | Bots | What happens if you block them |
|---|---|---|
| Training | GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, meta-externalagent, MistralAI-Training, CCBot, Bytespider | Your content is not used to train models. You lose no visibility in the answers. |
| Search and live visit | OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Meta-WebIndexer, Amzn-SearchBot, MistralAI-Index, DuckAssistBot, Googlebot, bingbot | You disappear from that assistant's answers. It is the equivalent of a noindex. |
Our rule: we never block the search bots; the training bots are the client's decision. Three details worth knowing:
- Google-Extended only controls Gemini training and grounding in the Gemini app; Google says it does not affect inclusion in Google Search or AI Overviews.
- Live-visit bots (
ChatGPT-User,Perplexity-User) act when a user asks to open a URL; Perplexity documents that its bot "generally ignores" robots.txt. If you really want to block them, it has to be done on the server or the CDN, not in robots.txt. - Many firewalls and CDNs block AI bots by default. We check this in the audit: it is the most common cause of "I don't show up in ChatGPT" we have seen.
What we do in the SEO for AI service
Eight steps. The first four are technical and go fast; the other four are content and authority, and they are what earns the citation.
2. Bing and IndexNow
Registration in Bing Webmaster Tools, sitemap submitted, IndexNow switched on. We verify that the important pages are indexed in Bing, not only in Google.
3. Structured data that identifies the source
Organization with legal name, VAT ID and addresses; WebPage with real dates; Article with an author. Google says no special schema is needed for AI, but that it still helps; Bing has said it uses schema so its models understand the content (SMX Munich 2025).
4. Speed and clean HTML
Core Web Vitals within threshold and lightweight pages. A bot with a limited crawl budget reads more pages of a fast website.
5. Answer first, detail second
Every page opens with the answer to its main question in the first paragraph. Then clear H2 and H3 headings, lists and tables a model can extract without interpreting.
6. Verifiable facts and sources
Concrete figures, prices, timings, and links to the source of every external claim. Bing asks for it in so many words in its AI Performance report: "support claims with evidence".
7. Mentions outside your website
Sector directories, local press, YouTube, forums. In the Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, brand mentions on the web and on YouTube correlate more with AI visibility than links do (coverage).
8. Monthly measurement
Search Console's generative AI report, Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance and a fixed set of questions put to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. We record whether you are cited and who is cited in your place.
What we do not do, and why
In 2026 Google published a list of myths about optimising for AI. It matches what we had already stopped doing.
- We do not create llms.txt. Google: "you don't need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown to appear in Google Search (including its AI features), because Google Search doesn't use them" (official guide, June 2026). No other provider documents reading it.
- We do not serve Markdown pages just for bots. Bing and Google said in February 2026 that it is duplicate crawling and borders on cloaking (statements by Fabrice Canel and John Mueller).
- We do not slice content into "chunks" or rewrite it "for AI". Google lists it as a myth: the page is written for the person asking.
- We do not fabricate mentions or reviews. Google calls them "inauthentic mentions". Mentions are earned with a real presence on real sites.
- We do not add unnecessary schema. FAQPage stopped showing rich results in May 2026; what works is a visible FAQ in the HTML, like the one on this page. No invented AggregateRating, no review markup for reviews that do not exist.
- We do not create a page for every variant of a question. Google warns that generating pages for every fan-out query violates its scaled content abuse policy.
What the data says
Correlation is not causation, but the 2025 and 2026 studies all point the same way: fresh, structured pages from brands that are mentioned beyond their own website.
| Study | Sample | What it found |
|---|---|---|
| Ahrefs, freshness (Jul 2025) | 16.98 million citations | URLs cited by AI are 25.7% more recent than those in organic results. ChatGPT cites the freshest content. |
| Ahrefs, ChatGPT top 1,000 (Oct 2025) | 1,000 most-cited pages | 23.8% are home pages; 89.7% were modified in 2025; 28% have no organic traffic. Brand weighs more than ranking. |
| Ahrefs, 75,000 brands (May 2026) | ChatGPT, AI Mode, AI Overviews | YouTube mentions (correlation 0.74) and brand mentions on the web (0.66 to 0.71) above links (0.22). |
| Evertune (May 2026) | 400 million citations, 25,000 URLs, six models | The most-cited pages have 1,000 to 2,000 words, an H2/H3 structure and sentences of around 18 words. 63% of citations go to lists. |
How we measure it
Three sources, one table a month. No tools that invent an 'AI visibility score'.
Search Console, generative AI report. Available worldwide since 31 August 2026. Shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and date. It does not show clicks or queries (Google).
Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance. Citations in Copilot and in Bing's summaries, sample queries, cited pages and, since June 2026, citation share against competitors (Bing).
Question set. The 10 to 20 questions your customer would ask, put to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude every month. We record whether you appear, in which position, and who appears in your place.
How we apply it
The list above does not stay on paper. Every page we make for a client goes through it before it is published.
We write every page in HTML, CSS and JSON-LD with the real facts of the business and review it against our checklist: thirteen SEO checks and four GEO checks, within the natural SEO method. The four GEO checks are, point by point, what an assistant needs in order to cite a page. What cannot be solved from the page, such as registering in Bing or mentions beyond your website, we do as well, and you will see it in the monthly report.
The bot can get in. The page comes out with no JavaScript: all the content is in the served HTML, so crawlers that do not run scripts read it all the same. Robots.txt and firewall are checked separately.
Answer first. GEO check: the first paragraph answers the page's main question. If not, we rewrite it.
Extractable structure. GEO check: lists, tables and FAQ visible in the HTML, with no FAQPage markup.
Quotable facts. GEO check: specific figures, prices and lead times in the text, taken from your business, not invented.
An identifiable source. GEO check: authorship and date in the HTML, and a JSON-LD with the business entity that matches what is visible.
Frequently asked questions about SEO for AI
What is the difference between SEO and SEO for AI (GEO)?
Almost none in the work; some in the emphasis. SEO makes a page crawlable, relevant and trustworthy for Google and Bing. SEO for AI adds three checks: that the assistants' search bots can get in, that the website is indexed in Bing (which feeds ChatGPT and Copilot) and that every page answers directly and can be quoted. Google sums it up in its AI optimisation guide: optimising for AI "is still SEO".
How do I show up in ChatGPT?
Three steps. 1) Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User in your robots.txt and in your firewall; OpenAI recommends it in its bot documentation. 2) Register the website in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the sitemap and switch on IndexNow: ChatGPT's search relies on Bing's index. 3) Have a page that clearly answers the question the user asks, with concrete facts and an identifiable author and company. Then measure with real prompts every month.
Does an llms.txt file help me appear in AI?
No. Google states in writing that its search engine "ignores" those files and that they are not needed to appear in its AI features (official guide). Neither OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity nor Bing mention llms.txt in their documentation. Server data points the same way: in an Ahrefs analysis of 137,000 domains, 97% of the published llms.txt files did not receive a single request. We do not include it in our deliveries.
Should I block GPTBot or ClaudeBot?
That is your decision, not a technical one. GPTBot and ClaudeBot are training bots: blocking them stops your content being used to train models and does not cost you visibility in the answers. What you should never block are the search bots: OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User, PerplexityBot, bingbot and Googlebot. Blocking them is the equivalent of a noindex in that assistant.
How long until my website appears in AI answers?
The technical part is quick: allowing the bots and getting into Bing's index takes days or a few weeks. Being cited by an assistant consistently depends on your page being among the best answers in its index, and that follows SEO timings: the first clear movement usually shows between the third and sixth month. Mentions outside your website (directories, press, YouTube) speed the process up.
Can I measure whether ChatGPT or Google cite me?
Yes, with two official reports and a manual test. Since August 2026 Search Console has a generative AI performance report showing how many times your website was linked in AI Overviews and AI Mode (impressions only, no clicks or queries; Google's announcement). Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report with citations in Copilot and Bing, sample queries and citation share (Bing's announcement). For ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude we run the same questions every month and record whether you are cited and who is cited instead.
Does AI cite you already? We check for free.
Bot access audit, Bing indexing and a test with real questions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude. We tell you what is missing, on one page.
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