How to get your business to show up on ChatGPT and other AI tools

How ChatGPT picks who shows up in the answer

When someone asks ChatGPT who does bookkeeping for freelancers in their city, it may search the web before it answers. The OpenAI Help Center explains that ChatGPT searches the web when a question needs current information, turns the question into shorter searches, uses the approximate location of the person asking and shows its sources as citations. The same page says these searches sometimes go through partners, and lists Microsoft, which owns Bing, among them.

In practice, the AI searches, opens a few pages, reads them and sums them up. The businesses that make it into the answer are the ones with text the AI could read and that answers the question. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode do the same thing with Google's own index.

AI has become one more stop on the path someone takes before they reach out to you, along with Google, Instagram, your website and WhatsApp. How that whole path works is in Online presence, your client's path.

What GEO and AEO mean

GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimization, is the work of getting your website and your name ready to show up in the answers of AI tools that write text, like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. The name comes from a study published in 2023 by researchers who tested changes to web content and measured up to 40% more visibility in the answers of these tools.

AEO, short for Answer Engine Optimization, is the work of writing each page to answer one question directly, in a way the AI can reuse and cite. And SEO is the work of showing up in Google's results, which you may already know.

The three support each other. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that SEO best practices still apply. A website Google reads well already has a head start with the other AI tools.

1. Let AI crawlers into your website

Every AI tool sends a crawler to read web pages, and a file on your website called robots.txt says which crawlers are allowed in. Some websites block these crawlers without knowing it, because of a security plugin, a hosting setting or an old website template.

OpenAI's documentation says websites that block OAI-SearchBot are left out of ChatGPT search answers, and it recommends allowing this crawler. Each rule works on its own. You can allow OAI-SearchBot and block GPTBot if you don't want your content used to train the AI. After you change robots.txt, ChatGPT takes about 24 hours to pick it up.

Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot for the same reason, and Anthropic explains that blocking Claude-SearchBot keeps a website out of Claude's search.

On my own website, robots.txt allows every crawler, OAI-SearchBot included. I checked it on October 2, 2026, because blocking any of them would keep my site out of the answers I want to show up in.

2. Be on Google and on Bing

AI tools search before they answer. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode only use pages Google has already indexed and can show with a snippet, according to Google's documentation. ChatGPT search relies on partners, Microsoft among them. A page that doesn't show up on any search engine rarely shows up in an AI answer.

• Add your website to Search Console, Google's free tool, and submit your sitemap. Visits from AI Overviews are counted in the same performance report
• Add your website to [Bing Webmaster Tools](https://www.bing.com/webmasters), Bing's free tool. You can import your site straight from Search Console
• Keep your Google Business Profile complete and up to date. Google lists this profile among the things to check to show up in its AI search experiences
• Put what matters in text, outside of images. Google asks for the important content to be written on the page, and the other AI tools read it the same way

The step by step for your profile and your website is in How to show up on Google. If your website already exists and still doesn't show up, the most common reasons are in Why my business isn't showing up on Google.

3. Write the kind of text an AI can cite

On October 2, 2026, I measured 59 Google searches in Portuguese on the topics I write about here, like websites, Google Business Profile, WhatsApp and online presence. Google showed an AI Overview on 57 of them. The sources those overviews cited were mostly YouTube videos and Instagram posts, with very little written text that answered the question properly.

If you sell a service, that's open ground. The AI cites what it finds, and when there's no good page, it cites the video from whoever got there first.

What AI looks for on a page

• The answer in the first few lines. Start the page by answering the question, and explain after
• One page for each service, with the name of the service, the city and who it's for
• The questions people ask before they hire someone, like how much it costs, how long it takes, how it works and what to bring on the first day
• Facts only you have, like how many years you've been in business, how many clients you've seen, your neighborhood and your hours. Google asks for original content that can't be found the same way on another site
• A visible last updated date, so readers know the information holds today

This blog follows that format. Every article opens with a short answer and explains after, so whoever lands here finds the answer right away. What changed on Google with the AI answer at the top is in Google AI Overviews, what changed.

4. The same name everywhere, with reviews

AI checks what it finds in more than one place before it recommends anyone. In BrightLocal's 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, done with US consumers, the use of ChatGPT and other AI tools for local business recommendations went from 6% to 45% in a year, making it the third most used source. In the same survey, 42% said they trust AI recommendations as much as reviews.

• The same name, phone number, address and city on your website, your Google Business Profile, Instagram, LinkedIn and the directories in your field
• Recent reviews with replies, on Google and wherever else your field gets reviewed
• Your name mentioned on other websites, like an interview, a partner, an association or a local news site
• Old profiles deleted or updated, because the AI can mix old information with new

BrightLocal also recommends checking the sources AI tools cite about you and asking for a correction when one is wrong.

How to tell if your business shows up on ChatGPT

There's no dashboard that shows how many times ChatGPT has cited you. The way to find out is to ask the way a client would and write down what comes back.

1. 1Open a new chat in a private window, signed out, so your past conversations don't shape the answer
2. 2Ask with the service and the city, like "who does dog grooming near downtown" or "which language school in my city has good reviews"
3. 3Ask about your name, like "what do you know about [business name]", and check that your hours, address and services are right
4. 4Open the sources it cited. If a competitor shows up, see which page the AI got that recommendation from
5. 5Repeat it on Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google, where AI Overviews show up
6. 6Log it in a spreadsheet and redo it once a month, because the answer changes from one chat to the next

OpenAI itself warns in its Help Center that search results and citations can be incomplete, outdated or wrong. If the AI says something wrong about you, find where it came from and fix it there.

What you don't need to do

• Create a special file for AI. Google says you don't need an AI text file or new markup to show up in AI Overviews and AI Mode
• Add special structured data. Google says there's no special markup for this, and only asks that the markup you already use matches the text on the page
• Repeat the same keyword ten times. It gets in the reader's way, and Google asks for content made for people

How long it takes to show up

The mistakes I see most

• A website made only of images, with the text inside the picture, which no AI can read
• A robots.txt blocking the crawlers because of a plugin or an old website template
• A single page covering every service, without properly answering any question
• Prices, hours and address only in Instagram stories, which disappear in 24 hours and no AI keeps
• A different name on each profile, like the old business name in one place and the new one in another
• Asking ChatGPT once and giving up, when the answer changes from one chat to the next

If you'd like me to look at your business's whole path, from Google and AI tools all the way to WhatsApp, what I do at each stop is in Services.