How to show up in AI search answers

More people now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews for a recommendation instead of scrolling a list of links. Those answers come with sources, and you want to be one of them. The good news: each provider publishes what it needs, and most of it is plain good practice.

Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google is direct about this: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations are necessary^[1]. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet. If your search basics are sound, you're already eligible.

The practices Google lists as helping^[1]:

• Allow crawling in your robots.txt.
• Link to your important pages from other pages on your site.
• Put important content in text, not only in images or PDFs.
• Make sure your structured data matches what's visible on the page.
• Keep your Google Business Profile up to date.

Google also says you don't need to create new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in these features^[1]. Be wary of anyone selling those as a shortcut.

ChatGPT search

OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot to find websites to show in ChatGPT's search results. To appear, OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot in your robots.txt^[2].

Its other crawler, GPTBot, collects content that may be used to train OpenAI's models. The two are controlled separately, so you can block GPTBot to opt out of training and still allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in search^[2].

Perplexity

Perplexity works the same way. PerplexityBot finds and links websites in Perplexity's search results, and Perplexity says it isn't used to train AI models. To appear, it recommends allowing PerplexityBot in your robots.txt^[3].

Check your robots.txt today

Your robots.txt file lives at yoursite.com/robots.txt. Hosting, security and firewall settings can block AI crawlers without you knowing, so it's worth a look. Here's a setup that lets AI search in but opts out of AI training:

# Appear in AI search
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

# Opt out of AI training
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

Blocking Google-Extended stops Google from using your content to train future Gemini models. Google says it doesn't affect your inclusion or ranking in Google Search^[4]. Whether to opt out of training is a business decision; what matters for being found is that the search crawlers can get in.

Write pages that are easy to quote

An AI answer can only cite what a page actually says. The pages that get quoted tend to be the same ones good customers like:

• Direct answers. Put the answer to a common question in the first sentence under its heading, then explain.
• Specifics. Prices or price ranges, service areas, hours and what's included. A vague page gives an answer nothing to cite.
• One topic per page. A page for each service beats one page that lists everything.
• Consistent facts. The same name, address, phone number and services on your site, your Business Profile and your directory listings.

What about llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposed file that summarizes a website for AI tools^[5]. It's quick to add, and we have one, but it's a proposal rather than a standard, and Google says you don't need AI text files to appear in its AI features^[1]. Do the basics first.

Check where you stand

Our free audit reads your robots.txt and tells you whether ChatGPT's and Perplexity's search crawlers are allowed in, along with 19 other checks on your homepage.