How to Get Your Brand Recommended by ChatGPT and AI Search

To get your brand recommended by ChatGPT and other AI assistants, you need to be easy to find, easy to understand and easy to verify. In practice that means a consistent brand description everywhere it appears, a site AI crawlers can actually read, answer-first pages with structured data, and, most importantly, independent sources that mention you for the things you want to be recommended for. Nobody outside OpenAI, Google, Anthropic or Perplexity knows the exact weighting, and nobody can guarantee placement. But the patterns are consistent enough to act on, and most of the work also improves classic SEO.

What is GEO?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making a brand easy for AI assistants to find, understand, trust and cite when they generate answers. It covers ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode.

How AI assistants choose which brands to recommend

An AI answer about your category draws on two sources.

1. What the model already knows. During training, a model reads a large slice of the public web. If your brand is described often and consistently, for example “X is a project management tool for construction firms”, the model is more likely to associate you with that category. This layer changes slowly, with each new model version.

2. What the assistant retrieves live. When an assistant searches the web before answering, it behaves like a search engine that reads passages instead of listing links. It runs queries, pulls several pages, and synthesises an answer with citations. This layer can change within weeks, because it depends on what’s indexed and readable today.

In both layers, the same things tend to help:

• Clear, direct answers that can be lifted into a response without rewriting
• Consensus. If several independent sources list you as a good option for a use case, you’re more likely to appear than if only your own site says so
• Recognizable entities. Brands with a consistent name, description and category are easier to reference with confidence
• Freshness. Dated, recently updated pages are preferred for time-sensitive questions such as pricing or “best of 2026”

Step 1: Make your entity consistent everywhere

An entity is a thing, such as a company, person or product, that search engines and language models recognize as distinct. If your brand is described five different ways across the web, models have to guess. Remove the guessing.

• Use the same brand name, one-line description and category on your website, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, directories, marketplaces and social bios
• Write an About page that plainly states what you do, for whom, where, and since when
• Keep founder and key people names and titles consistent
• Keep name, address and phone identical wherever location matters
• Link your official profiles together, and from your site using sameAs in structured data
• Fix or claim outdated listings that describe an old product, old pricing or old positioning

Step 2: Let AI crawlers read your site

Many sites block AI crawlers without knowing it, through robots.txt rules, a CDN’s bot protection or a security plugin.

• Check robots.txt for rules affecting AI user agents such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended
• Separate training from search. Some crawlers collect training data, others fetch pages for live answers. Blocking a search crawler can keep you out of that assistant’s cited results, so decide deliberately
• Review CDN and firewall settings, since some bot-protection features block AI crawlers by default
• Server-render important content. Many AI crawlers fetch raw HTML and don’t run JavaScript, so text that only appears after client-side rendering may be invisible to them
• Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console, since several assistants rely on Bing’s index, and consider IndexNow for faster discovery
• Keep your XML sitemap current with accurate lastmod dates

Step 3: Add llms.txt, and keep expectations realiztic

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at your site root (/llms.txt) that gives language models a short, curated summary of your site with links to the most important pages. It was proposed in 2024 and is being adopted by documentation sites and developer tools.

To be clear: no major AI provider has confirmed using llms.txt as a ranking or citation signal. It takes an hour to write, so I add it as hygiene, not as a strategy. A simple version looks like this:

# Example Co

> Example Co is a B2B invoicing platform for freelancers and small agencies in Europe.

## Key pages
- [Pricing](https://example.com/pricing/): Plans and what each includes
- [Features](https://example.com/features/): Invoicing, reminders, multi-currency
- [About](https://example.com/about/): Company background and team

Step 4: Use structured data to remove ambiguity

Structured data (Schema.org markup, usually as JSON-LD) tells machines exactly what a page describes. It doesn’t guarantee citations, but it removes ambiguity about who you are and what you offer.

Prioritize these types:

• Organization or LocalBusiness, with logo, contact details and sameAs links to official profiles
• Person for founders and authors, linked to the organization
• Product or Service with Offer for pricing where you publish it
• Article with author, datePublished and dateModified
• FAQPage for genuine question-and-answer content
• BreadcrumbList for site structure

Google has limited FAQ rich results in search since 2023, but the markup still helps machines understand the page. Only mark up what is visible on the page, and never mark up reviews or ratings that aren’t genuine.

Step 5: Earn third-party mentions and reviews

This is the step that matters most and the one most brands skip. AI assistants lean on corroboration: what others say about you carries more weight than what you say about yourself.

• Comparison and “best of” content. Get included, honestly, in roundups and comparison articles for your category. Offer publishers accurate information, screenshots and pricing.
• Reviews on the platforms your category uses. Google, Trustpilot, G2, Capterra, marketplaces or industry-specific sites. Ask real customers consistently; never buy or fake reviews.
• Community discussions. Forums and Reddit threads are frequently cited. Participate genuinely, disclose who you are, and answer questions rather than dropping links.
• Original data and opinions. A survey, benchmark or clear point of view gets referenced far more than rewritten advice.
• Partner and integration directories. Listings on the platforms you integrate with or are certified for.
• Podcasts, interviews and guest articles that describe you with the same category language you use.

When you get a mention, check that it describes you correctly. A wrong description repeated across ten sites is hard to undo.

Step 6: Write answer-first content AI can quote

AI assistants lift passages, not whole pages. Write so that a single paragraph can stand on its own.

• Use the question as the H2, then answer it directly in the first 40–60 words
• Define terms in one quotable sentence: “X is…”
• Use comparison tables, numbered steps and checklists where they fit
• Publish specific facts: prices or price ranges, locations, dates, supported platforms
• Cover the prompts buyers actually use: “best X for Y”, “X vs Y”, “how much does X cost”, “alternatives to X”
• Show authorship and a visible “updated” date
• Publish a real pricing page. Cost questions are among the most common prompts, and assistants can only cite prices they can find

Step 7: Measure AI visibility

You can’t improve what you don’t track, and AI answers vary from run to run, so measure trends rather than single results.

1. Build a prompt set. Write 20–50 prompts your buyers would realiztically ask (my rule of thumb, not a standard), covering category, comparison, pricing and problem-based questions.
2. Run them monthly in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google’s AI results. Record whether you’re mentioned, how you’re described, which URLs are cited and which competitors appear.
3. Track AI referrals in GA4. Create a custom channel group for sources like chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com. ChatGPT often appends utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it cites.
4. Ask your customers. Add “AI assistant (ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.)” as an option in your how-did-you-hear-about-us field. Many AI-influenced visits arrive later as direct or branded search.
5. Watch branded search in Search Console. Growing brand queries often follow better AI visibility.

Dedicated AI visibility tools can run prompts at scale. They’re useful, but spot-check them manually before trusting the numbers.

A 30-day GEO starter plan

• Week 1: Entity audit across your site and profiles; robots.txt and CDN crawler check.
• Week 2: Rewrite the About page; add Organization, Person and Service or Product schema; publish llms.txt.
• Week 3: Rewrite your five most important pages answer-first; publish or improve your pricing page.
• Week 4: Run a baseline prompt set, set up AI referral tracking, and build a list of review and mention opportunities.

Get it built

If you want to know how AI assistants currently describe your brand, and what to fix first, I run GEO audits and ongoing programs. See my GEO service, or get in touch to talk it through.