How to get your business mentioned by ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers

The honest answer is that you cannot buy or force a mention. What you can do is make your business easy to find, easy to read and easy to trust, which fits Google’s own statement that the usual SEO best practices still apply. This guide sticks to what the companies themselves have published, and says plainly where the evidence is thin.

What does Google say you need to do for AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Google’s own page on AI features is short on drama. It says: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed, the same as for any Search result.

The same page says you do not need new machine readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in these features, and that there is no special schema.org structured data to add. It points owners back to the fundamental SEO best practices. It also says indexing and showing a page is not assured, so even a perfect site can be left out.

In plain terms, if your site is not already findable on Google, start there. Our guide to what a small business website costs in South Africa covers getting the basics in place.

How do ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity find your pages?

Each of the three publishes documentation for its crawlers. The important point is that they run different bots for different jobs, and the search bots decide whether you can be shown. Here is what each company says.

Sources: OpenAI’s bots page, Anthropic’s crawler help article and Perplexity’s bots guide. OpenAI adds that it can take about 24 hours after a robots.txt change for its systems to adjust.

Whether to allow the training bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot) is your choice. The documentation describes them as separate from search. The search and user bots are the ones that matter if you want to be mentioned. Ask whoever built your site to check that robots.txt, and any security service in front of the site, is not blocking them.

Why must your text show up without JavaScript?

Vercel analysed AI crawler traffic with a firm called MERJ. It reported that none of the major AI crawlers render JavaScript, listing OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User and GPTBot, Anthropic’s ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot. It says ChatGPT’s and Claude’s crawlers fetch JavaScript files but do not run them, so they cannot read content that only appears after the script runs. It says Google’s Gemini, which uses Googlebot’s systems, can.

The Vercel article does not mention Claude-SearchBot, and the vendors’ own crawler pages are silent on JavaScript. The safe rule is simple: if your prices, services and areas are in the page’s plain HTML, any bot can read them. A quick test is to open the page, view the source and look for your key text.

What did the research find about content that gets cited?

The best-known study is "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" by researchers at Princeton University, IIT Delhi and other affiliations, accepted at the KDD 2024 conference. The authors built a benchmark of 10,000 queries and measured how much of an AI answer drew on a page after the page was changed. The main engine was a custom two-step set-up using gpt-3.5-turbo with the top five Google results per query, plus a smaller check on Perplexity.ai using 200 queries.

In the paper’s results, adding quotations scored 27.8 on its position-adjusted word count measure against a baseline of 19.5, adding statistics scored 25.9 and citing sources scored 24.9. Keyword stuffing scored 17.8, below the baseline. The authors say traditional tactics like that offer little to no benefit.

Two more details matter for small businesses. In a test where every source was optimised at once, the paper reports that lower-ranked websites benefit significantly more, with citing sources changing visibility by -30.3% for the top-ranked source and +115.1% for the fifth. And effectiveness varied by domain.

Does being mentioned on other websites matter?

It appears to. Ahrefs analysed about 75,000 brands with a domain rating above 40, comparing how often each was mentioned across the web with how often it appeared in AI answers. Branded web mentions correlated at 0.664 with ChatGPT, 0.709 with AI Mode and 0.656 with AI Overviews. Domain rating, a link-based score, correlated at 0.266, 0.285 and 0.326.

This is a correlation, and Ahrefs says so itself: "correlation isn’t causation." The sample is established websites, not a plumber with a new site. Our reading is modest: businesses that are talked about elsewhere tend to be the ones assistants name. Directories, local news, supplier pages, association member lists and customer reviews are all ordinary ways to be talked about.

What does not work, or is unproven?

• llms.txt. Google’s guide to AI search says creating one will neither harm nor help your visibility in Google Search. Google’s John Mueller wrote on Bluesky in June 2025 that "no AI system currently uses llms.txt". We found no statement either way on the OpenAI and Anthropic crawler pages we read. Google’s guide lists unnecessary AI text files such as llms.txt among things you can ignore, and says it is fine to create one for other services. Our reading: harmless to add, not a priority.
• Hidden text aimed at AI. Google’s spam policies describe hidden text, such as white text on a white background, as spam, and list attempting to manipulate generative AI responses in Google Search as spam.
• Mass-produced AI pages. The same policy defines scaled content abuse as many pages generated mainly to manipulate rankings, and lists using generative AI to make many pages without adding value. Google’s advice on AI-generated content says it is critical to manually fact-check and review it before publishing.
• Keyword stuffing. It scored below the baseline in the Princeton test above.

We build AI agents for owners, including a content agent for AI search and websites built to load fast and be found. The content agent drafts pages from a fact sheet you confirm, and nothing is published without your approval.

What should a small business owner do first?

1. Complete your Google Business ProfileFill in every field, add photos and keep hours current. If you travel to customers, read our guide to a Google Business Profile for a service-area business.
2. Write pages that answer real questionsOne page per service and per town, with the price or a starting price, the areas you cover, how long a job takes and what the customer should do next. Put the answer near the top.
3. State facts and name the sourceQuote a regulation, a manufacturer or a named expert where it applies, and link to it. That is the habit the Princeton test rewarded, and it also helps a human reader trust you.
4. Keep your name, address and phone the same everywhereUse one spelling of your business name and one phone number on your site, Google, Facebook and every directory. We found no study of this for AI answers, but it is standard good practice for local search.
5. Collect genuine reviewsAsk every happy customer and follow Google’s rules. Our guide to asking for Google reviews explains how.
6. Let the crawlers inAsk your web developer to confirm that robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, and that your main text is in plain HTML.

How do you check whether the assistants mention you?

Ask them. Write down ten questions a customer would type, such as "Who is a reliable electrician in George?" or "Where can I stay in Wilderness with parking?". Put each to ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Mode. Run each one three times, because answers change from one run to the next.

Note whether you are named, whether your site is linked and who else appears. Repeat monthly. If you are never named, look at the checklist above and at who is named instead of you: what do their pages and profiles have that yours lack?