How to get your business cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini

When an AI assistant uses live web results, it picks a handful of sources to build its answer. Getting picked is partly about relevance and partly about how easy you make the machine's job.

Step 1: Let the crawlers in

Check your robots.txt and any firewall or CDN rules. If you block the bots that power retrieval, you will not appear. We explain the main user agents in AI crawlers and robots.txt.

Step 2: Make pages readable by machines

• Render the important content on the server so it is in the HTML, not hidden behind client-side scripts.
• Use one clear H1, logical headings and short paragraphs.
• Keep pages fast. Slow or broken pages are skipped.

Step 3: Answer the question first

Assistants prefer passages that directly answer a query. Put a plain, quotable answer at the top of each page and expand below. Our post on answer-first content shows the pattern.

Step 4: Add structured data

Mark up your Organization, services, FAQs and articles. It will not force a citation, but it removes ambiguity about who you are and what each page covers. Start with the schema markup guide.

Step 5: Build real authority

• Keep your business name, description and contact details consistent everywhere.
• Publish original information others want to reference: data, guides, comparisons from real experience.
• Earn mentions and links from relevant sites, directories and communities.

Step 6: Measure

Every month, ask the same set of questions on each assistant and record whether you are mentioned, how you are described and which pages are cited. Look at trends, not single answers, because responses vary.

Be patient and honest. Citations come from being genuinely useful and easy to understand, not from shortcuts.