How do you get found on Google and ChatGPT?

Customers no longer ask only Google. They also ask AI assistants such as ChatGPT. Whatever acronym you put on it, the question is the same: "Am I shown as the answer to the person asking about me?" This article explains what that takes, based on what Google and OpenAI say in their own documentation.

The acronyms

SEO: showing up in search engines such as Google.
AEO: appearing in direct answers to questions (featured boxes, voice assistants).
GEO: being mentioned and cited as a source in the answers AI assistants generate.

One website has to serve all three at once. You do not build a separate site for each.

1. There is no special trick

Google's documentation on AI features is clear: there are no additional requirements or special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. To show up as a link, your page needs to be in Google's index and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Even so, the documentation also states that being indexed and being shown are not guaranteed.

So the core work stays the same: Google has to find your page, read it and judge it valuable.

2. Write for people first

Google's content guidance asks that content be created primarily for people, not to manipulate search rankings. The same document says trust is the most important element. In practice:

Use the question your customer actually asks as the heading.
Give the short, clear answer in the first sentence and follow with the detail.
Keep information such as prices, opening hours and address up to date.
State clearly on the site who you are and where you work.

3. Keep the technical foundations solid

Speed and mobile friendliness: if a page is slow or broken on a phone, it becomes harder to read.
robots.txt: the file that tells search bots which pages they may access. Google points out that it is not a way to hide a page from Google; to hide a page you use noindex or a password. A single wrong line can keep you out of search entirely, so check the file.
Structured data: extra information that tells machines what a page is about (a business, a product, questions and answers). Google recommends the JSON-LD format where possible. However, no special structured data is required for AI features, and structured data that breaks the rules may not be eligible for rich results.

4. Showing up in ChatGPT

According to OpenAI's documentation, OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. Make sure your site allows this bot. GPTBot, on the other hand, is for model training; blocking it does not stop you appearing in ChatGPT search results, it is a separate decision. OpenAI notes that a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to be reflected in search.

5. Do you need llms.txt?

llms.txt is an idea that proposes offering a plain summary of your site for AI (Jeremy Howard, 2024). It is not a standard, and Google's documentation also says no new machine-readable files or special text files are needed for AI features. It does no harm, but do not expect results from it.

A short weekly checklist

In Google Search Console, check which queries you are appearing for.
Keep the answers to customer questions current on your site, and add sections for new questions.
Fix broken links and pages that are slowing down.
Confirm that the permissions in robots.txt are still correct.

Because these tasks repeat every week, they suit automation well. Your brand's agents measure and fix them for you.

SEO, GEO, AEO: how do you get found on Google and ChatGPT?