How do you show up in ChatGPT and Google AI answers?
There’s no secret recipe. Google says no special optimization is needed for its AI Overviews: an indexed, useful, clear page is enough. For ChatGPT, OpenAI recommends allowing its OAI-SearchBot crawler. Beyond that, what helps most is pages that directly answer your clients’ questions.
What are we talking about?
More and more people ask their questions to ChatGPT or Perplexity, or read the AI Overview at the top of Google’s results, before even clicking on a website. GEO or AEO is what helps a site get used in those answers.
The topic is new, and there are a lot of promises out there. I’d rather start from what Google and OpenAI say themselves.
What Google says
Google is clear: there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in its AI Overviews or AI Mode. The usual SEO best practices apply (Google).
To be cited, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in search with a snippet. Google also states that no machine-readable file, no special AI text file and no particular structured data are required.
What OpenAI says
ChatGPT uses a crawler, OAI-SearchBot, to find the sites it shows in its search answers. A site that blocks it doesn’t appear in those answers. So OpenAI recommends allowing it in the robots.txt file (OpenAI).
It’s separate from GPTBot, the crawler used to train models. You can allow one and block the other. If you’ve never touched your robots.txt, both are probably already allowed: check anyway.
What really helps
- Answer directly. A question as the heading, and the answer in the first sentences, before the details.
- One page per topic. One page per service, rather than a single page that covers everything.
- Precise facts. Where you work, for whom, since when, with what timelines. An assistant is more likely to reuse concrete information than a vague slogan.
- An honest FAQ. The real questions your clients ask you, with short answers.
- Consistent information everywhere. The same name, address and description on your website, your Google Business Profile and your other profiles.
- A fast, well-structured site. Headings in the right order, pages that load quickly, content readable without JavaScript.
None of this is new: it’s what makes a website useful to your visitors. AI assistants simply reward it more. For searches near you, also read the article on local SEO.
What I would avoid
- Offers that guarantee you’ll appear in ChatGPT: no one controls its answers.
- Copy written for machines rather than people, stuffed with keywords.
- Publishing dozens of automatically generated pages without review.
When I design a website, I structure the pages so they clearly answer your clients’ questions. That’s useful for Google, for AI assistants, and above all for your visitors.
