AI SEO
AI SEO: How to Get Your Business Cited by AI Search
People now ask ChatGPT, Copilot and Google’s AI features the questions they used to type into a search box, and the answers name some businesses and leave out others. This guide explains what AI SEO means, how each AI search engine chooses its sources, and what a small business can do about it in ninety days.
What is AI SEO? The short answer
AI SEO means two things. It is the work of getting a business cited or recommended in AI-generated answers from Google, ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity. It is also the use of AI tools to do SEO tasks faster. Both depend on ordinary SEO: pages that can be crawled, clear answers and a name people trust.
This guide is mostly about the first meaning, because that is where the confusion and the sales pitches are. If SEO itself is new to you, start with our guide to what SEO is. The main points:
- AI search engines fetch live web pages to write their answers, so a page they cannot crawl cannot be cited
- Each engine has its own crawler. Blocking the wrong one removes you from its answers
- Google says its AI features need no special optimisation beyond good SEO
- In Google’s AI Overviews, mentions of a brand on other sites go with visibility more strongly than backlinks do
- Google and Microsoft both now report AI visibility free of charge
- Nobody can guarantee a place in an AI answer
What does AI SEO mean: optimising for AI, or using AI?
AI SEO is used for two different jobs, and suppliers do not always say which one they are selling. The first is being visible in AI answers. The second is using AI software to do SEO work.
| What differs | SEO for AI search | SEO done with AI tools |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Be cited or recommended in AI-generated answers | Do keyword research, briefs, audits and drafts faster |
| Where it shows | Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude | In your own workflow. The target is still the search results |
| Also called | AI search optimisation, GEO, AEO, LLMO | AI-assisted SEO, AI for SEO |
| Main risk | Paying for tricks that do nothing | Publishing unchecked or mass-produced content |
The names for the first meaning overlap. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and co-authors. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) and large language model optimisation (LLMO) describe the same goal, and no agreed definition separates them. Google’s own guide calls AEO and GEO terms that are common online, and treats the work as SEO.
How do AI search engines choose which sites to cite?
AI search engines cite the pages they retrieve while writing an answer. The assistants are built on large language models, a kind of machine learning trained on very large amounts of text. A language model on its own does not look facts up. In Google’s words, generative models do not retrieve facts but predict a likely sequence of words, which is why they can state things that are wrong.
To correct that, the main assistants search the web first. The technique is called retrieval-augmented generation, or grounding. The system runs one or more searches, reads the pages that come back, writes an answer from them and links to the ones it used. Google says its AI features often run several related searches at once, which it calls query fan-out.
That gives a business two ways into an answer. One is the model’s training data, which you cannot edit and which stops at a cut-off date. The other is live retrieval, which works much like a search engine and responds to the same things: pages that can be crawled, that answer the question and that come from a source the system has reason to trust. Almost everything useful in AI SEO works on the second route.
Which AI search platforms matter, and what does each one need?
These are the AI search platforms a UK business is most likely to meet. Each one finds pages in its own way.
| Platform | Where it finds pages | Crawler to allow | Where you can measure it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google’s Search index | Googlebot | Search Console, Generative AI performance report |
| Microsoft Copilot and Bing AI answers | Bing’s index | Bingbot | Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance report |
| ChatGPT search | OpenAI’s search crawler | OAI-SearchBot | Visits from chatgpt.com in your analytics |
| Perplexity | Its own search crawler | PerplexityBot | Visits from perplexity.ai in your analytics |
| Claude | Anthropic’s search crawler | Claude-SearchBot | Visits from claude.ai in your analytics |
Google has the largest reach by its own figures: over 2.5 billion monthly users for AI Overviews and more than one billion for AI Mode, as of June 2026. The others publish less, so measure them by the visits they send you.
The rule that follows is simple. To be cited by an engine, be findable by that engine. For Google and Microsoft that means normal SEO and their webmaster tools. For the rest it starts with not blocking their search crawlers.
Which AI crawlers should you allow, and which can you block?
Allow the crawlers that power search answers if you want to be cited, and treat the crawlers that collect training data as a separate decision. AI companies now publish different crawler names for the two jobs, and it is easy to block both when you meant to block one.
| Crawler | Run by | What it is for | If you block it |
|---|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | Finding pages to show in ChatGPT search | Your pages stay out of ChatGPT search answers |
| GPTBot | OpenAI | Collecting content that may train its models | Your content is not used for training. Search is unaffected |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | Finding and linking pages in Perplexity results. Not used for training | You are less likely to appear in Perplexity |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | Indexing pages to improve Claude’s search results | Reduced visibility in Claude’s search answers |
| ClaudeBot | Anthropic | Collecting content that may train its models | Future content is left out of training |
| Google-Extended | Training Gemini models and grounding the Gemini app | No effect on Google Search or AI Overviews | |
| Googlebot | Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google cannot read your pages for Search or its AI features | |
| Bingbot | Microsoft | Bing search and the AI answers built on it | Bing cannot read your pages for search or AI answers |
OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic also run fetchers that act when a person asks the assistant to open a page: ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User and Claude-User. OpenAI and Perplexity say these may not follow robots.txt in the usual way, because a person requested the visit.
Make two practical checks. Read your robots.txt file for these names, and use our robots.txt generator if you need to rewrite it. Then ask whoever manages your hosting or CDN whether a bot-blocking feature is switched on, because some security tools block AI crawlers by default. Google gives the same warning about its own crawler: crawling must be allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure. OpenAI says a robots.txt change takes about 24 hours to register.
What does Google say about AEO and GEO?
Google says the best practices for SEO still apply, because its generative AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems. Its July 2026 guide puts it plainly: prioritise effective SEO strategies over "AEO/GEO hacks".
The guide lists tactics you can ignore for Google Search: llms.txt files, special AI markup, "chunking" pages into fragments, rewriting copy for AI and chasing inauthentic mentions. Our guide on how to rank in AI Overviews sets each one against Google’s wording.
Two cautions apply. This is Google speaking about Google, and other assistants weigh sources in their own ways. And "no special optimisation" does not mean every page has an equal chance. It means the work that earns a citation is the work that earns a ranking: useful, original pages on a site that can be crawled.
How do you get your business cited by AI search?
Getting cited comes down to seven jobs, in this order. The early ones are quick, and they remove the reasons an engine cannot use your site at all.
1. Fix the SEO basics first
Every AI engine in the table above starts from a search index. If your pages are slow, blocked or not indexed, nothing else on this list will help. A technical SEO check covers crawling, indexing and page speed.
2. Open the door to the right crawlers
Allow Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot in robots.txt, and confirm your host is not blocking them. Decide separately whether to allow the training crawlers.
3. Make your business facts identical everywhere
AI answers describe businesses as well as linking to them, and they can only repeat what they find. Use the same name, address, services and prices on your website, your Google Business Profile, your Bing Places listing and your directory entries. Write an About page that says plainly who you are, what you do and where. Keeping those listings accurate is part of local SEO.
4. Answer the questions customers really ask
Write pages that answer the questions you hear on the phone, using your own prices, cases and photographs. Google calls this non-commodity content, and warns against recycling what others have said or what a generative AI model could easily produce. Generic advice gives an engine no reason to cite you in particular. Our SEO content writing starts from what your team knows for that reason.
5. Structure pages so each answer stands alone
Put one question under each heading and answer it in the first sentence. Use tables for comparisons and numbered steps for processes. Google says its systems can show the relevant piece of a page, so a paragraph that makes sense on its own is easier to use. Add internal links between related pages, with descriptive anchor text, so a crawler that finds one answer can find the rest. This is ordinary on-page SEO, and it is also what voice search optimisation relies on.
6. Earn mentions where your customers already look
In Ahrefs’ study of 75,000 brands, mentions across the web had a 0.664 correlation with appearing in Google’s AI Overviews, against 0.218 for backlink counts. Pew Research Center found that Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the sources Google’s AI summaries cited most. For a local firm the equivalent is reviews, trade associations, local press and supplier pages. Our link building services cover this.
7. Measure, then repeat
Set up the free reports described below, note where you stand and review every month. AI answers change between one search and the next, so judge the trend over a quarter, not a single check.
How can you use AI tools for SEO without hurting your rankings?
You can use AI tools for SEO safely if a person checks the output and the result adds something for readers. Google does not ban AI-assisted content. Its guidance says generative AI can be particularly useful for researching a topic and for adding structure to original content.
The line Google draws is at scale without value. Using generative AI to produce many pages without adding value for users may break its spam policy on scaled content abuse. It also tells site owners to fact-check AI output before publishing, including titles, meta descriptions and structured data.
| SEO task | What AI is good for | What a person must still do |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword research | Suggesting topics, questions and groupings | Check real search volumes in a keyword tool, as our keyword research does for every target |
| Content briefs and outlines | A first structure from your notes | Decide the angle and what you know that others do not |
| Drafting | A rough first draft to edit | Add experience, check every fact and rewrite in your own voice |
| Titles and meta descriptions | Several options to choose from | Pick one that is accurate and not clickbait |
| Schema markup | A starting template | Validate it and make sure it matches the visible page |
| Data analysis | Formulas, regular expressions and summaries of exports | Check the conclusions against the raw data |
This matches how the industry uses the tools. Semrush surveyed 100 marketers in early 2026. It found that 60% used AI for keyword research and 48% for brainstorming content ideas, but only about one in five used it to draft SEO articles. Most teams still have a person write the final piece.
The tools are also weaker than they look in some areas. A digital director interviewed by HubSpot said AI had been wrong every time he asked it to write schema, producing properties that do not exist. Treat anything technical as a draft to verify.
AI also cannot supply experience. Google describes the qualities its systems try to reward as experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, known as E-E-A-T. Those come from the people behind a page: a named author, real examples and sources a reader can check.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
Measure AI search visibility with the free reports from Google and Microsoft, plus the AI referrals in your own analytics. Together they cover most of what a small business needs without a paid tool.
| Source | What it shows | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search Console, Generative AI performance report | Impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country, device and date | Free |
| Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance report | Total citations, cited pages and a sample of "grounding queries" for Copilot and Bing AI answers | Free |
| Your website analytics | Visits arriving from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com, gemini.google.com and claude.ai | Free |
| A monthly prompt log | Whether you are named when you ask each assistant your 20 most important customer questions | Your time |
| Paid AI visibility trackers | Automated checks across assistants, with competitor comparison | A monthly subscription |
Google’s report became available to all sites on 31 August 2026. Microsoft’s opened in public preview in February 2026, and it is the only one of the two that shows the phrases the AI used when it retrieved your page.
Keep expectations realistic. A small site may see no report at all in Search Console until it has enough AI impressions. A prompt log is a set of snapshots, because the same question can produce different sources on different days. And visits are the weakest measure, since many people read the answer and never click.
You will see claims that visitors from AI assistants convert several times better than visitors from search. The figures we saw were quoted second-hand by software vendors and we have not verified them, so we have not repeated them. Count the enquiries from AI referrals in your own analytics instead.
Is AI SEO worth paying for as a separate service?
Usually not as a separate package. Most of what improves AI visibility is SEO you should be buying anyway, and Google says as much. Be wary of anyone selling guaranteed placement in AI answers. Nobody can promise that, any more than a number one ranking.
There is real work that is specific to AI search, and a fair proposal for AI SEO services will name it:
- A check of robots.txt and hosting rules against each AI crawler
- Setting up the Google and Bing AI reports and recording a baseline
- Rewriting key pages so each section answers its own question
- Making business details consistent across your site and profiles
- Earning genuine mentions and reviews
- A monthly review of citations and AI referrals
The warning signs are the reverse: an llms.txt file as the headline deliverable, "AI schema" sold as a secret, hundreds of AI-written pages, or a promise of a fixed number of ChatGPT mentions. Our guide to choosing an SEO agency in Leeds has a scorecard you can use on any proposal.
We treat this as part of our SEO services, not an add-on, and our prices are on the SEO pricing page. For market rates, see how much SEO costs in the UK.
A 90-day AI SEO plan for a small business
A small business can cover the essentials of AI SEO in about ninety days without new software. This plan assumes a few hours a week and a site that already has its basics in place. If you are not sure that it does, an SEO audit will tell you.
| When | What to do | What you have at the end |
|---|---|---|
| Weeks 1 to 2 | Check robots.txt and hosting for AI crawler blocks. Verify the site in Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. Write down 20 customer questions and record who each assistant cites today | Access fixed and a baseline to measure against |
| Weeks 3 to 6 | Rework your ten most important pages: one question per heading, the answer first, tables for prices and comparisons, current facts | Pages an engine can take a clear answer from |
| Weeks 7 to 10 | Publish four to six new pages answering questions from your list that you do not yet cover, each with first-hand detail | Coverage of the questions behind your main searches |
| Weeks 11 to 13 | Make business details identical across profiles. Ask recent customers for reviews. Pitch one useful piece to a trade or local publication. Repeat the 20-question check | A second measurement and a list of what moved |
Do not expect a dramatic chart. The realistic result after one quarter is a site with nothing blocking it, a handful of pages that now appear in the AI reports, and a clear view of which questions deserve more effort.
Getting started
Start with access and measurement, because both are free and both are quick. If you would like us to check your site, request a free SEO audit for a written summary of what is holding it back. If you want to talk through whether AI search matters for your market yet, our SEO consulting page explains how that works.
01Is AI SEO different from traditional SEO?+
Mostly not. AI SEO builds on the same foundations as traditional SEO: pages that can be crawled, content that answers the question and a trusted name. What it adds is checking access for AI crawlers, writing sections that stand alone, and measuring citations as well as rankings.
02What is the difference between GEO and AEO?+
There is no agreed difference. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) and answer engine optimisation (AEO) both mean improving how a business appears in AI-generated answers. Different vendors prefer different labels, and Google treats the work as part of SEO.
03Is ChatGPT good for SEO?+
ChatGPT is useful for parts of SEO, such as brainstorming topics, grouping keywords and drafting outlines. It has no backlink data of its own and it can state things that are wrong, so check its output against real data before you act on it.
04Does Google penalise AI-generated content?+
Google does not penalise content for being written with AI. Its spam policy targets pages made mainly to manipulate rankings, including many AI-generated pages that add no value, which it calls scaled content abuse. Helpful, accurate, checked content is acceptable however it was produced.
05Can AI replace an SEO agency or consultant?+
No. AI speeds up research, drafting and analysis, but it does not know your market, your customers or your margins, and it cannot be held accountable for results. The useful question is whether your supplier uses AI well and checks its work.
06Do I need an llms.txt file for AI search?+
Not for Google. Google says Search does not use llms.txt or other AI-only files. The crawler guidance from OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic is about robots.txt, which is the file to get right first.
07Does blocking GPTBot remove my site from ChatGPT?+
No. GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. ChatGPT search uses a separate crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says the two settings are independent, so you can opt out of training and still appear in search answers.
08How do I know if ChatGPT is sending visitors to my site?+
Look in the referral or source report in your analytics for visits from chatgpt.com. The same report shows visits from perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com. Expect small numbers at first, since many people read an AI answer without clicking.
09How long does AI SEO take to work?+
There is no fixed timeline. Access changes register quickly: OpenAI says about 24 hours for a robots.txt update. Content changes depend on recrawling, which Google says can take from several days to several months. Mentions and reputation build over months.
10Should a small local business bother with AI SEO?+
Yes, but after local SEO. Ahrefs found that only 7.9% of local searches show an AI Overview, so your Google Business Profile and reviews matter more for "near me" searches. AI answers matter for the questions customers research before they choose.
11Which AI SEO tools do I need?+
To start, none that cost money. Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools both report AI visibility free, and your analytics shows AI referrals. Paid AI visibility trackers become worthwhile when you have many questions and competitors to monitor.
12Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT or Google’s AI?+
You cannot buy a place in the organic answer. Advertising inside AI products is a separate matter. Anyone selling a guaranteed organic mention is promising something they do not control.
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