How to get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers

Short answer: there is no switch that guarantees a citation. What raises your odds is being easy to retrieve, easy to quote and worth quoting: allow the relevant crawlers, write pages that answer one question clearly near the top, publish original facts, make it obvious who you are, and earn mentions on other reputable sites. Then check what the assistants actually say about you, and fix what is wrong.

AI products change how they pick sources without notice, and I cannot see inside them. These steps are based on how retrieval-based answers work and on public guidance from the vendors, not on a guaranteed method. Be sceptical of anyone selling certainty.

How do AI assistants find sources?

There are two routes. A model may have learned about you from training data collected earlier. Or the product may search the web at the moment of the question, retrieve pages, and write an answer based on them, often with links. The second route is where you can have the most effect, because it works with current pages.

1. Let the crawlers in, if you want to be found

Check your robots.txt and your firewall or CDN settings. Some bot protection blocks AI crawlers by default. The vendors publish the user agent names for their crawlers and search bots. Allowing search-related bots is a different decision from allowing training bots, and you can set them separately. Decide on purpose.

2. Make pages easy to retrieve and read

• Serve the main content as HTML. If the text only appears after heavy client-side JavaScript, some crawlers will not see it.
• Use clear headings. A heading that is the question, followed by a direct answer, is easy to extract.
• Keep one topic per page.
• Use short paragraphs, lists and tables where they fit.
• Put the date and the author on the page.

3. Publish what only you can say

An assistant has no reason to cite a page that repeats what ten others say. Original material gets cited: your own measurements, a worked example, a comparison you actually ran, a price list, a documented decision. This site's articles on specific engineering choices are written for that reason. Add the numbers, the method and the date.

4. Be clear about who you are

• An about page that states your name, business, location and what you do in plain words.
• The same description on your profiles, directories and social accounts.
• Organisation or Person structured data on your site, consistent with the visible page.
• A contact route that works.

Assistants try to resolve names to entities. Consistent facts across the web make that resolution more likely to be correct.

5. Earn mentions elsewhere

Many answers lean on third-party sources: forums, review sites, news, directories, documentation. Being discussed honestly where your customers talk helps. Take part in communities with real answers, without spamming links. Ask satisfied customers for reviews on the platforms relevant to your trade. Contribute to documentation or projects that people cite.

6. Keep it accurate and fresh

Out-of-date prices and old claims get repeated. Review key pages on a schedule, update facts, and show the date you last checked.

How do you check results?

• Ask several assistants the questions your customers ask. Record what each says about you and what it cites.
• Check referral traffic in analytics for domains of AI products.
• Watch Search Console for impressions on question queries.
• Repeat monthly. Answers vary between runs, so use a set of questions and look at patterns, not one result.

What if an assistant gets facts about you wrong?

Correct the source. Publish a clear page that states the right facts, fix inconsistent profiles, and ask sites that repeat the error to update. Most products have a feedback option for answers too.

Underneath all of it is ordinary search work. Read SEO vs AEO vs GEO for how the three fit together.