Short answer: you can’t make an AI tool recommend you, and nobody can honestly promise it. You can make sure those tools can read your site, find the same clear facts about your business everywhere they look, and find pages that directly answer the questions customers ask. That is most of what “GEO” and “AEO” mean in practice, and it’s the same work that helps your normal Google rankings.
Where AI search tools get their information
- Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode are built on Google’s own search index, so the same things that help you in Google search help here: being indexed, being relevant, being trusted.
- ChatGPT search uses OpenAI’s own crawler (OAI-SearchBot) along with third-party search providers. Microsoft’s Bing has been one of those, which is why Bing Webmaster Tools and Bing Places are suddenly worth an hour of your time.
- Perplexity, Copilot and others run their own crawlers and search indexes too.
- All of them lean on what other sites say about you: directories, reviews, news, associations. Your own site is one voice among many.
What one answer page taught us
Barossa 50’s Diner has a short page answering “what is a spider drink?”, a question plenty of Australians genuinely ask. In the last 28 days that page appeared in Google 2,249 times, at an average position of 6.6. It was clicked 5 times.
That gap is what answer engines do. The answer gets shown on the results page itself, in a snippet or an AI Overview, so being seen doesn’t mean being visited. The page still earns its keep: it makes the diner more relevant to food searches in its area and gives AI tools an accurate source to draw from. But anyone selling “AI content” as a traffic machine is overselling it.
Five things you can control
1. Let the bots in
Check your site’s robots.txt file (add /robots.txt to your domain). It shouldn’t block Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended unless you’ve decided to. Also make sure your important content is in the page itself, not loaded later by scripts that some crawlers don’t run.
2. One consistent identity
Your business name, phone number, address, services and areas should be identical on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Facebook and the main directories. AI tools cross-check sources. Three different phone numbers make you look less certain than a competitor with one.
3. Structured data that matches the page
LocalBusiness or Organization structured data with your real details, services and service areas, connected to your official profiles. It’s machine-readable fact, not a ranking trick. Keep it accurate and never mark up your own reviews of yourself, which breaks Google’s rules (we’ve removed exactly that from a client site).
4. Answer real questions, plainly
Put clear answers near the top of your pages to the questions customers actually ask: price ranges, how long jobs take, what’s included, which areas you cover. Back them with your own experience and photos. You’ll notice every article on this blog opens with a short answer for exactly this reason.
5. Get mentioned elsewhere
Reviews on more than one platform, local directories, supplier and association listings, and local press. AI tools trust what others say about you more than what you say about yourself, which is also true of customers.
What about llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file that summarises a website for AI tools. When we rolled out AI-readiness basics across the sites we manage in August 2026, every site got one. But we’re clear about what it is: as of October 2026, no major AI or search company has confirmed that it uses llms.txt to rank or recommend businesses. It takes minutes to add and does no harm. It is not a reason to hire anyone, and it won’t make ChatGPT recommend you. (Ours is here if you’re curious.)
How to tell if any of it is working
- Google Analytics referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com. Small numbers, but real visits.
- The same questions, asked over time. Write down five questions a customer might ask an assistant (“who does mobile welding in the Adelaide Hills?”) and ask them every few months. Note whether you appear and whether the details are right.
- Search Console for question-style searches and pages, like the diner’s spider-drink page.
What to ignore
- Guarantees of AI recommendations or placements.
- “AI SEO” packages priced on top of SEO that don’t include anything beyond the list above.
- Mass-produced AI articles. They add nothing new, and Google’s spam policies target scaled, low-value content.
If you want the foundations checked, the free audit covers your site, your profile and your business details. Our approach is on the AI search optimisation page.
