How to show up in ChatGPT and Perplexity results (not just Google)

A friend texted me last week asking for a restaurant recommendation. I started to say "check Google Maps" and he said "I just asked ChatGPT, it gave me three options with reasons."

That's the shift happening right now. Not everyone, not all the time, but a growing number of people are using AI chatbots as their first search. Perplexity processed over 500 million queries in 2024, up from nearly zero two years prior. ChatGPT's browsing feature is used by tens of millions monthly.

If your business doesn't show up in these AI responses, you're invisible to a growing audience.

How AI search is different from Google search

Google shows you a list of links and you pick one. AI search engines read dozens of pages, synthesize an answer, and cite the sources they used. You either get cited or you don't. There's no "page 2" to aim for.

The ranking factors are different too. Google cares a lot about backlinks and page authority. ChatGPT cares about how well your content matches its response style and how recently it was updated (content under 30 days old gets cited 3.2 times more, according to an SE Ranking study of 129,000 domains).

Perplexity has its own quirks. It maintains manual lists of authoritative domains that get priority. It favors pages with FAQ schema markup. It actually prioritizes PDF documents for certain queries. And its ranking system has three layers, the last of which can discard entire sets of results if quality is too low.

What actually gets you cited

I've spent a few months tracking which content gets cited by AI engines and which gets ignored. Some patterns:

Direct answers win. If someone asks "what is the best CRM for small businesses," the content that starts with "The best CRM for small businesses is..." gets cited more than content that starts with a 500-word introduction about the history of customer relationship management.

Specific data gets cited. "Our analysis of 200 CRM platforms found that..." beats "Many CRM platforms offer various features." The Princeton GEO research quantified this: content with statistics sees up to 37% more AI visibility.

Expert quotes get pulled. When your content includes a quote from a named person with credentials, AI engines treat it as more authoritative. The same research found quotes boost visibility by 30%.

Fresh content gets priority. Both ChatGPT and Perplexity show strong recency bias. An article updated last week will be cited over an identical article from last year.

The technical checklist

Your robots.txt needs to allow these bots: GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai. Check yours right now — many default configurations block them.

Add FAQPage schema markup to your content pages. This is JSON-LD code in your page header that structures your Q&A content in a way AI engines can easily parse. Perplexity's citation data shows higher citation rates for pages with FAQ schema.

Make sure you're indexed on Brave Search, not just Google. Claude uses Brave's index exclusively. Submit your site at search.brave.com/webmasters.

Submit to Bing Webmaster Tools too. Microsoft Copilot pulls from Bing's index. If you're not indexed there, Copilot can't cite you.

Use IndexNow for faster indexing on Bing. When you publish new content, IndexNow pings search engines immediately instead of waiting for the next crawl.

Content structure that AI engines love

Put the answer first. Start each section with the direct, concise answer to the question it addresses. Then elaborate. AI engines extract from the top of sections.

Use clear heading hierarchy. H1 for the page title, H2 for major sections, H3 for sub-sections. AI engines use this structure to understand what your content covers.

Keep paragraphs short. Two to three sentences max. AI engines parse shorter paragraphs more effectively than long blocks of text.

Include comparison tables. When comparing options, use HTML tables rather than prose. Both Google AI Overviews and Perplexity frequently pull data from tables.

What this means for your business

If you're a local business, being cited in AI search results can drive phone calls and visits without anyone clicking through to your website. Someone asks ChatGPT "best Italian restaurant in Denver" and your restaurant gets mentioned with a specific reason to visit — that's worth more than a page-one ranking for some queries.

If you're a SaaS company or service business, AI citations build brand awareness. Even when the user doesn't click through, seeing your name mentioned as an authoritative source builds familiarity.

If you're an agency, this is a service you should be offering clients. Most businesses haven't heard of GEO yet. The ones that start optimizing now will have a significant advantage.

Getting started

Audit your robots.txt and fix bot access. That's step one and it's free.

Add FAQ schema to your top 5 pages. Takes maybe an hour if you're doing it manually.

Update your most important content with specific statistics and sourced citations. Not "research shows" but "according to [specific study], [specific finding]."

Set up monitoring to track when you get cited. Tools are emerging for this, and ClawKit includes AI visibility tracking as part of its GEO skill.

Or just keep optimizing for Google only and hope for the best. That's a strategy too. Just not one I'd recommend.