Introduction
Imagine millions of users asking AI chatbots for advice, and your website being the one cited as the authority. This is the promise of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) – making your content visible and influential in AI-driven search results. However, unlike traditional search engines, you can’t simply log in to a “ChatGPT Webmaster Tools” and hit a Submit URL button. AI models and chat search platforms have no direct site submission forms. Instead, getting your site into ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini (the upcoming AI model behind Search Generative Experience), Perplexity, Anthropic’s Claude, Bing Chat (a.k.a. Bing Copilot), and others requires a strategic, technical approach.

Why does this matter? Because user behavior is rapidly shifting. For example, ChatGPT alone reached 800 million weekly users who generate billions of queries. Google’s AI snapshots now appear at the top of search results, pushing regular links further down. Bing is baked into everything from Windows Copilot to enterprise chat apps. In short, AI answers are becoming a major gateway to your content, just as search engines have been for decades. If you ignore this trend, your site may effectively become invisible to a growing segment of searchers.

This guide explains how to “submit” or expose your website to AI chatbots and answer engines – even though there’s no official submission form. We’ll cover the underlying concepts (so you know how these systems include content), dive into technical steps (from schemas and sitemaps to API pings), walk through an implementation checklist, and share real-world tips. The goal is to ensure that when an AI-powered assistant is answering questions in your niche, it finds your site and cites it as a source.

Conceptual Foundations: AEO and How AI Chats Index Content
Before we drill into code and configuration, let’s clarify how AI answer engines discover and use website content. This is the core of Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) – optimizing your content to be chosen by AI-driven tools. Traditional SEO was about ranking high on page one of Google’s or Bing’s index. AEO, by contrast, is about being the trusted source that an AI summarizes or cites in response to a natural-language question.

How AI search differs from classic SEO: Conventional search engines crawl the web and build an index of pages to match against keywords. AI systems, however, operate in two modes: pre-trained knowledge and real-time retrieval. For example, ChatGPT’s original model was trained on a snapshot of the web (among other data) up to a cutoff date. It learned from content (even if it doesn’t explicitly cite it) in training. Newer models like GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini are expected to be trained on even larger swaths of web data. But training data can get stale, which is why many AI chatbots now incorporate live search results in their answers – a process called retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

• Pre-trained LLM knowledge: When an AI like GPT-4 or Claude generates text, part of it draws on patterns and facts absorbed during training. If your site was included in that training data, the model might know about your content (though it won’t quote or point to you unless specifically designed to). For instance, OpenAI’s GPTBot crawler collects public web data to improve ChatGPT’s general understanding. Anthropic’s ClaudeBot does the same for Claude’s model training. This is analogous to being in a library – your site becomes part of the AI’s background knowledge. There’s no guarantee an AI will use it on a given query, but inclusion means the model could paraphrase or rely on information from your pages when relevant.
• Real-time search and citations: The more immediate opportunity is when AI chatbots fetch fresh content at query time to give current answers with sources. This is how tools like Bing Chat, Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), Perplexity.ai, and ChatGPT’s browsing/search mode work. They use a search engine (Bing for ChatGPT and Windows Copilot; Google for SGE; a combination for Perplexity) to find relevant pages, then have the AI model read those pages and present an answer with citations. In ChatGPT’s case, OpenAI introduced OAI-SearchBot – a web crawler that builds an index for ChatGPT’s own search results. Google SGE directly draws from Google’s index of websites and typically cites a handful of sources in the AI summary. Perplexity relies on Bing’s index and its proprietary Sonar ranking algorithm to choose which snippets to show.

What does this mean for us? To be visible in AI answers, you must ensure your content is present in the indexes and datasets these models draw from. In practical terms, that breaks down into a few key goals:

1. Allow AI crawlers to access your site – so you’re not accidentally blocking the bots that feed GPT-4, Claude, etc.
2. Be indexed by traditional search engines (Google, Bing) – since they act as the data providers for many AI answers.
3. Provide clear, structured, authoritative content – so that AI algorithms select your page as a trustworthy source to cite, and so your content is easy for an AI to digest accurately.
4. Stay up-to-date and prominent – fresh content and a bit of authority (links, mentions) help AI systems prioritize your site for current questions.

It’s also worth noting that classic SEO and AEO are closely interconnected. A strong SEO foundation (crawlable site, relevant content, quality backlinks) is still necessary – most AI search tools start by looking at top search results. But AEO introduces new factors:

• Answer-focused content structure: AI chat prefers pages that answer questions directly and succinctly (more on that later).
• Brand or entity recognition: Being a known entity (e.g. having a Wikipedia page or knowledge panel) can increase your chances of being cited, since AI often checks for authoritative contex.
• Structured data & metadata: This helps machine-reading algorithms identify key pieces of information on your page to pull into an answer.
• Freshness & mentions: LLM-based systems put a premium on up-to-date info and may favor content that’s recently updated or widely discussed.

Finally, keep in mind there’s no official “AI Search Console” (at least not yet). OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and others haven’t launched a direct webmaster portal for AI inclusion. As one expert succinctly noted, “OpenAI doesn’t provide a Search Console-like tool, so server logs and crawl monitoring are your best bet” for now. In other words, we achieve “submission” to AI by technical SEO tactics rather than a literal submit form. Let’s explore those tactics in detail.

Technical Deep Dive: How to Force Visibility in AI Answers

In this section, we’ll cover the nitty-gritty of how to make your site technically visible to AI models and chat search platforms. Think of this as making your site “AI-friendly.” It involves a mix of classic SEO best practices and new techniques specific to large language models.

1. Crawler Access & Robots.txt Configuration
The first step is ensuring that the bots used by AI systems can actually crawl your content. If your robots.txt file blocks these user agents, your pages won’t be seen or stored by AI—no matter how great your content is. By default, most sites allow all well-behaved bots, but it’s worth double-checking and explicitly allowing the important ones.

Key crawlers to allow include:

• OpenAI GPTBot: This is used to collect data for training ChatGPT and GPT-4’s knowledge base. If GPTBot can’t crawl your site, your content won’t be in the pool of information the model “knows” when answering questions. To allow it, ensure your robots.txt does not disallow GPTBot. For example:User-agent: GPTBot Allow: / OpenAI has stated that GPTBot respects robots.txt and will not scrape content if disallowed. So if you previously blocked it (maybe out of fear of content scraping), consider lifting that restriction if being part of ChatGPT’s knowledge is beneficial. Keep in mind, blocking GPTBot only affects future training runs – content it already ingested might still influence the model.
• OpenAI OAI-SearchBot: This bot specifically powers ChatGPT’s browsing/search feature and the new ChatGPT “search results” with citations. It does not feed the training dataset, but rather an index for real-time search inside ChatGPT. If you want ChatGPT (when it’s connected to the internet) to find and cite your site, you must allow OAI-SearchBot. The same syntax applies in robots.txt:User-agent: OAI-SearchBot Allow: / If you accidentally blocked all OpenAI bots earlier (some sites did out of caution), note that this one is separate. In fact, OpenAI has three primary agents: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, and a third called ChatGPT-User (used when ChatGPT acts like a browser for a user prompt or plugin). To be thorough, you’d allow all three. A blanket allowance for User-agent: * works too, but listing them specifically can be clearer in your policy. On the flip side, if you had a blanket disallow and forgot about it, you may have been inadvertently invisible to ChatGPT’s citations until now.
• Anthropic ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot: Similar logic for Claude, Anthropic’s AI. ClaudeBot is their training crawler, while Claude-SearchBot indexes content for any Claude-powered search features. The Anthropic support docs explicitly say that blocking Claude-SearchBot will prevent your content from being indexed for search, reducing visibility in Claude’s answers. So, ensure your robots file doesn’t block ClaudeBot or Claude-SearchBot. For example:User-agent: ClaudeBot Allow: / User-agent: Claude-SearchBot Allow: / If you use a standard User-agent: * Disallow: approach that allows everything, you’re fine. Just be careful if you have any bot-specific rules.
• Bingbot (and Bing’s others): Bing’s regular web crawler (Mozilla/5.0 ... bingbot) is crucial because Bing’s index is used by Bing Chat and often by ChatGPT. When ChatGPT uses web browsing, it actually relies on Bing search results in the background. Perplexity.ai also draws from Bing’s API. So, you want all your pages indexed in Bing. Typically, if you weren’t blocking Bingbot for SEO, you’re okay. But one new Bing-related bot to note is Bing’s IndexNow mechanism (more on that shortly) – it’s not a crawler but an API you can ping to prompt indexing.
• Googlebot and Google-Extended: Google’s classic crawler Googlebot should of course be allowed (that’s basic SEO). But in the AI era, Google introduced a token called Google-Extended which controls whether your content is used for training Google’s Bard/Gemini models. By default, Google-Extended is allowed, meaning Google can use your pages to improve Bard and Gemini. You only need to add something to robots if you want to opt out. Since our goal here is inclusion, you generally do nothing – just don’t disallow it. (If you had copied some disallow rule from a template, check for “Google-Extended: Disallow” lines and remove them if present, so that your site can help train Gemini.) Google has clarified that Google-Extended is separate from regular search indexing and “does not impact your site’s inclusion or ranking in Google Search”. So blocking it won’t hurt your Google rankings, but it will exclude your content from the next-gen Google AI models. Our recommendation: keep it enabled (i.e., don’t explicitly block it) if you want to appear in AI answers generated by Google’s Gemini/Bard.

In summary, audit your robots.txt for any directives that might be keeping these newer bots out. A simple, permissive robots.txt might look like:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: *
Allow: /

This effectively welcomes all crawlers (OpenAI, Anthropic, and others) to access your site. Of course, tailor this to your needs – if there are sections of your site you genuinely don’t want in AI outputs (say, private forums, or customer-only content), you might disallow those sections. You can even use meta tags like <meta name="robots" content="noai"> in the future if standards evolve – but as of now, robots.txt is the primary control.

One more thing: JavaScript. Unlike Googlebot, which renders JavaScript, many AI crawlers do not execute JS and only see raw HTML. GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, for example, don’t run client-side scripts. They fetch the initial HTML and that’s it. This means if your content relies on heavy JS (SPA frameworks, or content injected after load), the AI crawlers may crawl an empty page. In technical SEO terms, server-side rendering (SSR) or at least dynamic rendering for bots is essential. If you have a React/Vue/Angular site, consider prerendering important pages for bots or implementing hydration such that core content appears in the HTML source. Otherwise, even though your page might be indexed in Google (which does render JS), GPTBot might effectively see nothing and skip it. As the Vercel/MERJ analysis showed, in over half a billion GPTBot fetches they studied, there was effectively zero JS-rendering – reinforcing that you should deliver content in HTML where possible.

2. Search Engine Indexing: Sitemaps, APIs, and “Pushing” Your Content
Since most AI chat tools piggyback on search engines, being indexed in search engines is critical. That means your content should be in Google’s index and Bing’s index at minimum. Traditional SEO wisdom applies: use an XML sitemap, fix crawl errors, avoid duplicate content with proper canonical tags, and so on. But there are a few specific steps to take to expedite indexing, especially for Bing, given its outsized role in feeding AI answers.

• XML Sitemaps: Maintain a comprehensive, up-to-date sitemap listing your important URLs. Submit this sitemap in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools. The sitemap helps search bots discover new pages faster and ensures nothing important is overlooked. Place the sitemap location in your robots.txt (Sitemap: https://example.com/sitemap.xml) for good measure. Remember to update it whenever new content is published or major changes occur.
• Bing’s IndexNow API: IndexNow is a protocol that lets you ping search engines to notify them of new or updated content instantly. Bing (and Yandex) are big proponents of IndexNow; and interestingly, Perplexity.ai also benefits from it because Perplexity relies on Bing’s index. By leveraging IndexNow, you can dramatically cut the time it takes for Bing to pick up your changes – often to within hours or minutes, as opposed to waiting for the next crawl. To use IndexNow:
  1. Go to IndexNow.org and generate an API key (a simple token). This key is tied to your site.
  2. Host the provided key file on your site (e.g., key_XXXXXXXX.txt at the root) to verify ownership.
  3. Whenever you publish or update a page, have your system send an HTTP request to the IndexNow endpoint with the URL. For example:GET https://api.indexnow.org/indexnow?url=https://yourdomain.com/new-page&key=YOURKEY You can automate this. Popular SEO plugins like Yoast and Rank Math have started integrating IndexNow support to “auto-ping” when you create or update a post If you prefer coding it yourself, it’s just an HTTP GET – easy to implement in any backend language or even via a serverless function.
  4. Alternatively, use Bing Webmaster Tools API to submit URLs in bulk if that fits your workflow.
  The payoff: faster inclusion in Bing’s index. One AEO case study noted that if a site is indexed in Bing and you use IndexNow, Perplexity usually picks it up within 24–48 hours of publication. That’s a big deal if you have timely content that you want surfacing in AI answers quickly.
• Bing Webmaster Tools Content Submission API: In addition to IndexNow, Bing has a content submission API where you can even push the HTML of your page directly for indexing (bypassing the need for Bingbot to crawl it). This is mostly useful if you have pages that Bingbot has trouble crawling or if you want to guarantee indexing. It requires API keys and is a bit more involved, but it exists as a method. For most, IndexNow is simpler and nearly as effective.
• Monitor indexing: It’s not a set-it-and-forget-it. Use site:yourdomain.com searches on Bing and Google to confirm your pages are indexed. In Google Search Console’s Coverage report and Bing Webmaster’s Index Explorer, keep an eye out for any pages not indexed due to errors or content quality flags. If some pages aren’t indexed, re-submit or troubleshoot why (thin content? blocked by mistake? etc.). Also, resubmit via IndexNow if a page isn’t showing up – it doesn’t hurt to ping again after a few days if you suspect it didn’t index properly.
• Don’t forget smaller engines: While Google and Bing dominate, there are others like Yandex (which uses IndexNow), and emerging AI-centric search engines. For instance, Brave Search has an AI summary feature; Neeva (now closed) had one too. Ensuring general crawlability and sitemap availability will cover these cases. Also, consider submitting to DuckDuckGo (which uses a mix of sources including Bing) and others if relevant to your region or audience.

3. Structured Data (Schema) for AI Visibility
Structured data is your secret weapon in AEO. By adding Schema.org markup to your pages, you help search engines and AI algorithms better understand the content and context of your site. Google’s SGE, for example, can use structured data to identify specific bits of information (like an FAQ or a step in a how-to) and present them in the AI summary. Likewise, ChatGPT and Perplexity benefit from well-structured content, even if they don’t explicitly use Schema markup at runtime, because structured content is easier to parse and more likely to be ranked/cited in the first place.

Consider implementing the following schemas where appropriate:

• FAQPage schema for Q&A content or any page that can be presented as a question and answer. This is extremely useful for AEO because many AI queries are question-form, and having clearly marked questions and answers on your page makes it easy for an AI to grab the relevant answer. Google’s documentation and SEO experts have noted that FAQ schema can increase your chances of being featured in AI answers. Example: a “FAQPage” JSON-LD might list a question like “How to submit a URL to Perplexity.ai?” and the answer text. If your page has a section addressing that, mark it up!
• HowTo schema for instructional content. If your site provides step-by-step guides (recipes, DIY, processes, etc.), marking them up can not only get you rich results in traditional SERPs but also primes that content for extraction by AI. An AI summary might directly enumerate your steps if they are clearly defined. Example: marking up the steps to integrate IndexNow on your site in JSON-LD, so an AI could directly present “Step 1, Step 2, Step 3” if someone asks “How do I use IndexNow?”
• Article/BlogPosting schema on your blog posts or news articles to provide metadata like author, publish date, and mainEntityOfPage. This helps establish context and credibility (e.g., an AI might prefer citing an article with clear author info over an anonymous page).
• Organization and Person schema for your website and authors. Establishing your organization as an entity with a proper Organization schema (with attributes like name, URL, logo, sameAs links to social profiles or Wikipedia) can feed Google’s knowledge graph and enhance your E-E-A-T signals. Similarly, using Person schema for authors (with sameAs to their LinkedIn, etc.) can bolster credibility. AI systems tend to favor sources that have clear authority signals, and schema is one way to communicate that.
• Product schema if applicable (especially for e-commerce sites). Why? Because ChatGPT has introduced product search carousels for shopping queries, and it relies on structured data (price, description, reviews) from third parties to display products. If your product pages have schema, they are more likely to be understood and pulled into such results. (Additionally, OpenAI launched a ChatGPT Instant Checkout program using an Agentic Commerce Protocol – if you’re an e-commerce merchant, you can actually feed your product info directly to ChatGPT. More on that in the integration section.)
• Breadcrumb and Website schema to clarify your site structure. A BreadcrumbList can help an AI understand the hierarchy of your content (useful for context in an answer). A Website schema with potentialAction SearchAction can help (that one mostly for adding a search box in SERPs, but indicates your site’s search capability).

In practice, adding schema is usually done via JSON-LD scripts in the HTML. Here’s a quick example of an FAQ schema for context:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [{
    "@type": "Question",
    "name": "How long does it take for Perplexity.ai to index my page?",
    "acceptedAnswer": {
      "@type": "Answer",
      "text": "If your site is indexed in Bing and submitted via IndexNow, Perplexity usually picks it up within 24–48 hours."
    }
  }]
}
</script>

This snippet (adapted from a real-world guide) explicitly provides a question and answer that an AI could use. Not only will this potentially get you a rich result in Google, it literally gives the answer engine the exact phrasing to quote. In an AI chat, a user asking that question could see your answer with a citation to you.

After implementing structured data, always validate it. Use Google’s Rich Results Test and the Schema.org validator to ensure there are no errors. Errors or badly-formed JSON-LD might be ignored entirely. Also, keep your schema updated – stale information (like an old price in Product schema) could mislead users or cause AI not to trust it.

One more tip on content structure: even outside of formal schema, structure your HTML with clear headings (H1, H2, H3) and use lists or tables for key info. AI models love content that is easy to extract. An H2 that asks a question and a concise paragraph that answers it is golden. In fact, an effective pattern is: pose a question as a header, answer it in the first sentence below, then elaborate. This way, your page provides a snippet that can stand alone as the answer. Similarly, well-organized bullet points or numbered steps can be directly lifted by an AI. When I consult on content, I sometimes say “write as if you’re trying to get a featured snippet” – meaning front-load the direct answer. This not only helps with Google snippets, but also aligns perfectly with AI answer extraction. An example from an SEO who did this: they added FAQ sections (with schema) to pages and saw those pages get cited by GPT-based answers within two days– the content was already optimized for quick Q&A pickup, and it worked.

4. Utilizing Public Data Sets and Knowledge Graphs
This is a less obvious tactic, but it can give you an edge: make sure your content or brand is represented in the data sources that AI models and answer engines themselves rely on. What does that mean?

• Common Crawl and Open Datasets: Many language models (including older GPT-3 and likely parts of GPT-4) are trained on the Common Crawl dataset – essentially a public archive of the web. While you cannot directly “submit” to Common Crawl, you can ensure they can crawl you. Common Crawl respects robots.txt; if you haven’t blocked it (user agent CCBot), your site might already be in their corpus. You could also consider manually submitting important pages to Common Crawl via their tools, or even hosting a dataset. Some site owners who produce lots of data (e.g., scientific data, encyclopedic content) release it under open licenses so it gets incorporated into training data. For instance, if you run a reference site, offering an open API or data dump can lead to inclusion in datasets like The Pile. This is an indirect method and not for everyone, but it can seed the AI world with your content in ways beyond web crawling.
• Wikipedia and Wikidata: If your brand or the topics you cover have corresponding Wikipedia pages or entries in Wikidata, it can significantly boost your AEO. AI models heavily rely on Wikipedia content for factual information. Being mentioned or cited there increases the chance the AI “knows” about you. For example, if you have a notable company, ensure it has a Wikipedia page and that page is well-sourced. If you as an author are publishing content, maybe your bio can be in Wikipedia. At the very least, link your Schema.org Person/Organization sameAs to these trusted sources. Google’s Knowledge Graph (which surfaces in knowledge panels and SGE context) pulls from Wikipedia and other databases. So getting yourself into that ecosystem is powerful.
• Knowledge Panels and Graph connections: If Google recognizes your site or author as an entity, it may give your content a credibility boost in SGE answers. For example, if you write about finance and Google knows you are a CFA-certified expert via a knowledge panel, that E-E-A-T signal may carry weight in AI citation choices. While you can’t directly create a Google knowledge panel (they are auto-generated), you can influence it by claiming your Google My Business (for orgs), using schema, and having a presence on authoritative sites.
• Public Q&A forums and datasets: AIs like Bing Chat sometimes use content from StackExchange, Reddit, Quora, etc. If you or your company actively contribute to those (in a genuine, non-spammy way), you can build “digital footprint” in the places AI might look. I’ve seen brand mentions on Reddit that lead to Bing Chat citing a Reddit comment that mentions the brand – an indirect way of showing up. Adobe’s AEO best-practices explicitly list channels like Wikipedia, Reddit, Quora, YouTube as off-site venues to increase your brand footprint in AI answers The logic is simple: the more the AI sees your name or URL mentioned in authoritative contexts, the more it will view you as relevant. It’s similar to link-building for SEO, but in an AI context, even an unlinked mention (e.g. “ExpertName from Site.com says…”) could matter.

In short, think beyond your website: contribute knowledge to the web that can point back to you. If there’s a relevant open dataset or community, being part of it will help ensure AI models learn about you from multiple angles.

5. Integration Scripts and Direct AI Interfaces
So far, we’ve focused on passive inclusion (crawl and index). But there are also active integrations you can leverage. These are not “SEO” in the traditional sense, but they can directly put your content into an AI system’s responses or UI.

• ChatGPT Plugins and API Integrations: OpenAI allows developers to create plugins for ChatGPT. A plugin can expose your website’s information or services to ChatGPT via an API. For example, if you run a travel site, you could make a ChatGPT plugin so that when users ask about flight prices or hotel bookings, ChatGPT can query your API and answer with your data. While this is not exactly “getting your site into ChatGPT’s index,” it does get your site content directly into ChatGPT responses when the plugin is invoked. To do this, you create an API, host a .well-known/ai-plugin.json file describing the plugin, and go through OpenAI’s review process. It’s a technical project, but it can be hugely valuable for certain businesses (OpenTable did this for restaurant reservations, for example). For content sites, a plugin could be as simple as an API that returns your latest blog posts or a specific answer from your database when asked. Not every site needs a plugin, but it’s something to consider if real-time interaction with your content is beneficial.
• Bing Chat and Edge integration: Microsoft announced that the same OpenAI plugins would be supported in Bing Chat (since it runs on GPT-4). This means your ChatGPT plugin could also work in Bing. Additionally, if you have a web service or data source, Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service has a feature called “Connectors” where enterprises connect internal websites or databases to an AI. That’s more for internal use, but it shows the trend: integration is key. If you make structured data or an API available, you might become part of these ecosystems. In the meantime, ensure your site works well in Bing’s context – e.g., enable Bing’s indexing and preview. When Bing Chat cites a source and the user hovers or clicks, it’s essentially showing a bit of your webpage. Optimize your meta tags (title, description) because Bing Chat might show those when linking to you.
• ChatGPT Product Search submission: As mentioned, ChatGPT now features a shopping mode where it lists products and even allows checkout. OpenAI has an official merchant portal where site owners can submit their product feeds to be included. If you run an e-commerce site, you should explore signing up at chatgpt.com/merchants or OpenAI’s merchant program It’s free to have your products show up, and OpenAI only takes a fee if sales are made via their Instant Checkout. By submitting a product feed (or ensuring your products are on a supported third-party feed like Shopify or Stripe’s network), you actively get your offerings into ChatGPT’s recommendations. This is a direct analog to Google Shopping feed submission, but for AI. It’s new and evolving, so keep an eye on OpenAI’s announcements.
• llm.txt (Emerging Standard): There’s discussion in the industry about a proposed llm.txt or similar file where you can list which large language models you allow to use your content. This is not widely adopted yet, but the idea is you might eventually be able to “submit” or notify models of your content availability through such a file. For now, it’s more of a theoretical note, but be aware of developments here as standards for AI crawlers evolve (similar to robots.txt but for model training usage).
• Scripting answers into pages (caution): Some have experimented with embedding a succinct answer in their page specifically to target AI extraction (kind of like old-school SEO hidden text, but not hidden – just a block that explicitly answers a question). For instance, a page might have an HTML comment or a structured data field that says “AI Summary: …”. Currently, there’s no evidence that ChatGPT or others look for an “AI summary” field on your page. They rely on the actual content. So don’t bother with gimmicky “hey ChatGPT, here’s my answer for you” text. Focus instead on making your actual content easily parseable (as discussed with structure and schema). The AI is quite capable of reading your page; you just need to write in a way that’s easy for it to interpret and quote.
• Voice assistant integration: AEO also touches voice search (Alexa, Google Assistant). While not the main topic here, note that those assistants often use featured snippets or schema (like Speakable schema for news). Implementing Speakable schema (for news sites) could potentially make your content the one that an assistant (or an AI reading aloud) picks to answer a question. As chatbots integrate voice (ChatGPT and Bing can now speak answers), having your content structured for voice consumption – short, declarative sentences – can help it be chosen.

By leveraging these integration points, you go from passively hoping the AI finds you to actively feeding it your information. It’s an advanced step, but for many businesses, it’s worth doing.

6. Monitoring and Iteration
Just like with regular SEO, you need to measure what’s working and adjust. The difference is, measuring AEO is a bit trickier because the analytics aren’t fully mature yet. Here’s how you can keep tabs:

• Analytics for referral traffic: ChatGPT’s external links include utm_source=chatgpt.com in the URL. That means if someone clicks from a ChatGPT result to your site, you’ll see chatgpt.com as the referrer (or in a UTM report). Set up a filter or segment in Google Analytics (or whatever analytics you use) to catch any traffic with utm_source=chatgpt.com. This will directly show you if ChatGPT-driven traffic is hitting your site. Similarly, Perplexity.ai referrals will show up with perplexity.ai as the referrer. Bing Chat traffic often appears as just Bing or with a specific identifier (sometimes queries come through as from “bing.vc” or a special Bing subdomain for the new chat). Track these. If you suddenly see an uptick from, say, bing.com with weird query parameters, it might be from Bing Chat.
• LLM analytics tools: New tools are emerging to specifically monitor AI visibility. For example, Adobe has introduced an LLM Optimizer dashboard that can show how often your brand is mentioned in AI answers and even track sentiment. Semrush’s Site Audit now flags if your site is blocking AI bots. Startups like Passionfruit and Skale (the one from which we quoted Perplexity tips) offer services focusing on Generative SEO/GEO. If budget permits, these can give deeper insight. But even without them, a lot can be gleaned manually: run queries on these AI platforms and see if/when your site appears.
• Perform periodic prompt tests: Think of a few representative queries relevant to your site. Every month, go to ChatGPT (with browsing enabled or via the new web search mode), Bing Chat, Google SGE, Perplexity, etc., and actually ask the questions. See who gets cited. If it’s not you, see who is showing up – analyze what they’re doing. Are their answers more direct? Is their domain more authoritative? Use this to adjust your strategy. Also, note any incorrect or outdated answers that appear – this might be an opportunity to create content to address that gap (and then you can say “I want the AI to use my accurate page instead of that outdated one”).
• Log file analysis: If you have access to server logs, monitor hits from AI crawlers. You’ll see user agents like GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Perplexity, etc. If you notice, for example, that GPTBot has never crawled you, something might be off in your robots settings or the bot hasn’t found your site yet (maybe you lack backlinks). If OAI-SearchBot is crawling a lot, that’s a good sign your site is being indexed for ChatGPT’s search feature. Log analysis can be geeky, but it’s the raw truth of what’s happening.
• Citation tracking: When your site does get cited by an AI, take note. Some SEO pros track this manually by reading AI answers. Others use tools: e.g., the GrowthRocket blog notes that Perplexity, ChatGPT, and SGE provide citations that reveal content visibility, and suggests keeping an eye on those to measure success. If you know a certain page of yours is often cited, you might expand on it or keep it extra fresh to maintain that position.
• Conversion and value: Interestingly, early data indicates that AI-driven traffic can be incredibly valuable. In one analysis, visitors from AI search platforms converted 23x better than regular search visitors. The volume might be lower now, but the quality is high – possibly because if a user goes through the trouble of clicking a cited source, they’re highly motivated. Keep an eye on whether the traffic you get from ChatGPT/Bing/SGE is engaging (low bounce, good time on page) and converting (sign-ups, purchases, etc.). Use that in your internal reporting to justify AEO efforts. It’s not just shiny new stuff – it can impact the bottom line.

With monitoring in place, you can iterate: tweak content, adjust schemas, build a few backlinks, then test again. AEO is new for everyone, so it requires a bit of experimentation and agility. The key is to stay informed (subscribe to SEO and AI newsletters, follow researchers on Twitter/X or LinkedIn) because the platforms are changing fast – what works on SGE this month could shift next month with a Gemini model update.

Real-World Perspective: Case Studies, Tools, and Pitfalls
Let’s ground this advice with some real-world insights and cautionary tales from the AEO frontier:

• Bing Optimization Success Story: One SEO professional shared a case where focusing on Bing led to immediate gains in ChatGPT visibility. He optimized pages for specific, long-tail queries (which Bing tends to favor), beefed up on-page content (as Bing’s algorithm is a bit more old-school SEO), and crucially, added FAQ schema to a few high-intent pages. The result? Within two days, those pages started appearing in ChatGPT’s cited answers for relevant queries. In fact, a client found his agency through ChatGPT because the bot had cited their blog – leading to a new business deal The takeaway here: don’t ignore Bing. If you’ve been “Google-only” in your SEO strategy, you might be leaving money on the table. As the SEO quipped, Bing is no longer just the second-place engine – with the OpenAI partnership, it’s “way more than that” now. Optimizing for Bing (indexing via Bing Webmaster, targeting Bing-friendly keywords, using schema) can pay dividends by getting you into ChatGPT and Windows Copilot results.
• The Cost of Blocking AI Crawlers: Several major publishers (NYTimes, CNN, etc.) have chosen to block GPTBot and other AI crawlers over concerns of content usage.While that’s a valid strategic choice for them (to negotiate or protect IP), it carries a trade-off. If you block these bots, AI will still answer questions about your content – but it will rely on someone else’s data or a summary from another site. For instance, if you block GPTBot, ChatGPT might still get information about your article from a user prompt or a third-party site quoting it, but you won’t be the cited source. You lose control over accuracy and credit. As one article pointed out, disallowing AI crawlers is like telling Google you don’t want to be in new search features. You might maintain control, but you sacrifice visibility. On the flip side, allowing your content to be learned and indexed by AI can set you up as the authority on a topic in that AI’s mind. It’s a new kind of gamble. Most businesses leaning into AEO are opting not to block – they want to be part of the conversation going forward.
• Conversion Impact Data: We mentioned the stat that AI-driven visitors convert much higher. Passionfruit’s analysis showed AI-sourced visitors converting 23x more than ordinary search visitors. This aligns with anecdotal reports: e.g., a user who comes via an AI recommendation is often later-stage in the funnel (they got a direct answer recommending “Site A’s product”), whereas a generic search visitor might just be browsing options. One of my clients in the finance space found that while the traffic from Bing Chat was only a few hundred visits, those visitors spent 3x longer on site and had an 8% conversion rate vs 1% from Google organic. So, the quality can be superb. It underscores why getting cited in an AI answer can be as valuable as ranking high in traditional SEO – sometimes more.
• SGE and E-E-A-T: Early observations of Google’s SGE (Search Generative Experience) indicate it favors authoritative, well-structured content. Pages that demonstrate experience and expertise (the E-E-A-T framework: Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) tend to be the ones chosen for citation. For example, Google’s AI might answer a medical query but cite a site with MD-reviewed content or high authority. This means all your classic SEO work to build authority – quality content, author bios with credentials, backlinks from reputable sites, consistent topical focus – also feeds into AEO. Ensure your content carries those trust signals (citing sources within your content, having up-to-date author pages, etc.). Google’s helpful content system and EEAT guidelines still apply; the AI is just another layer on top that extracts the answers. If anything, AI summaries amplify the importance of having distinctive, trustworthy insights on your pages – because the AI is looking for unique points it can attribute to someone. In one SEO experiment, brands that provided original research or unique examples found that SGE was more likely to include them, quoting their statistics or findings rather than a generic statement. So consider investing in content that stands out (studies, data, expert quotes) – it gives the AI something to latch onto as an “attributable nugget.”
• Tools for Implementation: On the practical side, a number of tools can ease AEO tasks:
  • CMS plugins: If you use WordPress, plugins like Rank Math SEO or Yoast can automate a lot (IndexNow integration, schema markup for FAQs/how-tos, etc.). There are also standalone IndexNow plugins if that’s all you need.
  • Crawling tools: Use Screaming Frog or Sitebulb to simulate how a bot (even a non-JS bot) sees your site Screaming Frog in text-mode can mimic GPTBot’s view. This helps find content that might be missing without JS, or pages that aren’t linked internally (which bots might not find).
  • Log analyzers: Tools like GoAccess or any log parser can filter your server logs for “GPTBot” or “Claude” to see crawl hits. Cloudflare users can use Cloudflare’s analytics to see bot traffic composition (Cloudflare even has a switch now to block known AI crawlers at the edge if you wanted – which you likely should not enable if AEO is your goal, but it’s interesting to note).
  • Webmaster tools: Obviously, Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are still your best friends for basic indexing issues. Bing’s tool, in particular, has a Fetch as Bingbot that you can use to see how your page appears to the crawler – helpful since Bing’s view will be similar to what Bing Chat and Perplexity get.
  • Adobe LLM Optimizer / Others: As mentioned, Adobe’s solution can automate discovery of where you stand in AI answers It’s likely enterprise-level (not cheap), but if you are working with big brands, worth looking into. There are also agencies specializing in AEO (NoGood, O8 Agency, etc.) publishing guides with actionable tips – sometimes including case studies of their own. Stay plugged into those resources.
• Pitfalls and Edge Cases:
  • JavaScript-heavy sites: We covered this, but it’s worth repeating as a pitfall: if your site relies on client-side rendering, you will be invisible to ChatGPT’s index. One of my colleagues discovered this painfully when an SPA site wasn’t getting any AI love – the content just wasn’t there for GPTBot. The solution was to implement pre-rendering for the sections of the site meant for public consumption.
  • Thin content / AI-generated content: Ironically, using AI to produce your content might hurt your chances. If your page is just a rehash of generic info (especially if AI-written without human value-add), Google’s systems might not rank it, and AI bots might ignore it as well. The future of AEO likely involves a feedback loop where AI will prefer citing content that has a human touch or originality (to avoid echoing itself). So avoid the trap of creating content farms hoping to feed the AI; quality beats quantity here.
  • Overusing schema incorrectly: Yes, we said use schema, but be careful. Don’t mark up non-FAQ content as FAQ just to force it – Google can penalize schema misuse. Also, if you have FAQ schema, ensure the questions are actually visible on the page (hidden FAQs for SEO are not a good idea).
  • Forgetting mobile and performance: Bing’s and Google’s algorithms still consider page experience. If your page loads slowly or isn’t mobile-friendly, it might rank lower, and thus not be seen by SGE or Bing Chat. Also, from a user perspective: if an AI cites you and a user clicks, then your site doesn’t work well on their phone, you’ve lost that trust. So keep up with Core Web Vitals and responsive design – AEO doesn’t override basic web best practices.
  • Language and localization: AI models in English predominantly cite English content. If you operate in multiple languages, you’ll want your content indexed in those languages on the respective search engines. For example, Bing’s Chat in French will cite French sources if available. Use hreflang tags, separate sitemaps for each locale, etc. One edge case: if you have content in a less-covered language, you might find your content more likely to be cited because there’s simply fewer options for the AI to choose from. That can be an opportunity (less competition in AI answers).
  • Legal and sensitive content: AI platforms have their own content policies. If your site deals with YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics like health or finance, realize that AI might be extra cautious. Ensure your content is well-vetted and accurate. There have been instances of AI models avoiding citing certain sites if they seem sketchy or user-generated (for fear of misinformation). Expertise really matters here – if you’re in a sensitive niche, double down on citing sources and demonstrating credibility in your content, so the AI has confidence choosing you.

In essence, treat AI chat visibility as a natural extension of SEO, with a dash of PR and data management. You want to be seen everywhere knowledge is being aggregated: search indexes, knowledge graphs, data sets, and real-time answers.

Impact on SEO, AEO, and the Future of Visibility
Implementing the steps in this guide will have multifaceted benefits:

• For traditional SEO: Many of these optimizations (structured data, content clarity, faster indexing) directly boost your organic search performance. You might see improved featured snippets, higher Bing rankings, and more traffic even before considering AI chats. It’s not an either/or – good SEO and good AEO go hand in hand. For instance, by adding FAQs for AEO, you might grab a People Also Ask question on Google, driving traffic in the meantime.
• For Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): You position your site to not just rank, but to be referenced. This is a slightly different mindset. Success isn’t just a click; sometimes it’s your information being delivered with your name next to it. That can be a win even if the user doesn’t click through immediately – it builds brand familiarity and authority. Over time, we might measure “share of voice” in AI answers, similar to how we track market share. By following these strategies, you’re aiming to maximize your share of that AI-generated voice.
• Visibility in LLM-based platforms: When Gemini rolls out widely in Google’s products, or when the next iteration of ChatGPT’s model comes (say GPT-5), having been lenient and welcoming to AI crawlers means those models will have learned from your site. It’s a long-term play. It’s akin to investing in content now to rank later – except you’re investing in being part of the AI’s training. If you were to block everything, you might protect your content short-term, but you risk obscurity if AI-driven search overtakes traditional search. The trend from Cloudflare’s data is telling: since AI overviews launched, some sites are seeing notable drops in Google referral traffic. People are getting answers straight from the AI. To adapt, you need to be inside those answers. Otherwise, you may get cut out of the loop.
• User trust and brand authority: There is also a branding aspect. If users repeatedly see your site cited by ChatGPT or Bing or Google’s AI, that implicitly boosts your reputation. I’ve had clients say, “We want to be the site that the AI recommends.” Because being recommended by an ostensibly neutral AI carries weight – it’s like a third-party endorsement. That can then feed back into traditional SEO via branded searches (users specifically searching for your site after hearing about it from an AI). We might even see AI citations become as coveted as page-one rankings are today.
• Content strategy shifts: Knowing that AI often takes only a part of your content (the most relevant part) and may not send a click, you might worry, “Am I giving away the milk for free?” This is similar to the featured snippet dilemma. But one way to look at it: if the AI is going to answer the user’s question anyway, better it use your content and name than someone else’s. You might lose some direct traffic, but if your snippet is there, users can still click for depth, and your brand gains recognition. Plus, as noted, those who do click are highly engaged. For many businesses, being the trusted answer is as important as getting the site visit. It positions you as a leader, which can have myriad downstream benefits (from links to conversions later on).
• Adaptability: By engaging with AEO now, you’re essentially future-proofing your SEO strategy. Search is clearly evolving. As one marketer put it, “optimizing for AI search is now the difference between being cited in answers or disappearing below the fold”. We’re in a transitional period where both classic SERPs and AI SERPs coexist. Those who excel in both will dominate visibility. Those who stick to just “ten blue links” SEO may find themselves edged out as users increasingly turn to conversational search interfaces.

To boil it down: the impact of doing this right is more visibility in more places, and often for queries you might not have been getting via traditional search. You might find your content being referenced for long-tail, natural language queries that no one was typing into Google but are now asking ChatGPT. It opens a new long-tail. And quantitatively, it can lead to sustained (if not higher) traffic and better converting visitors as AI adoption grows.

Common Mistakes and Edge Cases
Let’s recap some common mistakes to avoid and special scenarios to be aware of:

• Assuming “no submit form = no control”: Some webmasters shrug and say “I can’t submit to AI, so I’ll just wait.” This passivity is a mistake. You have influence, even if indirect. By proactively implementing the tactics here, you are essentially submitting your site by proxy (through Bing, through schema, through crawlability). Not taking action is the surest way to fall behind more proactive competitors.
• Blocking or throttling important bots unintentionally: Maybe you set up a firewall rule to block “unknown” user agents or you rate-limit scrapers aggressively. If that catches OAI-SearchBot or GPTBot, you’ve cut off your nose to spite your face. Make sure any anti-bot measures (Cloudflare settings, Wordfence, etc.) are configured to allow well-known AI crawlers. This is new, so your security tools might not have them in default allow lists. Manually add them if needed.
• Neglecting content quality and correctness: This is huge for AEO. If an AI pulls a sentence from your page and it’s outdated or inaccurate, users (and the AI feedback loops) will trust you less. Always keep your answers up to date. If prices or stats change, update those pages before they mislead someone via an AI citation. Also, add dates to content where relevant (“As of 2025, the value is X”) so that if an AI does use it, it has context. AI models sometimes state something like “According to Source.com (2023)…” – if your page has a clear date or version, it helps them.
• Overlooking the power of internal search and site structure: Users might ask AI about a detail buried in your site. If your site search is poor, the AI might not find it. Interestingly, some integrations allow AI to use a site’s internal search (e.g., an enterprise chatbot might have access to your site search). Optimize your site’s search and navigation structure. It’s indirectly useful: if content is well-organized, it tends to rank and get cited more. Also, use internal links lavishly to connect related answers on your site – it improves crawlability (bots finding all your Q&As) and helps AI pick up the full context if it crawls multiple pages.
• Expecting immediate, guaranteed results: You might do all this and next week not see any change. AEO is an emerging field; sometimes you won’t know it’s working until that one day your site is suddenly quoted by Bing or traffic from ChatGPT spikes. Don’t get discouraged. A lot of this is cumulative groundwork. And sometimes, just like with SEO, you’ll need to iterate and troubleshoot. Maybe Bing indexed you but ChatGPT still doesn’t cite you – why? Perhaps your content isn’t hitting the mark; maybe the competition’s answer is shorter or more direct. Be ready to refine content itself, not just the technical stuff.
• Edge case – Non-public or paywalled content: If your most valuable content is behind a login or paywall, AI won’t see it (unless you have arrangements like Google’s IP can view for news, but AI crawlers typically don’t). One strategy could be releasing a “teaser” or summary publicly that AI can index, which then prompts users to log in for full details. Google’s SGE has been known to not show content that it can’t also show as a normal result (to avoid showing something users then can’t access). So be mindful: a strict paywall might mean AI simply ignores that source. Decide what you might open up to ensure you’re part of the conversation.
• Edge case – Misattribution or combined citations: Sometimes AI answers mush together info from multiple sources and list them all. Your quote might appear, but with two other sites listed too. This happened to one of my clients – they were thrilled to see their sentence in an SGE answer, but the citation had 3 websites, and they were second in the list. The user could click any of them. How to handle this? Try to make your content distinct. If you’re saying the same thing as everyone else, the AI might treat it as interchangeable. Add unique insights or examples so that if the AI uses your phrasing, it has to cite you (because no one else said it that way). This is a new kind of content differentiation strategy.
• Edge case – Negative or unwanted context: Be aware that AI might cite your site in a negative context too. For example, “According to reviews on Site.com, this product fails after a month.” If that’s from your forum or user reviews, that could be surfaced. It’s the double-edged sword of being included. You can’t really control how the AI uses the info if it’s factual. The best defense is to ensure the narrative around your brand is positive and accurate across the web (classic PR and reputation management, now extending to AI).

Short Summary & Actionable Checklist

To wrap up, here’s a concise checklist of steps to make your website visible to ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini/SGE, Perplexity, Claude, Bing Chat, and beyond. Use this as a reference to implement AEO on your site starting today:

• Open your site to AI crawlers: Update your robots.txt to allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot, and Bingbot (along with Googlebot). Don’t block the new “Google-Extended” user agent – keep your content eligible for Bard/Gemini training.
• Ensure rapid indexing on Bing (and Google): Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console. Submit your XML sitemap to both. Implement the IndexNow API for instant crawl notifications – you can use a plugin or a simple script. This helps Bing (and thus ChatGPT/Perplexity) pick up new or updated pages within hours. Likewise, use Google’s Indexing API for jobs/live streams if relevant, and otherwise rely on sitemaps + request indexing for important new pages.
• Implement relevant Schema markup: Add FAQPage schema for common questions, HowTo schema for guides, Article/Blog schema for articles, Product schema for e-commerce pages, etc. Structured data makes your content easier for AI to parse and quote. Verify schema with Google’s Rich Results Test to avoid errors. Proper schema usage can directly lead to being cited in AI summaries (e.g., FAQ answers pulled into SGE).
• Write AI-friendly content: Structure your content to be concise and answer-oriented. Use descriptive headings (H2s/H3s) that are questions or clear topics, followed immediately by a crisp answer or definition. Then elaborate. Aim for a summary in the first 1-2 sentences of each section – this is what AI will grab. Use bullet points or numbered steps for processes (easy for AI to enumerate). Essentially, think like an AI: it wants the nugget of information that directly addresses the query.
• Leverage Bing-focused SEO: Don’t neglect Bing ranking factors. Incorporate your target keywords naturally (Bing still likes exact matches a bit more than Google). Earn some relevant backlinks (Bing values relevance of links highly). If you’ve been strong in Google but weak in Bing, audit what differences might be – sometimes it’s as simple as meta keywords (Bing still looks at them slightly) or having a better social media presence (Bing uses social signals). Improving your Bing SEO will pay off in Bing Chat and ChatGPT’s citations.
• Allow and encourage brand mentions in knowledge sources: Create or update your Wikipedia page if applicable, contribute expert content on forums or Q&A sites (with your identity or site cited), and generally cultivate an off-site presence. These third-party signals increase the likelihood that AI systems view your brand as authoritative. (E.g., a well-referenced Wikipedia article about your niche that links to you can cause the AI to pick up info and attribute it to you.)
• Consider direct integrations: If relevant, build a ChatGPT plugin exposing some of your content or tools, so ChatGPT users can pull info from your site on demand. E.g., if you have a database of stats, a plugin could let ChatGPT query it. Also, e-commerce sites should join ChatGPT’s merchant / shopping program to get products listed in AI shopping results Watch for Bing plugin integration as well. These steps require developer effort but can set you apart early.
• Monitor your presence: Track referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and Bing in analytics. Use Search Console to watch for any drop in clicks/impressions that might coincide with SGE rollouts (indicating traffic moving to AI answers). Periodically search common queries on AI platforms to see if you appear – adjust content if not. Check server logs for AI bot activity to ensure they’re crawling your site regularly (if not, get your content linked elsewhere to be discovered).
• Keep content fresh and authoritative: Update key pages frequently with current facts (AI values freshness – models and RAG systems prioritize newer info for many queries). Add internal references to indicate dates or version numbers. Continue to build E-E-A-T: showcase author expertise, cite sources within your content, and maintain a high content quality bar. Both Google’s and OpenAI’s systems are tuned to favor trustworthy, expert content.
• Avoid common pitfalls: Don’t inadvertently block AI bots via robots or firewalls – double-check your settings. Deliver critical content in HTML (server-rendered) to ensure AI crawlers can see it. Use schema honestly and don’t spam it. And importantly, don’t panic about AI cannibalizing your traffic – focus on being part of the answers, and the traffic and conversions will follow in new ways

By following this guide and checklist, you’ll position your site to ride the wave of AI-driven search rather than be drowned out by it. In this new era, it’s not about gaming algorithms with hacks – it’s about making your content accessible, understandable, and authoritative for both humans and AI. There’s no “Submit URL to ChatGPT” button, but through smart technical SEO and content strategy, you’re effectively waving your hand and saying, “Hey ChatGPT and friends, here’s the best answer – take it from my site!”. Optimize for that, and you’ll reap the benefits of both worlds: the old search and the new.