How to appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews

How AI assistants decide whom to cite

Assistants with Internet access (ChatGPT with search, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews) do something like this: they rephrase the question, retrieve pages from a search engine or their own index, extract the most useful passages and compose an answer with a few sources. When they do not use search, they answer from what they learned in training, where widely mentioned brands carry weight.

Two fronts follow from this: being retrievable and useful (your website) and being known and mentioned (your brand in other sources). The first depends largely on how your website is built (accessible HTML, performance, structured data); the second is brand and content work.

Six steps to improve your presence

1. A solid SEO base. Indexing, speed, clear structure and internal links. If the search engine cannot find you, neither can the assistant.
2. Define your customers' questions. List how they would ask at each stage ("which company do you recommend for…", "how much does… cost", "difference between…").
3. Answer first. Open each page with a 40-60 word summary that answers the question, and then expand with tables, lists and examples. It is the format that is most easily extracted.
4. Include concrete, verifiable information: reference prices, timelines, steps, requirements and comparisons. Models cite the specific more than the generic.
5. Structured data and brand entity. Organization, Service, Article, FAQ and Person schemas; the same name and description on your site and your profiles; author pages.
6. External mentions. Sector directories, media, collaborations, reviews and communities where your company is discussed in context.

The technical side: what to check on your site

Types of content that tend to be cited

How to measure whether it works

• A fixed set of questions (40-60) tested every month in several assistants, recording whether you appear, how and which sources they cite.
• Referral traffic from assistant domains in your analytics.
• Enquiries with clues: ask in the form "how did you hear about us?" to capture "an AI recommended you".
• Search Console for impressions and clicks on answer pages.

AI answers vary between runs: measure the trend with repeated samples, not with a single test.

What to avoid

• Promises of a guaranteed "position 1 in ChatGPT": nobody controls those answers.
• Mass-generated content without information of your own: systems reward what is useful and specific.
• Structured data that does not match what is visible on the page.
• Hiding text or manipulating content for models: it can lead to penalties.

If your website needs technical adjustments (performance, structured data, accessible HTML), tell us about your case.

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