Get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, not just ranked
- Crawler access checked vendor by vendor
- Pages rewritten to be quotable and sourced
- Structured data that matches the page
- A monthly citation panel, not guesses
What changed
Search answers now come from Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Copilot, Gemini and Claude. Each one fetches pages, picks passages that answer the question and links to some of them.
The good news is that the work is familiar. Google says there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode": a page that is indexed, crawlable and eligible for a snippet can be used. What changes is the emphasis: crawler access for each AI vendor's search bot, sentences that can be lifted on their own, and an entity (your business, your authors) that the engines can recognise. Our practical GEO guide covers the evidence.
What we do
Crawler access
We check robots.txt and your CDN or firewall rules for each AI vendor's search crawler, and confirm in the logs that your key pages are fetched. See AI crawlers and robots.txt.Quotable content
Answer-first openings, specific and sourced statements, tables for comparisons and short FAQ answers on the pages that matter.Structured data parity
Organization, Article, Service and FAQPage markup that says exactly what the visible page says, nothing more.Entity and author signals
Consistent business facts across your site and profiles, and named authors on your articles.Citation-worthy pages
Comparison, pricing-driver and how-to pages that answer the research questions your buyers ask AI assistants.Measurement
AI referrals in GA4, Search Console trends and a monthly citation panel, reported on one page.Measurement
- GA4: the default "AI Assistant" channel plus a custom channel group for AI referrers, so you see landing pages and conversions, not just totals.
- Search Console: Google reports AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the normal Performance report under the "Web" search type; we track the pages we changed. See our Search Console guide.
- A citation panel: 20 prompts your buyers would ask, run on the same day each month on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode, with the cited URLs recorded.
- Crawler checks: your server or CDN logs, to confirm new pages are fetched by the AI search crawlers.
The method is described in measuring AI search.
How we work with you
Audit
Crawler access, content, structured data and entity signals reviewed, with a prioritised list of fixes and a first citation panel as the baseline.Implementation
We make the fixes: robots.txt and CDN rules, page rewrites with your team, structured data, author pages and measurement set-up.Monthly
The citation panel, AI referral reporting, and the next pages to improve, every month.What we did on our own site
We apply the same rules to impingesolutions.com. As of October 2026 our robots.txt allows all crawlers, on purpose; our llms.txt and llms-full.txt are generated from the site's own pages; new articles carry named authors and dates; and FAQ structured data is built from the text on the page. Our guide to SEO content that ranks and gets cited is the writing standard we follow.
What we will not do
The same rules apply to every AI project we take on. They are the reason some projects end with a smaller scope, and a few with a recommendation to wait.
- Mass-produce AI-written pages to chase queries: search engines treat scaled content made to manipulate rankings as spam.
- Write fake reviews or testimonials, or show crawlers different content from visitors (cloaking).
- Sell an "AI text file" or special markup as a shortcut to citations.
- Put an agent into production that acts without a person who can approve, stop and undo what it does.
- Train or fine-tune a model on your data, or send it to a provider that does, without your written consent.
- Publish AI-generated text on your site or send it to your customers without a person reviewing it first.
Frequently asked questions
Can you guarantee that ChatGPT or Google will cite my site?
No. Nobody controls which sources an AI engine cites. We can make your pages crawlable, quotable and unambiguous about who you are, and measure citations every month so you can see what changes.
Do I need special markup or an AI text file?
No. Google states there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that you do not need new machine-readable files or markup for them. Structured data still helps when it matches the visible page, and an llms.txt file is cheap hygiene, not a ranking factor.
Is AI search optimization different from SEO?
It is SEO done properly, plus attention to what answer engines need: crawler access for each AI vendor's search bot, passages that can be quoted on their own, consistent facts about your business, and a measurement routine for citations.
Should we block AI crawlers?
Decide separately for training crawlers and search crawlers. Blocking a training crawler such as GPTBot does not remove you from that vendor's search answers; blocking its search crawler does. Our own policy is to allow all crawlers.
How do you measure AI search visibility?
With GA4's AI Assistant channel and a custom channel group for AI referrers, Search Console, crawler checks in your server or CDN logs, and a monthly panel of prompts run on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode.
Request an AI visibility audit
We will check crawler access, your most important pages and how AI engines describe your business today.
