How to get found by ChatGPT and AI search, not just Google
People now put questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers that they used to type into a search box. Sometimes the answer names a source and sometimes it does not. Either way, a business these systems cannot read or describe correctly gets left out of the conversation.
There is a lot of confident advice on this, much of it untested. This post separates what is well established from what is still a guess, and ends with a check you can run in ten minutes.
Three acronyms, one underlying job
SEO is ranking in search results for what people type. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is being the concise source for a direct question such as “who does cataract surgery in Coimbatore”. GEO, generative engine optimisation, is how AI systems describe your business, including in answers that never link to you.
They overlap more than the acronyms suggest. Pages that answer a clear question in plain language and are easy for a machine to read tend to do well in all three.
What is well established
Machines can only use what they can fetch. Content that exists in the HTML the server sends is read reliably; content that appears only after heavy JavaScript runs may be missed. Clear headings, short direct answers and one topic per page help both people and crawlers.
Structured data, written as schema.org markup in JSON-LD, tells search engines who you are and what a page is about. Google documents it for organisations, articles and breadcrumbs. One caution: Google cut back FAQ rich results in 2023, so add FAQ markup for clarity, not for a visual boost in results.
What is still unproven
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file that summarises a site for AI systems. We publish one on this site because it costs almost nothing, but we are not aware of a major AI provider confirming that it uses these files to answer questions. Treat it as optional, not as a ranking lever.
The same applies to any promise of a trick that makes an assistant quote you. Nobody outside these companies knows exactly how the answers are assembled, and the systems change.
Make claims a machine can check
AI systems tend to trust what several sources agree on. Keep the basic facts about your business identical across your website, Google Business Profile and social profiles: name, address, services, year established, contact details.
Prefer specific, checkable statements over slogans. “Eye hospital in Peelamedu, Coimbatore, performing corneal transplants” gives a system something to match; “a new vision for care” gives it nothing.
A ten-minute check
1. Open your page, choose View Source, and confirm your main text is in the HTML. 2. Run the page through Google's Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator and fix errors. 3. Ask three assistants “what is [your business]?” and “who offers [your service] in [your city]?” and write down what is wrong. 4. Check robots.txt does not block crawlers you want, and look at Search Console to confirm your pages are indexed. 5. Compare your facts across your profiles.
If an answer is wrong, fix the source it probably came from, such as an old directory listing, rather than arguing with the assistant. Repeat monthly.
What this site does
designedbyarth.com serves pre-rendered pages, structured data for the organisation, articles, breadcrumbs and FAQs, a sitemap and an llms.txt file. Whether any of that gets us quoted by an assistant is not something we can promise, and we would be wary of anyone who does.
Sources and further reading
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO aims to rank pages in search results. GEO aims to shape how generative AI systems describe your business, including in answers that do not link to you. The practical work overlaps heavily.
Does llms.txt work?
It is a proposal, and we are not aware of a major AI provider confirming that it reads these files. It is cheap to add, so some sites do, but do not rely on it.
Can I stop AI tools from using my site?
You can ask crawlers to stay away using robots.txt, and several AI companies publish the crawler names they respect. This is a request, not a guarantee, and blocking them also removes you from those tools' answers.
Do I need to rewrite my site for AI?
Usually not. Clear pages that answer real questions, with accurate facts and sensible markup, serve people, search engines and AI systems at once.
How do I know if ChatGPT mentions my business?
Ask it directly, with the questions a customer would ask, and repeat monthly. Answers vary between runs, so look for patterns rather than single results.
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