How to Get Your Brand Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews

Growthclan Team · October 15, 2026

Getting cited by an AI assistant is not luck. Assistants choose sources they can retrieve, understand and trust. This playbook walks through the steps we use in our GEO consulting work, in the order that usually pays off fastest.

If you are new to the topic, start with what GEO is.

Step 1: Find the questions that matter

Do not optimise for “AI” in general. Optimise for the 20–50 questions your buyers actually ask:

• Category: “What is the best [category] for [segment]?”
• Comparison: “[You] vs [competitor]”, “alternatives to [competitor]”
• Problem: “How do I [job your product does]?”
• Commercial: “How much does [service] cost?”, “Should I hire an agency or do it in-house?”

Sources for these: sales call notes, support tickets, “People also ask” boxes, Reddit and community threads, and the follow-up questions assistants suggest themselves.

Step 2: Record a baseline

Run every prompt across ChatGPT (with search), Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Copilot and Google (AI Overviews / AI Mode). For each answer, note:

• Are you mentioned? In what position?
• Is the description accurate (category, pricing model, audience)?
• Which competitors appear?
• Which URLs are cited? This list is gold: it tells you exactly which sources each assistant trusts for your topic.

Repeat monthly on the same prompts. Single answers vary; trends do not lie.

Step 3: Make sure assistants can read you

• In robots.txt, allow the search and user agents you want to be cited by — for example OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User. Decide separately about training crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and the Google-Extended control.
• Check that key pages render their main content in the HTML response. Fetch a page with curl and look for your headline and answer text; if they are missing, AI crawlers that do not run JavaScript will not see them.
• Make sure your pages are indexed by Google and Bing. Live AI search frequently builds on traditional search indexes.
• Optionally add an llms.txt file that points models to your most important pages.

Step 4: Write citation-ready content

For each priority question, have one page that answers it better than anything else on the web — and makes the answer easy to extract.

• Answer first. The first two sentences under a heading should answer the heading’s question on their own.
• Use precise, checkable facts. Numbers, dates, prices, specifications, named methods. Cite your sources; research on GEO found that adding citations, quotations and statistics measurably increased visibility in generated answers.
• Structure for extraction. Descriptive H2/H3 headings phrased as questions, short paragraphs, numbered steps, comparison tables and a FAQ section.
• Be honest in comparisons. Balanced “X vs Y” pages that acknowledge where a competitor is a better fit are more likely to be trusted and quoted than one-sided ones.
• Keep it current. Show a visible “updated” date and refresh facts regularly; assistants favour fresh information for time-sensitive questions.

Step 5: Make your entity consistent

Assistants cross-check what they read. Inconsistent facts lead to hedged or wrong answers.

• Write one canonical description of your company — what you do, for whom, where — and use it on your site, LinkedIn, directories, marketplaces and review platforms.
• Add Organization structured data with your name, logo, address, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles. Add Service, Product and FAQPage markup where relevant.
• Fix outdated information wherever it lives: old pricing pages, stale directory listings, press releases with retired product names.

Step 6: Get mentioned where assistants look

Go back to the cited URLs from Step 2. Typically you will find:

• “Best [category]” listicles and comparison sites
• Review platforms relevant to your market
• Community threads (Reddit, specialist forums)
• Industry publications and newsletters
• Documentation, tutorials and open-source projects

Earn a genuine presence on those sources: pitch data or expert commentary, request inclusion with evidence, encourage reviews from real customers and take part in communities as a helpful expert. This is digital PR, aimed with data.

Step 7: Track results and connect them to revenue

• Re-run the prompt set monthly and report share of voice against competitors.
• In analytics, segment referral traffic from AI assistants (chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com and others).
• Add “How did you hear about us?” with an “AI assistant (ChatGPT, Perplexity…)” option to your lead forms. Many AI-influenced buyers convert later through branded search or direct visits.

Common mistakes

• Blocking AI search crawlers by accident with a blanket robots.txt rule or a bot-protection setting.
• Hiding key information in PDFs, images or JavaScript-only widgets.
• Publishing dozens of generic AI-written articles that say nothing new. Assistants have no reason to quote them.
• Trying to manipulate answers with hidden text or prompt-injection tricks. It is fragile and can backfire.

Want help?

Our GEO consulting team runs the baseline across assistants, prioritises the gaps that cost you the most recommendations and tracks your AI share of voice every month — built on solid SEO foundations.