AI SEO
What is AI SEO? A practical guide to getting recommended by ChatGPT, Claude and Google AI
AI SEO explained in plain English: how ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews choose sources, and the steps that get your brand mentioned and cited.
Key takeaways
- AI SEO is the work of getting your brand mentioned, cited and recommended by AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
- Assistants use two sources: what they learned in training, and what they find with live web search. You need to work on both.
- The foundations are the same as good SEO: crawlable pages, clear answers, structured data, and other trusted sites talking about you.
- Track it with a fixed list of buyer prompts, checked every month across every assistant your customers use.
AI SEO (also called generative engine optimisation, GEO, or LLM SEO) is the practice of making your brand easy for AI assistants to find, understand, trust and recommend. When someone asks ChatGPT for "the best perfume shop in Dubai" or asks Claude to compare project management tools, AI SEO is what decides whether your name comes up.
It doesn't replace SEO. It builds on it. But it changes what "ranking" means: instead of ten blue links, there's one answer, a handful of cited sources, and sometimes a single recommendation.
How AI assistants decide what to say
Every assistant draws on two kinds of knowledge.
Training data. Large language models learn from a huge snapshot of the web, books and other text. If your brand was described consistently across many trusted sources before the model's cut-off date, the model "knows" you. If it wasn't, the model may not mention you at all, or may get details wrong.
Live retrieval. ChatGPT search, Claude's web search, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews can fetch pages in real time. They search an index, read a few pages, and write an answer with citations. Here, your current website and what other sites say about you right now matter most.
| Training data | Live retrieval | |
|---|---|---|
| What it uses | Text the model learned before its cut-off | Pages fetched at the moment of the question |
| How fast changes show | Months, at the next model update | Days or weeks |
| What helps | Consistent brand facts across many trusted sites | Crawlable, clear, current pages and citations |
| Example | "Who is V Perfumes?" answered from memory | "Best oud perfume shops in Dubai" with sources |
- 1QuestionA buyer asks "best oud perfume shop in Dubai?"
- 2SearchThe assistant runs several searches for the topic
- 3ReadIt opens a handful of pages it can crawl and parse
- 4WeighIt compares what different sources say about each brand
- 5AnswerIt names a few brands and cites the pages it trusted
Notice that your website appears in only one of those steps. The rest is about whether the assistant can reach you, and what the rest of the web says about you.
The five pillars of AI SEO
1. Let the right crawlers in
AI companies run separate crawlers for training, search and user requests. OpenAI has GPTBot (training), OAI-SearchBot (search) and ChatGPT-User (pages a user asks it to open). Anthropic has ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User. Perplexity has PerplexityBot and Perplexity-User. Google uses its normal Googlebot for AI Overviews, while Google-Extended only controls Gemini training.
Check your robots.txt and your firewall or CDN bot settings. Many sites block AI search crawlers by accident, then wonder why they're never cited.
2. Write answer-first pages
AI tools quote passages, not whole pages. Put a direct answer to the main question in the first few sentences, then go deeper. Use short sections with clear headings, one idea per section, and include specifics: prices, sizes, dates, steps and comparisons. A section that makes sense on its own is a section that can be quoted.
3. Make your brand an entity
Assistants need to be sure who you are. State your name, what you do, where you operate and who runs the business the same way everywhere: your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and press coverage. Add Organization and Person schema that links those profiles together with sameAs.
4. Get mentioned where AI looks
AI answers lean heavily on third-party sources: review sites, Reddit threads, comparison articles, industry publications and YouTube. If the only site saying good things about you is your own, you're unlikely to be recommended. Digital PR, genuine reviews and helpful community participation all feed AI visibility.
ChatGPT
Which perfume shops in Dubai sell authentic niche fragrances?
Several retailers are well regarded. Shoppers often mention stores with authenticity guarantees, testers in store and clear return policies. Reviews highlight a few names repeatedly...
- retailer website
- Google reviews
- Reddit thread
- fragrance blog
5. Measure with prompts, not just rankings
Build a list of 20 to 50 prompts your buyers would really ask, such as "best Shopify SEO consultant in Dubai" or "Venngage vs Canva for infographics". Run them every month in each assistant and record whether you're mentioned, cited or recommended, and which competitors appear instead. Watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and claude.ai in your analytics too.
AI SEO for each assistant
The foundations are shared, but each assistant has its quirks:
- ChatGPT relies on its own search crawler plus third-party search results, so healthy Bing indexing is a sensible baseline. See my ChatGPT SEO guide.
- Claude is popular with professionals and developers and rewards precise, well-sourced pages. More on my Claude SEO service.
- Google AI Overviews and AI Mode mostly cite pages that already rank in Google, so classic SEO stays essential. See Google AI Overviews SEO.
- Perplexity cites heavily and favours fresh, specific content. See Perplexity SEO.
What I see in AI visibility audits
When I audit a brand's AI visibility, the same patterns come up again and again:
- The brand is described from an old source. An outdated directory listing or an old press article becomes the "fact" assistants repeat, including old addresses, prices or product ranges.
- Competitors win on third-party pages, not their own sites. The brands that get recommended are usually the ones named in comparison articles and review threads.
- A CDN setting quietly blocks AI search crawlers. The site looks fine in Google but is invisible to one or more assistants.
- Product facts live in images. Specs, prices and notes shown only in banners can't be quoted.
- Answers differ by assistant. A brand can be recommended by Perplexity and missing from Claude, which almost always points to a crawl or index-coverage gap.
An AI visibility scorecard you can copy
Use a simple sheet like this for each prompt you track. Score each assistant monthly and the trend tells you whether your work is landing.
| Prompt | Assistant | Mentioned | Cited with link | Position | Competitors named |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| best shopify seo consultant dubai | ChatGPT | Yes | No | 3rd | Agency A, Agency B |
| best shopify seo consultant dubai | Perplexity | Yes | Yes | 1st | Agency A |
| best shopify seo consultant dubai | Claude | No | No | – | Agency B, Agency C |
| shopify seo checklist | Google AI Overview | – | Yes | 2nd source | Shopify Help Center |
The rows above are an illustrative example of the format, not real results.
Common AI SEO mistakes
- Blocking AI search bots by accident. A blanket "block all AI" rule in your CDN can remove you from AI answers entirely.
- Chasing tricks. Hidden prompts, keyword stuffing and fake reviews get filtered out, and can damage trust in your brand.
- Ignoring the rest of the web. Your own site is only one source. Reviews, press and forums carry a lot of weight.
- Measuring only traffic. Many AI answers mention you without a click. Track mentions and citations as well as visits.
Where to start
If you do one thing this month, check what the assistants say about you. Ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity five questions a customer would ask, and note who they recommend. That list of competitors is your AI SEO roadmap.