AI Search
How people now use ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity to find businesses.
By the Vulo Labs team · Last updated
How do AI assistants like ChatGPT decide which websites to mention?
AI assistants mention websites they can crawl and understand. They favor pages with a clear, direct answer near the top, logical headings, FAQs, cited facts, structured data and strong trust signals such as an About page, author details and consistent brand naming. If AI crawlers are blocked in robots.txt, the assistant cannot read the page at all.
On this page
What changed
More people ask AI assistants to recommend businesses and answer questions instead of typing queries into a search box. The answers cite or paraphrase websites they can understand.
How assistants learn about you
They read your pages, your structured data and signals of trust such as an About page, a Contact page, author information and consistent naming. If those are thin or contradictory, the assistant may describe you wrongly or not at all.
Make it easy to read
Put a short, direct answer near the top of key pages. Use clear headings, short paragraphs and a FAQ. Back claims with sources. An llms.txt file is optional: Google Search does not use it, though some other tools read it.
Do not block the readers
Check robots.txt so important AI crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot are not blocked by accident, unless you deliberately want that.
Key takeaways
- Answer questions clearly and early
- Strengthen trust signals
- Add llms.txt and FAQ schema
- Check crawler access
AI Search: frequently asked questions
The main ones are GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot (Perplexity) and Google-Extended (Google's AI products). Each can be allowed or blocked in robots.txt.
No. Google says normal SEO best practices apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode, and no special markup or AI files are required. Clear, helpful, well-structured content is what counts.
No. Organic AI answers cannot be bought. You can only improve the signals AI systems use to choose and trust sources.
Sources and further reading
Be understood by ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity.