ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot optimization
Each AI assistant finds businesses through its own crawler and index, and they often recommend different businesses for the same question. Cited optimizes for all of them at once: we open each engine's access to your site, make your facts consistent, write pages they can quote, and re-run your customers' questions every month to show what changed.
Engine by engine
| Engine | How it finds you | The first thing to check |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT search | OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot crawler; OpenAI says sites that opt out won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers | Your robots.txt and host or firewall settings allow OAI-SearchBot |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot, which Perplexity recommends allowing if you want to appear in its results | Same as above, for PerplexityBot |
| Google AI Overviews, AI Mode and Gemini | Google's regular search index; Google says no special markup is needed, but a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet | Search Console indexing, and an accurate Google Business Profile |
| Microsoft Copilot | Bing's index; Bing Webmaster Tools reports which of your pages are cited in Copilot | Bing Webmaster Tools set up with your sitemap submitted |
Sources: OpenAI crawler docs, Perplexity crawler docs, Google Search Central.
Why one engine isn't enough
On October 29, 2026 we asked ChatGPT and Perplexity the same question: best med spa for Botox in Rice Village, Houston. ChatGPT named four businesses and Perplexity named five. Only one appeared in both answers. The same day, for the Houston Heights, two of five overlapped. A business can be the first name on one engine and absent from the next, which is why we measure all five major engines and not just the one you happen to use.
What we change
- Access: robots.txt, host and firewall settings so every engine's search crawler can read your public pages, plus a sitemap submitted to Google and Bing.
- Facts: one consistent version of your name, address, phone, hours, services and people across your site and the listings each engine draws on.
- Pages: a page per service and location that answers the questions customers actually ask, written so a sentence can be quoted on its own, with structured data.
- Evidence: honest reviews that mention specific services, and relevant third-party mentions.
- Measurement: your priority questions re-run monthly on every engine, dated and quoted.
What doesn't work
Buying reviews, stuffing pages with keywords, or paying anyone who claims they can "submit" you to ChatGPT. The engines don't sell placement. Special files such as llms.txt are cheap to add but aren't a switch; Google says you don't need them for its AI features.
For a deeper explanation, read how the AI engines decide who to recommend, or see what's included in the AI Visibility Audit.