1. Direct answer first
Lead with a clear, quotable answer to the question, not a sales pitch. This makes the page easier for people and machines to understand.
ChatGPT visibility guide for business owners
How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.
You cannot submit a business for guaranteed placement or force ChatGPT to recommend it. You can improve the public information and evidence AI systems may use, then test whether your business is named for real buyer questions. This guide explains that process without the AEO jargon.
The method
Six things that can improve your chance of being named.
No single factor guarantees a recommendation. These are practical signals a business can improve and measure:
2. Accurate schema
FAQ, Service, Organization, and HowTo markup that describes the page truthfully. Schema can help machines interpret what you publish, but it does not guarantee trust or placement.
3. Original data and expertise
Independent research, real numbers, or first-hand expertise engines can safely attribute. This is the 'earned' part that cannot be faked.
4. Consistent entity signals
Your name, location, and what you do stated the same way across your site and the web, so engines build a reliable picture of your business.
5. Earned mentions
Relevant reviews, citations, and coverage can corroborate what your own site says. These should be earned, not fabricated or injected.
6. Measurement
You cannot improve what you do not track. A baseline of where you appear in AI answers today, re-tested, is how you prove progress.
FAQ
Common questions about AI citations.
What does it mean to get cited by ChatGPT?
It means an AI answer engine names your business or page as the source of an answer it gives, instead of answering without naming anyone. Being cited in an AI answer is the AEO/GEO version of ranking for a keyword in search.
How do you get ChatGPT to cite your business?
Make your page the clearest, best-structured answer to a real question. Write a direct answer up top, use FAQ and Organization schema, publish original data or expertise engines can trust, keep your entity signals consistent, and earn third-party mentions. Then measure whether the engine actually cites you and improve from the data.
What is AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)?
AEO is the practice of structuring content so AI answer engines read, trust, and cite it. It focuses on direct answers, accurate schema, entity consistency, original data, and earned mentions rather than on traditional keyword rankings.
Can I guarantee an AI engine will cite my business?
No reputable provider guarantees an AI citation, and practices that try to force prominence now violate Google's spam policy on AI answer manipulation. A responsible AEO provider measures a baseline, makes defensible improvements, and re-tests so you can see movement in the data.
We prove it on ourselves
We measure our own citations, and publish the baseline.
We run this exact method on our own pages and publish the dated results, including where we are not yet cited. See the honest starting line and watch it move: our live citation baseline.
Free AI search check
Send your site. We'll tell you if AI engines can even find you.
We check how ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, and AI Overviews answer your top 3 customer questions and whether you're named as a source.