ChatGPT & AI Search
ChatGPT & AI Search Optimization
AI search optimization helps get your business named when customers ask ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini or Perplexity what to buy or who to hire. We deliver sales, not just rankings.
What Is AI Search Optimization?
AI search optimization, also called generative engine optimization (GEO) or ChatGPT SEO, is the work of getting your business cited and recommended inside AI answers. A Google ranking is one input. The rest is whether AI tools can find clear, consistent facts about you on your own site and on the sites they cite.
People already ask. When someone asks ChatGPT for the best carry-on under $200, or who repairs furnaces in Brea, it names a handful of businesses. We check whether yours is on that list.
of U.S. adults use AI chatbots to search for information (Pew Research Center, 2026)
daily ChatGPT queries in March 2025, by Google’s own internal estimate, against about 140 million for Google’s Gemini app, as recorded in the court’s remedies opinion (U.S. v. Google, 2025)
of ChatGPT sessions sent a traceable click to a website, vs 31.1% of Google searches, in U.S. desktop data from October 2024 to July 2025 (Bocconi University, 2026)
Why a Google Ranking Isn’t Enough
A top-10 ranking helps, but AI answers also draw on sites that don’t rank. In queries run in 2025, researchers at Ruhr University Bochum and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems found that, on average, 53% of the domains Google AI Overviews consulted weren’t in Google’s top 10 organic results. And 27% weren’t even in the top 100. Ranking alone misses those.
Many of the sources AI tools cite aren’t yours. A 2025 University of Toronto study asked AI tools ranking-style questions about niche brands. Of the domains ChatGPT cited, 95.1% were third-party sites such as reviewers and publications. Official brand sites made up 4.9%. We work on your own pages and on the sites AI tools cite about you.
Your Own Website Still Has to Show Up
Brands get named more often when AI tools cite their own site. Aiso, an AI-visibility software company, tracked unbranded prompts for its clients in 2026. Brands were named in only 2.8% of GPT answers when the model neither cited their site nor searched for their name. With an own-site citation but no brand-name search, the rate was 49.0%. Aiso measured correlation only. We still start with your pages, because they’re the one source you fully control.
Most AI SEO Tricks Don’t Hold Up in Testing
Most published AI SEO content tricks showed no reliable gain when researchers tested them. C-SEO Bench, a benchmark presented at NeurIPS 2025 by researchers from TU Darmstadt, the University of Tübingen and others, ran published methods across six subject areas and four AI models. They looked at 54 cases. Only three showed a statistically significant ranking gain. Adding statistics to a page lowered its ranking in 19 of 24 settings.
Ordinary search ranking did far better. The same paper found that improving a page’s position in the results the AI model reads was significantly more effective than the content tricks. Putting a page first in the model’s context beat every method they tested. So our budget goes to rankings, accurate facts and third-party mentions.
We’re just as wary of lift claims. Several widely quoted lift numbers come from companies that sell AI-visibility software, and they’re correlations. When we test whether a page change lifted citations, we compare it against matched pages we didn’t touch. We’ve seen an apparent doubling in citations turn out to be an outside launch that started before the page work.
ChatGPT SEO for Ecommerce Brands
ChatGPT SEO for an ecommerce brand means product and collection pages that say who each product is for. In a 2026 Northwestern University study, six AI models answering from training data, with web search off, never put Craftsman in a top-five list when the prompt only asked for cordless drills. When the prompt described what the shopper needed, Craftsman made 35.4% of the lists. The question changed the list. Our read is that a model names you more often when it can tie your brand to a shopper’s needs. So we rewrite product and collection pages around the use cases, comparisons and specs shoppers ask about.
Shopping answers likely add a product-data gate. We’ve seen a store rank in the top three when it appeared and still rarely show up at all. We suspect product data rather than relevance. Its product schema marked items out of stock even when they were for sale. We check your feed and product markup before we touch copy.
ChatGPT SEO for Local Businesses
ChatGPT SEO for a local business means making your name, services and hours match everywhere AI tools look. The same University of Toronto team ran queries like “top dentists in [city]” through Google and a web-enabled AI engine. Their source domains overlapped by just 11.9% for dentists, 17.1% for roofing and 2.5% for auto repair. The AI engine mostly cited different sources. We make your Google Business Profile, directory listings and service pages consistent, and help you earn more reviews.
How We Measure AI Search
We measure AI search by how often you’re named for a fixed set of buyer questions, which pages get cited, and the sales AI referrals bring. Clicks alone undercount it. ChatGPT sends far fewer clicks to websites than Google does. For an auto-parts ecommerce client, we built a GA4 dashboard that splits out visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot and ties each one to transactions and revenue.
We also say how we tested. When we check what ChatGPT says about you, we run each prompt through OpenAI’s API and tell you so, because API answers can differ from the ChatGPT app.
What AI Search Did for One Client
For Arun, a solo AI consultant, AI search produced his first leads. He sells AI implementation and training to companies. Referrals had dried up. In months two and three of our SEO and AI search work, his first two leads came from ChatGPT. Organic search leads followed a couple of weeks later, and his first closed client came from organic. That was faster than we usually see, and we said so in his recorded interview.
His numbers, as he gave them on camera: his best month before was under $8K, and at the interview he said he was “above forty,” meaning $40K a month. He put it this way: “It didn’t feel like I was hunting anymore. It felt like I was farming.”
What’s Included
Every engagement includes all six of these.
AI Search Audit
See which buyer questions name you in ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity, which name a competitor instead, and whether your firewall blocks the crawlers that would cite you.
Content Optimization
Product and service pages that answer the questions buyers ask AI tools: who each one is for, how it compares, what’s included.
Consistent Business Facts
AI tools find the same name, services, hours and locations on your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
Schema & Structured Data
Your prices, hours, service area and FAQs marked up in machine-readable code for search engines and AI crawlers.
Third-Party Mentions
The review sites, roundups and publications AI tools cite in your category, plus outreach to get you on them.
Monthly AI Search Report
How often you’re named, which pages get cited, and AI-referred leads and sales from GA4.
AI Search Optimization FAQs
How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT?
Showing up in ChatGPT can take weeks or months, depending on where it gets the answer. When ChatGPT searches the web live, a page update can change the answer within weeks. For answers drawn from the model’s training, the knowledge behind them only changes when a new model ships. We check your robots.txt and firewall first. A crawler that can’t read your site can’t cite it.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend us?
No agency can guarantee ChatGPT will recommend you. Nobody controls what an AI model says. Answers also change from one run to the next. We can fix the facts on your site and listings, and pitch you to the sites AI tools cite. Each month we show you how often you’re named.
Should we block AI crawlers?
Blocking AI search crawlers can keep you out of AI answers. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot, its search crawler, won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Training is a separate switch. You can block GPTBot, its training crawler, and still allow OAI-SearchBot. Blocking can cost traffic too. Large news publishers that blocked AI crawlers, training bots included, saw about a 7% drop in traffic within six weeks, in a 2026 Rutgers and Wharton study.
Is AI search replacing Google?
AI search isn’t replacing Google for buying searches yet. In its 2025 remedies opinion in U.S. v. Google, the federal court found that commercial queries are not, at present, a common use for generative AI apps, and haven’t cut into commercial searches on search engines like Google so far. That can change. We keep your Google rankings strong and build AI visibility on top of them.
Can Google Analytics show our AI search traffic?
Google Analytics shows part of your AI search traffic. GA4 can split out visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot when the referrer comes through. It can’t separate clicks from Google AI Overviews, which arrive as ordinary Google organic traffic. If AI referrals drop overnight, check for a tracking change first.
Related SEO Services
AI search optimization is part of our SEO services. It works best alongside these.
Local SEO
Consistent listings and reviews that get you into the map pack and AI answers for your city.
Learn more →E-Commerce SEO
Collection and product pages that rank and sell, for Shopify and beyond.
Learn more →Content SEO
Pages built on first-hand detail and checked facts, the material AI answers quote.
Learn more →Technical SEO
Crawl access, speed and structured data, so search engines and AI crawlers can read your site.
Learn more →Find Out What ChatGPT Says About You
Book a free 30-minute consultation. We’ll run the questions your customers ask through ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, and show you who gets named.