What is GEO, and what should I change on my website so ChatGPT cites me?

• SEO: works on a website's position in search engine results.
• GEO: works on a brand's presence in the answers AI assistants write, and on those answers citing it.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): the part of the work that organizes content into questions and answers, so an assistant can extract and attribute it.

They aren't competing strategies. Without the authority SEO builds, an assistant is unlikely to cite a brand; without a clear answer structure, it won't either.

1. Allow AI crawlers in

Each assistant uses its own crawlers, such as OpenAI's GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic's ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. If the robots.txt file or the website's provider blocks them, the brand doesn't exist for them. In Cloudflare, one of the most widely used providers, AI crawlers are managed by type (search, agents and training): since September 15, 2026, agent and training crawlers are blocked by default on pages with ads on new domains. It's worth checking that setting.

2. Publish text in HTML

AI crawlers execute JavaScript in a limited way and far behind Google, according to an analysis published by Oncrawl in April 2026: the safest option is for the content to be on the page as it comes from the server. Text that only appears when an app loads, or that sits inside an image or a 3D scene, risks not existing for them. That's why, on 3D websites, text must sit outside the scene.

3. Answer first, then expand

A page that answers a specific question in its first lines is easier to extract and cite. Headings phrased as questions and direct answers make that work easier.

4. Provide sources and data

A report published in May 2026, analyzing hundreds of millions of citations in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Google, concludes that original data and explicit source attribution are what most help content get cited. Text with its own data and clear sources is easier to extract and attribute.

5. Make the brand's identity clear

Who it is, where it's based and what it offers should be stated the same way across the whole website and marked up with structured data (schema.org), code that helps search engines identify an organization and the people who run it. The llms.txt file, a proposal for summarizing a website for language models, can complement it, although it isn't an official standard yet.

6. Work on external mentions

Assistants cross-check sources: professional profiles, directories, reviews and press. If the information outside contradicts the website, or doesn't exist, the brand loses weight in the answers.

AI search is attracting investment at high speed. WPP Media forecasts that generative search advertising will grow from $5.1 billion in 2026 to more than $100 billion in 2030: the fastest-growing channel in its forecast. ChatGPT also started showing ads in 2026. Appearing in assistants' answers is increasingly relevant for brands.

Technical changes are applied quickly, but search engines and assistants take time to reread the website. Authority and external mentions are built continuously. That's why GEO works better as an ongoing process with monitoring than as a one-off action.

• Regularly repeating the questions a customer would ask in each assistant, and recording whether the brand appears, how it's described and which competitors are mentioned.
• Checking web analytics for visits coming from assistants such as chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai.
• Following the website's performance in Google Search Console.

BlackFrameStudio analyzes brands' presence in AI assistants, implements the improvements and measures progress within its AI marketing systems service. Every project starts with a free initial review.