How to get your business cited by ChatGPT

Start with access, not writing

Before a single sentence of content matters, an AI crawler has to be able to reach your page at all. Check these first:

1. robots.txt allows AI crawlers. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and confirm GPTBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended aren't disallowed. Many site builders and page-builder plugins block these by default, without telling you.
2. Content is server-rendered. If your homepage's actual text only appears after JavaScript executes in a browser, many crawlers see an empty shell. Content needs to exist in the raw HTML response — this is one of the reasons this site is built with server-side rendering by default, rather than a client-only JavaScript app.
3. Pages load fast and don't block on scripts. Slow, script-heavy pages get skipped or partially read.

Then, publish an llms.txt

llms.txt is an emerging standard: a plain-text file at the root of your site (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that summarises what your site is, what it offers, and links to the pages that matter most. Think of it as a concise briefing document for an AI crawler, in the same spirit as sitemap.xml — but written for models, not search indexers.

Write to be quoted, not just read

Once a crawler can reach your content, the writing itself decides whether it gets cited. In practice:

• Lead with the answer. State the fact or definition first, then explain it — don't bury the useful sentence three paragraphs into a story.
• Use concrete numbers. "Most small business sites take 3–6 weeks to build" is citable. "We deliver websites quickly" is not.
• Define your terms plainly. If you use an industry term, define it in the same breath — AI models favour content that doesn't require outside context to understand.
• Structure real FAQs. Direct question-and-answer pairs, backed by FAQPage schema, are close to the exact shape a generative answer engine reproduces.
• Cut the fluff a model would skip anyway. Marketing adjectives with no factual content ("industry-leading", "world-class") don't get quoted — specific, checkable claims do.

A simple test you can run today

Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity a question your business should be able to answer — "who's a good your service in your city" or "what's the difference between your service and alternative" — and see what comes back. If your business isn't mentioned, work backwards from the checklist above: is the crawler blocked, is the content invisible without JavaScript, or is the writing too vague to quote? That diagnosis is most of the work.