---
title: "How to get your business cited by ChatGPT"
description: "A practical checklist for making your website citable by ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI answer engines — crawler access, llms.txt, and citation-friendly writing."
canonical_url: "https://cxllum.co.uk/blog/how-to-get-your-business-cited-by-chatgpt"
last_updated: "2026-07-07T12:31:07.504Z"
---

## 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 <span>

your service

</span>

 in <span>

your city

</span>

" or "what's the difference between <span>

your service

</span>

 and <span>

alternative

</span>

" — 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.