How to Optimise Your Website for ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews

Optimising a website for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews is not about adding a secret AI tag, publishing hundreds of prompt-shaped pages or rewriting every paragraph into artificial “LLM-friendly” fragments. The durable approach is much closer to good SEO: make important pages discoverable, technically accessible, useful, specific, trustworthy and easy for search and AI systems to retrieve.

Google now says this explicitly. Its official guide to generative AI features in Search states that existing SEO best practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, while useful, non-commodity content and a clear technical structure are central to visibility.

OpenAI is similarly concrete about eligibility for ChatGPT Search. Its publisher guidance for ChatGPT Search says public websites can appear in ChatGPT Search and advises publishers who want content included in summaries and snippets not to block OAI-SearchBot.

Gemini requires slightly more careful language. Google documents that Gemini Apps can use public information from Google Search and can show public websites as sources, but Google does not publish a separate website-ranking checklist for “ranking in Gemini.” The safest strategy is therefore to strengthen the same discoverability, content quality and brand signals that make a site useful in Google Search and other retrieval-based AI experiences.

For businesses, that is the practical role of Innovitive's Digital Marketing services working alongside Web and App Development: connect technical SEO, content, crawlability, brand authority, analytics and website quality instead of selling disconnected AI-search tricks.

This guide explains what to optimise, what not to overvalue, how ChatGPT differs from Google's AI experiences, how to build stronger brand visibility across the web, and how to measure whether the work is creating meaningful discovery.

AI Search Optimisation Is an Extension of Search Strategy, Not a Replacement for SEO

Terms such as AEO, GEO, LLMO and AI SEO are useful because they describe a real change in discovery: people increasingly receive synthesized answers rather than scanning ten blue links. But the existence of new labels does not mean the technical foundations of search have disappeared.

Google's current position is unusually direct: from its perspective, optimising for generative AI Search is still search optimisation. Its AI guide explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode use core Search ranking and quality systems, including retrieval-augmented generation and query fan-out. Read Google's explanation of generative AI search for the underlying model.

That has an important commercial implication. A business does not need one SEO strategy for Google, a separate content strategy for AI Overviews and a third unrelated content system for ChatGPT. It needs one authoritative web presence that can be discovered in different ways.

What changes in AI-driven discovery?

Traditional SEO often focuses on whether a page ranks for a query. AI visibility adds another question: whether a system can retrieve, understand, trust and use part of your information when building an answer.

That shifts attention toward source usefulness, entity clarity, answer completeness, brand reputation, factual consistency and the wider web context around a business.

What does not change?

· Important pages still need to be crawlable and indexable.

· The website still needs a clear information architecture.

· Content still needs to satisfy real user intent.

· Internal links still help users and crawlers discover related information.

· Duplicate, thin and mass-produced pages remain weak foundations.

· Trust still depends on accurate claims, evidence and a clear business identity.

Good AI optimisation therefore starts by strengthening the website people already use, not by creating a parallel site written for machines.

Understand the Three Visibility Paths: ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews

The platforms in this topic should not be treated as one identical ranking system. Each can surface websites, but the documented mechanisms differ.

ChatGPT Search

OpenAI says ChatGPT can search the web for current information and provide citations and source links. To make a website eligible for inclusion, OpenAI says publishers should allow OAI-SearchBot and ensure the host or CDN permits traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP ranges. See OpenAI's current ChatGPT Search documentation.

OpenAI also distinguishes search crawling from potential model-training crawling. OAI-SearchBot is relevant to search discovery; GPTBot is the separate user agent publishers can disallow for content they do not want used for potential training. Treating those bots as interchangeable can cause accidental loss of search eligibility.

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

For Google's generative Search features, eligibility begins with Google Search itself. Google states that a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet before it can be surfaced in generative AI features. Its AI optimisation guide also emphasizes crawlability, useful content, page experience and normal technical SEO.

AI Overviews can use multiple sources to support one synthesized response. That means the opportunity is not limited to being the single number-one blue link. A page can be useful because it answers one part of a broader query well.

Gemini Apps

Google's Gemini Apps source documentation says responses may include links to public websites, while Gemini Connected Apps guidance confirms Gemini can use public information from Google Search.

However, there is no public Google document promising that a particular schema, phrase pattern or “Gemini optimisation” technique will make a website appear. The defensible approach is to improve the search-accessible web presence Gemini can draw from rather than claim a proprietary ranking shortcut.

Technical SEO Is the First Layer of AI Visibility

Content cannot be cited reliably if the systems that might retrieve it cannot access or interpret it. For this reason, the first phase of AI-search work should look familiar to a technical SEO audit.

Check crawlability

· Confirm important pages are not accidentally blocked in robots.txt.

· Check that Googlebot can crawl pages intended for Google Search and AI Overviews.

· If ChatGPT Search visibility matters, confirm OAI-SearchBot is not blocked.

· Check CDN, firewall and bot-management rules as well as robots.txt.

· Ensure canonical pages return stable 200 responses and do not depend on fragile client-side states.

OpenAI specifically notes that host or CDN rules can prevent inclusion even when robots.txt looks correct. Its ChatGPT Search eligibility guidance recommends allowing the published searchbot IP addresses in addition to OAI-SearchBot.

Check indexability and canonicalisation

For Google AI Overviews, crawlable is not enough. The canonical page should also be indexable, eligible for snippets and correctly represented in the Google index. Duplicate URLs, conflicting canonicals, accidental noindex directives and broken redirects create the same problems for AI-driven Search that they create for traditional Search.

Make JavaScript content retrievable

Modern frameworks are not automatically bad for AI visibility, but important information should render reliably. Google's current AI guidance says it can process JavaScript content when it is not blocked, while also acknowledging that JavaScript SEO is more complex. See Google's AI technical-structure guidance.

Use accessible, understandable page structure

OpenAI's publisher and developer FAQ also notes that ChatGPT Agent in Atlas uses ARIA labels and roles to interpret interactive elements. That makes accessibility useful beyond compliance: descriptive controls and a clear interface can improve how browser agents understand what a page does. See OpenAI's accessibility guidance for ChatGPT Agent.

If the underlying website needs technical remediation, connect AI-search work with Innovitive's Web and App Development services rather than treating crawlability as a content-team-only responsibility.

Create Non-Commodity Content That Gives AI Systems a Reason to Cite You

The internet does not need another generic definition page explaining the same ten tips as every competitor. AI systems can synthesize commodity information very efficiently, which makes undifferentiated content even less valuable.

Google's current guidance explicitly recommends “non-commodity” content: original, useful material with a distinct point of view, experience, analysis or evidence. It warns against simply recycling what is already available online. See Google's guidance on valuable, non-commodity content.

What makes business content more citeable?

· Original analysis of a real business problem.

· A transparent methodology or decision framework.

· First-hand implementation lessons.

· Detailed comparisons with clear criteria.

· Current policies, requirements or platform details with primary-source citations.

· Useful calculations, checklists or diagnostic steps.

· Clear examples that explain when advice does and does not apply.

· Expert review and visible authorship where readers would expect it.

The goal is not to manufacture an “answer block.” It is to make each section useful enough that a reader can understand the point without searching again.

Clarity helps, but there is no magic paragraph length

Industry research can help identify patterns, but it should not be turned into a formula. A 2026 Semrush study of AI-cited pages found positive associations with qualities such as clarity, E-E-A-T signals, Q&A formatting and section structure. Those findings are correlations from a defined dataset, not platform ranking rules.

Google goes further and explicitly says there is no requirement to break content into tiny chunks or hit an ideal page length for generative AI. See Google's mythbusting guidance on content chunking.

The practical standard is therefore simple: structure content so humans can scan it, questions are answered clearly, and supporting detail is available when needed.

Build Topical Depth Without Publishing Hundreds of Near-Duplicate Pages

AI systems frequently expand a user's question into related sub-questions. Google describes this as query fan-out. A user asking about an SEO agency may trigger related retrieval around technical SEO, pricing, local expertise, reporting, case studies and implementation.

The opportunity is to cover the topic comprehensively across a sensible site architecture—not to create a separate thin page for every possible wording.

Use one strong primary-intent page

A service page should clearly explain the service, who it is for, what problems it solves, what the process includes and what evidence supports the claims. Do not dilute one commercial intent across several near-identical pages.

Support it with useful topic-cluster content

Blogs can then answer narrower informational or comparison questions and link back to the relevant service page. For example, this article should connect naturally to deeper material about crawlability, ChatGPT visibility, Gemini and Google Search rather than duplicating every topic in one page.

Useful Innovitive supporting resources include Why Your Website Is Not Showing in ChatGPT or Other AI, SEO for Google and Gemini in 2026 and Organic SEO and AI Optimization.

Use descriptive internal links

Internal links should explain the destination. “Technical SEO audit checklist” is more useful than “read more.” Descriptive anchors help visitors choose the next step and make topical relationships clearer to crawlers.

Strengthen Brand Signals Beyond Your Own Website

AI visibility is not only a page-level content problem. When users ask systems to recommend a provider, compare brands or identify credible companies, the wider web presence of those brands can matter.

Ahrefs' 2025 study of 75,000 brands found strong correlations between AI visibility and branded web mentions, with YouTube mentions showing the strongest correlation in its later cross-platform analysis. The researchers repeatedly caution that correlation is not causation. See Ahrefs' brand visibility study.

The sensible takeaway is not “buy mentions.” It is that real brands tend to leave consistent evidence across the web: customers discuss them, experts reference them, videos mention them, partners link to them, people search for them by name and third-party pages describe what they do.

Build genuine third-party evidence

· Earn relevant editorial mentions rather than mass link placements.

· Publish useful expert contributions where your audience already learns.

· Encourage accurate customer reviews on appropriate platforms.

· Maintain consistent company, product and service information.

· Use YouTube or other video channels when the format genuinely helps explain the offering.

· Build partnerships, directories and industry profiles that users would value even without AI search.

Community visibility should be authentic

A Semrush analysis of 248,000 Reddit posts cited by AI systems found that Q&A, comparison and discussion formats were common among cited threads, while high engagement was not a prerequisite. The study's authors explicitly recommend genuine participation rather than treating Reddit as another promotional channel. See Semrush's Reddit and AI visibility study.

This is useful guidance for AI brand visibility services: reputation work should create genuine, useful public evidence, not manufactured mentions designed to imitate consensus.

Make Your Brand Entity Clear and Consistent

A search system should not have to guess whether two slightly different names refer to the same company or whether a service page belongs to the brand mentioned elsewhere.

Clarify who you are

The website should clearly state the organisation name, primary services, markets served, contact information, authorship and relevant expertise. About, Contact and service pages should not contradict one another.

Clarify what you offer

Use specific service language instead of vague marketing claims. A page saying “we transform digital experiences” is less informative than one explaining the actual services, audiences, platforms and business problems involved.

Use structured data for what it is good at

Structured data can help Search understand eligible page types and entities, but Google explicitly says structured data is not required for generative AI Search and there is no special schema for AI visibility. See Google's guidance on structured data and AI Search.

Use Article, Organization, BreadcrumbList, Product, Service or other relevant types only when they accurately describe visible content and fit normal structured-data guidance.

Do Not Treat llms.txt as a Google AI Overviews Requirement

This point deserves its own section because outdated AI-SEO checklists still present llms.txt as essential for Google AI visibility.

Google clarified this in 2026: Google Search does not use llms.txt files for ranking or visibility in Search, including its generative AI capabilities. Adding such a file will neither help nor hurt Google Search visibility. See Google's current llms.txt clarification.

That does not mean an organisation can never maintain an llms.txt file for another tool or experimental workflow. It means the file should not be sold as a Google AI Overview ranking lever.

What should receive priority instead?

· Crawlability and indexability.

· Clear canonical pages.

· Useful, expert-led content.

· Accurate business and product information.

· Strong internal linking.

· Technical performance and accessibility.

· Real brand reputation and third-party evidence.

· Measurement and iterative improvement.

A credible LLM optimization agency should be willing to say when a fashionable tactic is low priority.

Separate OAI-SearchBot From GPTBot in Your Robots Strategy

Another common mistake is using one blanket rule for every OpenAI crawler without understanding what the user agent controls.

OpenAI's current publisher FAQ distinguishes OAI-SearchBot, which supports ChatGPT Search discovery and citation, from GPTBot, which publishers can disallow for content they do not want used for potential model training. Review OpenAI's publisher and developer FAQ before editing robots.txt.

A business may therefore choose to allow search discovery while taking a different position on model training. The correct robots configuration depends on the organisation's publishing policy; it should not be copied blindly from a generic template.

Audit more than robots.txt

Even a correct robots.txt file can be undermined by security tooling. Check WAF rules, bot protection, CDN settings, server logs and rate limits when a crawler appears unable to access public content.

Optimise for Questions, Comparisons and Decision Support

AI search is especially useful when the user's query is complex: comparing options, asking for a recommendation, understanding trade-offs or combining several criteria into one decision.

That means businesses should create content that supports decisions rather than merely defines terminology.

Useful formats include

· Service comparison guides.

· Implementation checklists.

· Pricing and scope explainers with clear limitations.

· Migration guides.

· Problem diagnosis articles.

· Buyer questions to ask before hiring.

· Case studies with verifiable context.

· Frequently asked questions that genuinely reduce uncertainty.

A strong article can answer the immediate question early and then provide enough context for readers who need depth. This is good AEO and GEO because it is good communication—not because a particular heading format guarantees extraction.

Measure AI Visibility Without Pretending It Is a Stable Ranking

AI answers can vary by wording, user context, freshness, model behaviour and retrieval path. Treating one prompt result as a permanent rank creates false confidence.

Measure ChatGPT referral traffic

OpenAI says ChatGPT automatically adds `utm_source=chatgpt.com` to referral URLs from ChatGPT Search, which makes inbound sessions easier to identify in analytics. See OpenAI's publisher tracking guidance.

Measure Google generative AI performance

Google's 2026 AI optimisation guide directs site owners to the Generative AI performance report in Search Console to understand how content is being discovered through generative AI features on Google Search.

Track prompts as a sample, not a scoreboard

For commercial topics, maintain a representative set of buyer questions and periodically record whether the brand is mentioned, cited, omitted or misrepresented. Look for trends across groups of prompts rather than celebrating a single answer.

Track downstream brand demand

AI discovery may influence branded search, direct visits, assisted conversions and sales conversations even when referral clicks are limited. Combine AI-specific visibility data with Search Console, analytics, CRM and branded-search trends.

What AI Search Optimization Services Should Actually Include

A credible commercial service should be broader than rewriting blogs. The work needs to connect website engineering, technical SEO, editorial quality, brand signals and measurement.

· AI-search and technical crawl audit.

· OAI-SearchBot and robots/CDN review where ChatGPT visibility matters.

· Google indexation, canonicalisation and Search Console review.

· Content quality and non-commodity content audit.

· Entity and business-information consistency review.

· Internal-link and topic-cluster planning.

· Structured-data validation where appropriate.

· Brand mention and third-party visibility analysis.

· AI answer monitoring across a defined prompt set.

· Analytics and referral measurement.

· Prioritised implementation roadmap rather than a list of theoretical recommendations.

LLM SEO services

LLM SEO services should connect the established SEO foundation with the retrieval and citation patterns of modern answer systems. If a provider ignores crawlability, Search indexing, source quality and business authority, it is solving only part of the problem.

AI visibility services and AI brand visibility services

AI visibility services should distinguish page visibility from brand visibility. Page work improves the usefulness and retrievability of owned content; AI brand visibility services also examine how consistently the business appears across reputable third-party sources, discussions, reviews, video and industry references.

LLMO services

LLMO services can be a useful label for optimisation focused on large language model discovery, but the service should still be evidence-based. It should not imply that a provider can directly control a proprietary model's answers.

Choosing an LLM optimization agency

Ask the agency which recommendations come from official platform documentation, which come from third-party correlation studies and which are its own working hypotheses. That single question often separates disciplined strategy from AI-search theatre.

A Practical 90-Day AI Search Optimisation Roadmap

Days 1-30: Fix discovery and establish a baseline

· Audit Google crawlability and indexability.

· Review robots.txt, canonicals, sitemaps and JavaScript rendering.

· Check OAI-SearchBot access if ChatGPT Search matters.

· Audit important service and commercial pages for clarity and completeness.

· Establish Search Console, analytics and AI-referral baselines.

· Build a representative prompt set for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI experiences.

Do not begin by publishing twenty new articles. The first objective is to make sure the website you already have can be discovered and accurately understood.

Days 31-60: Upgrade high-value content and entity clarity

· Rewrite weak service pages around real buyer questions.

· Add original analysis, examples, methodology and first-hand expertise.

· Strengthen authorship, About and company information.

· Improve internal links between service pages and supporting guides.

· Validate relevant structured data.

· Create one or two genuinely useful supporting assets rather than mass content.

Days 61-90: Expand trusted visibility and measurement

· Identify realistic third-party mention and expert-contribution opportunities.

· Strengthen video, community or industry presence where it fits the audience.

· Monitor AI citations and brand mentions across the defined prompt set.

· Compare AI visibility with branded search and referral trends.

· Feed recurring AI questions back into the content roadmap.

· Prioritise the next quarter based on observed gaps, not generic AI-SEO checklists.

The objective is an operating system for modern search: technical accessibility, useful content, brand evidence and measurement improving together.

Common AI Search Optimisation Mistakes

Publishing content for every prompt variation

Google warns that creating many pages primarily to capture query or fan-out variations can violate scaled-content spam policies. Its AI optimisation guide recommends focusing on user satisfaction instead.

Treating llms.txt as a universal ranking requirement

Google explicitly ignores llms.txt for Search. Do not prioritise it over crawlability, indexation, content quality and brand evidence.

Buying artificial brand mentions

Third-party research can show correlations between real brand mentions and AI visibility, but manufacturing low-quality mentions to imitate authority is not the same thing as earning genuine recognition.

Adding schema that does not match visible content

Schema should accurately describe the page. Structured data does not create expertise, and Google says there is no special schema required for generative AI visibility.

Confusing training access with search access

For OpenAI, GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot serve different documented purposes. A blanket robots rule can produce an outcome the publisher did not intend.

Promising guaranteed placement

OpenAI states that placement in ChatGPT Search is not guaranteed, and Google states that meeting requirements does not guarantee crawling, indexing or serving. Any agency selling guaranteed AI citations should be treated cautiously.

How Innovitive Helps Businesses With AI Search Visibility

Innovitive approaches AI-search visibility as part of a connected digital growth system. The goal is not to bolt an “AI SEO” checklist onto a weak website. It is to improve the technical, editorial and brand foundations that influence how a business is discovered across modern search experiences.

· Technical and on-page SEO through Innovitive's Digital Marketing services.

· Website architecture, performance and implementation through Web and App Development.

· Crawlability, indexing, JavaScript and structured-data review.

· AI-search content strategy built around useful, non-commodity information.

· ChatGPT crawler and referral-measurement review where relevant.

· Google AI Overview and AI Mode readiness based on current Search guidance.

· Brand visibility and third-party signal analysis.

· Internal linking, topic clusters, analytics and conversion measurement.

For a deeper diagnosis of missing AI visibility, read Why Your Website Is Not Showing in ChatGPT or Other AI. For the Google side of the strategy, see SEO for Google and Gemini in 2026.

The value of this approach is prioritisation. A business with blocked crawlers needs a technical fix. A business with thin service pages needs better content. A business with strong owned content but almost no independent footprint may need reputation and brand-distribution work. Those are different problems and should not be sold as the same package.

Final Wrap

Optimising a website for ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews is not about finding one new ranking trick. It is about making the business easier to discover, understand, trust and cite across a search environment that now includes both ranked results and generated answers.

The most durable priorities are familiar: crawlable and indexable pages, technically clear architecture, useful expert-led content, accurate business information, descriptive internal links and a real reputation beyond the website. AI-search work adds new crawler checks, citation monitoring and brand-visibility analysis, but it does not make those fundamentals obsolete.

For ChatGPT, pay particular attention to OAI-SearchBot and search eligibility. For Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, follow Google's Search requirements and people-first content guidance. For Gemini, strengthen the public Search-accessible evidence Gemini can use without pretending Google has published a separate Gemini ranking formula.

The right AI search optimization services should therefore reduce uncertainty, not sell certainty that the platforms themselves do not promise.

FAQs

What are AI search optimization services?

AI search optimization services improve a website's ability to be discovered, understood, cited and represented across AI-assisted search experiences. A complete service normally combines technical SEO, crawlability, content quality, entity clarity, internal linking, brand visibility and measurement rather than relying on one AI-specific tactic.

How can I make my website appear in ChatGPT Search?

OpenAI says public websites can appear in ChatGPT Search. To help make content eligible for summaries and snippets, publishers should allow OAI-SearchBot and ensure their hosting or CDN permits traffic from OpenAI's published searchbot IP addresses. Inclusion and placement are not guaranteed.

Is GPTBot the crawler used for ChatGPT Search?

OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT Search discovery, while GPTBot is the separate user agent publishers can disallow for content they do not want used for potential model training. Review the current OpenAI publisher guidance before changing robots.txt.

How do I optimise a website for Google AI Overviews?

Start with normal Google Search eligibility: crawlable, indexable pages that can appear with snippets. Then improve useful, original content, technical structure, internal links, page experience and accurate business or product information. Google says no special AI markup is required.

Can I optimise specifically for Gemini?

Google confirms Gemini Apps can use public information from Google Search and may show public website sources, but it does not publish a separate website-ranking formula for Gemini. The defensible approach is to strengthen Search visibility, content usefulness, brand clarity and authoritative public evidence.

Do I need llms.txt for AI Overviews?

No. Google's current guidance says Google Search does not use llms.txt files for its Search results or generative AI features. Maintaining one for another service is optional, but it should not be treated as a Google AI Overview ranking requirement.

What are LLM SEO services?

LLM SEO services apply established SEO foundations to environments where large language models retrieve, summarize or cite web information. The work can include crawler access, technical SEO, answer-ready content, entity clarity, source authority, brand visibility and AI citation monitoring.

What is the difference between LLMO services and traditional SEO?

Traditional SEO focuses heavily on organic search discovery and ranking. LLMO services add attention to retrieval, citation, generated answers and brand representation in AI systems. In practice, strong LLMO still depends heavily on technical SEO, useful content and credible brand signals.

How do I choose an LLM optimization agency?

Choose an LLM optimization agency that separates official platform guidance from third-party studies and experimental tactics. It should audit crawlability and indexing, explain how it measures AI visibility, avoid guaranteed-placement claims and connect recommendations to business outcomes rather than vanity prompts.

Can Innovitive help with AI brand visibility services?

Yes. Innovitive can connect technical SEO, website development, content strategy, internal linking, brand visibility, analytics and AI-search monitoring. The scope should be based on an audit because a crawler-access problem requires different work from a content-quality or brand-authority problem.

Build AI visibility on a foundation you can defend.

If your website ranks in some places but rarely appears in ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI experiences, start with evidence: technical accessibility, content quality, brand clarity and the actual sources those platforms can retrieve.

Explore Innovitive's Digital Marketing services, strengthen technical foundations with Web and App Development, or contact Innovitive to discuss an AI-search visibility audit and practical optimisation roadmap.

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