10 tips to get your business found in AI search results

When a buyer asks ChatGPT or Google's AI Mode which tool, firm or vendor to consider, the answer names a few businesses. Being one of them is the new page one. Here are the ten things I focus on, in the order I would do them.

1. Make sure you can be found at all

AI search still starts with a search index. Google says that to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page simply has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. Check Google Search Console for pages that are "crawled, not indexed," and fix them first. Nothing else on this list helps a page Google cannot show.

2. Let the AI search crawlers in

ChatGPT search uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says sites that block it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. That is separate from GPTBot, which collects training data, so you can allow one and block the other. Open your robots.txt and make sure you are not blocking the search crawlers by accident. Many sites are.

3. Answer the question in the first two sentences

Put a short, direct answer to the page's main question right under the headline. "A fractional CMO typically costs $3,000 to $15,000 a month" beats three paragraphs of context. This is the passage an AI tool can lift and credit to you.

4. Write headings as the questions people ask

Use the buyer's own words as headings: "How much does it cost?", "Is it worth it for a 20-person company?" Search Console's query report shows you the exact questions people already use to find you.

5. Add specifics: numbers, sources and quotes

The research paper that coined "generative engine optimization" (Aggarwal et al., 2023) found that adding citations, quotations from relevant sources and statistics were among the most effective changes, lifting a source's visibility in AI answers by up to 40% in their tests. Vague pages are hard to quote. Specific ones are easy.

6. Build comparison tables

When buyers ask "X vs Y" or "best X for Y," AI answers lean on structured comparisons. A clean table of price, features and who each option fits, with sources, is one of the most reusable things you can publish.

7. Use structured data honestly, and skip the gimmicks

Organization, Article, Product and FAQ markup help search engines understand your pages, as long as it matches what is visible on the page. But Google is clear that there is no special schema and no new AI text file you need to appear in its AI features. Spend the time on content, not hacks.

8. Get mentioned where AI tools look

AI answers draw on more than your website. Pew found that Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit together made up 15% of the sources cited in Google's AI summaries. Review sites, industry directories, podcasts and trade publications matter too. Useful answers in communities and guest appearances on industry shows are how your name ends up in the sources.

9. Be consistent about who you are

Use the same business name, description, address and category everywhere: your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories. AI tools connect a brand to a topic when the signals agree. If your site says "marketing consultant," your LinkedIn says "fractional CMO," and a directory lists you under "advertising," you are three half-entities instead of one strong one.

10. Check your AI visibility every month

Write down the 20 questions your buyers ask most. Each month, ask them in ChatGPT, Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode) and Perplexity, and log which brands get named. It takes an hour, and it is the most honest scorecard you have. Pair it with branded search volume in Search Console, which rises when AI answers start mentioning you.

Where to start

If you only do three things this week, do numbers 1, 2 and 3: confirm you are indexed, confirm the AI crawlers can reach you, and rewrite your five most important pages to answer the question first.

For the bigger picture, read Google AI Overviews and B2B and my earlier piece on answer engine optimization. To see the approach in action, look at these zero-click marketing examples.