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How to get your technology company cited by ChatGPT, Claude and other AI assistants

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your pages easy for AI assistants to find, understand and cite when buyers ask them questions. It builds on good SEO, and no one can guarantee a mention.

By Search Value · Updated 19 October 2026

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How it works

How AI assistants choose what to cite.

When a buyer asks an assistant such as ChatGPT or Claude to recommend a partner or explain a topic, the assistant draws on what it learned in training and, where search is switched on, on pages it retrieves from the web. Pages that state the answer clearly, are easy to crawl, and are backed by other sources are easier to use and cite.

So GEO and SEO share most of their work. The difference is the standard: a page has to answer a question in a form a model can lift, not just rank for a keyword.

The work

Seven things we do.

Step 1

Let the crawlers in

Allow the search and user agents of the main assistants in robots.txt, and check that key pages are not blocked or hidden behind scripts.

Step 2

Answer first

Put a short, direct answer under each question heading, then the detail. Define terms in one sentence.

Step 3

Structured data

Mark up the organisation, services, articles and FAQs, so the page says plainly what it is.

Step 4

A consistent entity

Use the same name, description and facts everywhere: site, directories, partner pages and profiles.

Step 5

Third-party evidence

Earn mentions on sites assistants trust: directories, partners, publications and review sites.

Step 6

Original data

Publish results and numbers only you have, with the method stated. Specific facts are what get quoted.

Step 7

Fresh and attributed

Show dates, authors and sources, and update key pages on a schedule.

Crawler access

Which AI crawlers to allow.

They vary by purpose, so decide per agent. This is a starting list.

Assistant	Agents in robots.txt	What they do
OpenAI (ChatGPT)	`OAI-SearchBot`, `ChatGPT-User`, `GPTBot`	Search results, user-triggered visits, and training
Anthropic (Claude)	`Claude-SearchBot`, `Claude-User`, `ClaudeBot`	Search results, user-triggered visits, and training
Perplexity	`PerplexityBot`, `Perplexity-User`	Search index, and user-triggered visits
Google (Gemini)	`Google-Extended`	A control for use of content in Google's AI models

Measurement

How to tell whether it is working.

Keep a fixed list of 20 to 30 questions your buyers ask. Run them in each assistant every month and log whether your firm is mentioned, cited, or absent, and which competitors appear instead. Add referral traffic from the assistants in analytics. Expect movement to be slow and uneven, because answers differ from one run to the next.

Technology clients across 19 years Birlasoft

Algoworks HyTechPro

Pipeline review

See how assistants describe your firm today.

We will run your buyers' questions across the main assistants and show you where you appear, and where you do not.

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GEO and AI search: questions, answered in detail.

Short answers first. Open any question for the detail.

Can you guarantee we will appear in ChatGPT or Claude?

No. Nobody can. Assistants choose their sources themselves and change how they do it. What we can do is remove the barriers, make your pages the clearest answer available, and measure the result every month.

Is GEO different from SEO?

Most of the work is shared: crawlable pages, clear content, links and mentions. GEO adds answer-first writing, structured data, entity consistency and measurement across assistants.

What is llms.txt?

A proposed plain-text file at the root of a site that summarises it for language models. We include one because it costs little, but AI companies have not confirmed that they rely on it, so we do not treat it as a ranking lever.

How long does GEO take?

Technical fixes can show within weeks. Third-party mentions and a recognised entity take months to build. We report on it monthly.

Does GEO replace SEO?

No. Search engines still send most of the traffic, and the pages that rank are often the pages assistants retrieve. We run both together.

What is GEO (generative engine optimisation), and how is it different from SEO?

GEO is the practice of making your content clear, credible and easy to cite so AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity describe your company accurately. It builds on SEO rather than replacing it.

Search engines rank pages. AI assistants synthesise answers and cite or paraphrase sources. To be included, your pages need a direct answer near the top, clear entity information (who you are, what you do, where, for whom), consistent facts across your site and the wider web, and structured data that machines can read.

We cannot guarantee a mention, because assistants choose their own sources. What we can do is make your pages the clearest answer available and measure how you are described each month. See our guide to GEO for technology companies.

Will AI search tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews replace SEO?

No. AI assistants rely on the same public web content that SEO improves, so strong pages, clear structure and credible sources help you in both. But buyers increasingly ask assistants first, so visibility in AI answers is now worth measuring.

The practical approach is to treat SEO and GEO as one programme. Technical health, topical depth and authority still decide what search engines and assistants can find and trust. On top of that we add answer-first writing, clear definitions, FAQ content, structured data and consistent brand facts.

We also track how assistants answer your target questions every month, who they cite, and whether the description of your company is accurate. That tells you where to improve and gives you a baseline in a channel that is changing quickly.

What is llms.txt, and does our website need one?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a site that summarises what the site is and links to its most useful pages for language models. It is an emerging convention, not a ranking factor, but it costs little and can help.

The file is written in Markdown: a short description of the company and a list of key pages with one-line summaries. Not every AI system reads it, and no major search engine has said it affects rankings, so treat it as a low-cost clarity aid rather than a lever.

It works best alongside the basics: clear page titles, an accurate sitemap, structured data and well-written answer-first content. Our own llms.txt is public, so you can see what a clean one looks like.

How can we tell whether AI assistants mention or recommend our company?

Ask the assistants the questions your buyers ask, on a fixed set of prompts each month, and record whether you are mentioned, how you are described and which sources are cited.

A simple method: build a list of 20 to 40 buyer questions across your services, industries and comparison queries. Run them across ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Log mentions, position, accuracy of the description and the sources cited. Repeat monthly and compare.

Answers vary between runs, so look at trends rather than one result. Pair the log with referral traffic from AI assistants in your analytics, and with inbound leads that say they found you through an AI tool. Our GEO guide includes the approach we use.

What is schema markup (structured data), and which types does a B2B site need?

Schema markup is code that labels the content of a page so machines understand it. B2B sites typically use Organization, WebSite, BreadcrumbList, Service, Article and FAQPage.

Structured data helps search engines show richer results and helps AI systems identify entities. Use JSON-LD, keep it accurate to what is visible on the page and validate it with Google's Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator.

It is not a magic ranking lever. It clarifies meaning, which supports both SEO and GEO.

Which keywords should an IT services or technology company target?

Target buyer-intent keywords that combine a service, a problem or an industry, such as "SAP S/4HANA migration partner" or "ERP integration for manufacturers", rather than broad terms like "IT services".

We build a keyword map in three layers. First, commercial terms where buyers look for a provider: service plus location, industry or platform. Second, problem terms where they describe a pain before they know the solution. Third, comparison and evaluation terms such as alternatives, costs, timelines and risks.

Each keyword is assigned to one page, so pages do not compete with each other, and each page is built to answer the full question a buyer has. We also check what Google and AI assistants already show for these queries, so we can see what the page must do better. Read more in SEO for IT services companies.

How long does SEO take for a B2B technology company?

Expect early signals such as indexing and ranking movement in two to four months, and meaningful lead growth from around six months, with the full effect over twelve. Competition and your starting site health change this.

SEO is cumulative. Month one is usually an audit and fixes: crawl and index problems, page speed, structure and tracking. Months two to four are content and page improvements and the first ranking movements for lower-competition terms. Months four to eight are where competitive terms start to move and organic leads become visible in your CRM.

A new domain or a site with a history of penalties takes longer. A site with good authority and weak structure can move faster. Anyone who promises page one in 30 days for a competitive B2B term is guessing or cutting corners.

How should we structure service pages and internal links for SEO?

Give each service and industry its own page with a unique primary topic, link related pages together, use descriptive anchor text and keep important pages within two or three clicks of the homepage.

A clear architecture helps search engines and AI systems understand what you do. A common pattern: a services hub, one page per service, supporting guides that link up to the service page, and case studies that link to the services used.

Avoid several pages targeting the same keyword. Use breadcrumbs, a clean URL structure and an up-to-date sitemap.

What is technical SEO, and why does it matter for a B2B website?

Technical SEO is making sure search engines can crawl, understand and index your site efficiently: clean URLs, fast pages, correct canonicals, a sitemap, structured data and no broken links. Without it, good content struggles to rank.

For B2B sites the common technical problems are duplicate or near-duplicate service pages, slow pages from heavy scripts, orphan pages with no internal links, accidental noindex tags, broken redirects after a redesign, and missing structured data.

A technical audit checks crawlability, indexation, site architecture, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, canonical tags, hreflang for multiple regions, XML sitemaps and robots rules. Fixing these is usually the fastest SEO win because it removes the ceiling on everything else. Our SEO and GEO service starts with this audit.

How do we use Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools?

Verify your domain, submit your sitemap, check indexing and crawl errors monthly, review queries and pages with impressions, and use the URL inspection tool after major changes.

Search Console shows which queries trigger your pages, which pages are indexed and which have problems. Bing Webmaster Tools gives similar data and feeds several other search products. Both are free.

Look for pages with many impressions but low clicks, because better titles and descriptions can lift them.

Find out why your best buyers do not find you.

Pick the closest topic and leave your details. We will come back with a clear view of what we would fix first.

What is the closest match?