How to get cited by ChatGPT: what we can verify, what we can't, and the steps that are actually checkable

"Get cited by ChatGPT" is a sentence with a hidden assumption: that there is one ChatGPT, one index and one lever. There is not. ChatGPT with search retrieves pages and writes an answer with links. Google's AI Overviews are assembled from Google's index. They source differently, they refresh differently, and a page can be cited by one and invisible to the other on the same afternoon. Any plan that does not start by separating the two surfaces is guessing.

What follows is the part that is checkable. It is shorter than the checklists, and it comes with an honest account of what nobody can verify yet.

How a citation happens, as far as anyone can observe

ChatGPT with search. OpenAI documents a crawler called OAI-SearchBot that surfaces sites in ChatGPT search results; it honours robots.txt, and opting out removes you from search answers (https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots, accessed 2026-10-27). GPTBot is a different crawler, used for training, with its own rules. That distinction matters: blocking the training crawler is a legitimate choice, and it is not the same as blocking the search one.

Google AI Overviews. Google's AI features are grounded in its core Search systems. Google's documentation says there are no additional requirements beyond being indexable and eligible for a snippet (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features, accessed 2026-10-27), and its AI optimisation guide frames the whole exercise as ordinary SEO (https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide, accessed 2026-10-27).

The sources differ. A vendor analysis of citation patterns across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity describes each platform sourcing information differently (https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/ai-platform-citation-patterns, accessed 2026-10-27). That matches what we see when we record answers: the same question produces different source lists on different surfaces.

The practical consequence: "cited" is not one number. It is a per-surface outcome, and adding a ChatGPT citation to an AI Overview citation produces a total that means nothing.

The steps that are actually checkable

Step 1 — Write down the questions first (prerequisite). Ten to twenty questions a buyer would ask before they know your name: "best family dentist in Leeds", not your brand name. Put each to the surface the way a buyer would, in a clean session, and record the date. Our own measurement design asks each key question three times and counts only three hits out of three as stable; the paid report grades 30 questions across five surfaces (how we measure).

Step 2 — Check the crawler gate (prerequisite). For ChatGPT, check whether OAI-SearchBot is allowed in robots.txt; it is the crawler that governs whether your pages can be surfaced in search answers. For Google, check that Googlebot is not blocked, that there is no stray noindex or nosnippet, and that your facts survive with JavaScript off. This is the most common finding that is both severe and trivially fixable.

Step 3 — State facts the model can parse (lever). Prices, hours, services, service areas, what you do not offer. In our published sample — a real client run, pseudonymised — 14 of the 333 claims the answers made about a market-leading business were wrong (the sample is public). The errors were about identity, location, services and prices: the facts a buyer needs. That is the layer to fix first.

Step 4 — Get described somewhere other than your own site (lever). Directories, review sites, local news, trade press, map listings, partner pages. In the local market we measured, the AI Overviews leaned on Google's map listings and competing businesses' pages before they leaned on the measured business's own site (how those answers get built). Your own claims about yourself carry the least weight of anything a model reads.

Step 5 — Write pages worth quoting (lever). Answer the question in the first sentence. Use the buyer's wording as the heading. Be concrete to the point of boring. The GEO benchmark found that adding statistics, quotations and cited sources lifted visibility by 30–40% — for top-five sources, in English, in one experiment that has not been replicated (https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735, accessed 2026-10-27). Worth testing. Not a promise.

Step 6 — Re-measure before you believe anything (prerequisite for knowing). Ask the same questions again, several times each. A single run is an anecdote; a before-and-after pair with repeats is the only thing that can tell you whether a fix moved an answer. A practitioner checklist on r/LLMSEOHub describes what one person says moved the needle for them (https://www.reddit.com/r/LLMSEOHub/comments/1uu91an/a_practical_checklist_for_getting_your_brand/, accessed 2026-10-27); it is a useful list of hypotheses, not a controlled result.

The folklore to skip

Most of what is sold as an AI citation trick falls into one of five buckets, and Google's own guide pushes back on all five: special AI files such as llms.txt, content "chunking", AI-specific rewriting, inauthentic mentions, and over-focusing on structured data. Google says its AI features need none of it. We have also found no published evidence that FAQ markup or schema alone earns citations on ChatGPT.

That does not make those files harmful. An llms.txt is cheap hygiene, and we wrote a separate guide to what it does and does not do. As a strategy, though, it is a poor bet: if the only reason you are doing it is a promised citation lift, the evidence is not there.

The same caution applies to volume. Dozens of thin posts and mass directory submissions are the thing most likely to get you filtered, not the thing that gets you quoted.

Why you cannot add ChatGPT and AI Overviews citations together

Our method separates two outcomes on every surface: a citation is a link to your page in the answer; a mention is your name in the answer. It also separates the two Google surfaces from the chat assistants, and records AI Overview appearance separately from whether the overview cited you. The reason is arithmetic: a citation rate on one surface is a fraction of that surface's answers, and another surface has a different denominator.

A vendor analysis of platform citation patterns makes the same point from a different direction: ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity do not source information the same way (https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/ai-platform-citation-patterns, accessed 2026-10-27). If you want one number to track, make it "share of my unbranded buyer questions where this surface named me, across repeats". One surface at a time.

What we can and cannot verify

We can verify what was asked, what was answered, which pages were cited, and how the answer changed between repeats. We publish the questions, the scoring rule and the limitations (method). We cannot verify why a model chose one source over another; nobody can, from outside the model. And we cannot promise a citation, a ranking, or a timeline. A vendor who does is telling you about their sales process.

What we can offer is a record. The paid report runs 30 real buyer questions across five live AI surfaces — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode — with 176 graded answers and 302 API calls in total, for $4.99 once (pricing). The free check shows you the questions first, and you can read a complete real report before spending anything.

If you want the Google-only version of this checklist, the AI Overviews guide goes step by step through that surface. The manual 15-minute check is the free way to see whether ChatGPT names you at all. For the vocabulary, start with what AEO means and AEO vs GEO vs SEO.

Common questions

Can I make ChatGPT cite my website? No one can guarantee a citation, but you can make your pages eligible: crawlable by the search crawler, readable without JavaScript, and specific enough to be worth quoting.

Does blocking GPTBot stop my site appearing in ChatGPT? Not necessarily: OpenAI documents separate crawlers for search answers and for model training, and the search crawler honours robots.txt on its own terms.

Why do ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews cite different pages? They are different retrieval systems with different indexes and source preferences, so a page can be cited by one and absent from the other on the same day.

Does schema or an FAQ block get my page cited? There is no published evidence that it does, and Google's own AI guidance says its features need no special markup beyond ordinary crawlable pages.

How do I know whether a fix worked? Ask the same set of buyer questions before and after, several times each, and compare the answers; one run cannot show a change.

Sources

• OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers" — https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots (accessed 2026-10-27)
• Google Search Central, "AI features and your website" — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features (accessed 2026-10-27)
• Google Search Central, "AI optimization guide" — https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide (accessed 2026-10-27)
• Profound, "AI Platform Citation Patterns: How ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity Source Information" — https://www.tryprofound.com/blog/ai-platform-citation-patterns (accessed 2026-10-27)
• Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", arXiv:2311.09735 (KDD 2024) — https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735 (accessed 2026-10-27)
• r/LLMSEOHub, "A practical checklist for getting your brand mentioned by AI engines" — https://www.reddit.com/r/LLMSEOHub/comments/1uu91an/a_practical_checklist_for_getting_your_brand/ (accessed 2026-10-27)
• SeeWAIS method — https://seewhataisays.com/method (accessed 2026-10-27)
• SeeWAIS published sample report — https://seewhataisays.com/sample (accessed 2026-10-27)