How to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT and AI Overviews

More of your customers now start with a question instead of a search: "Who's a good plumber in Surrey?" or "Which Langley bakery does custom wedding cakes?" They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, or read the AI Overview at the top of Google. The answer they get names a handful of businesses and links to their websites.

Those tools can only recommend a business they can reach and read. Many small business websites quietly fail one of those two tests. This guide explains how AI search tools find businesses, and the five fixes that matter most.

How AI Tools Find and Cite a Business

It works in three steps. A program called a crawler (or bot) visits your website and downloads its pages. The AI tool reads those pages and works out what your business does, where, and for whom. When someone asks a matching question, the tool cites the pages it trusts and links to them.

Not every bot does the same job. Each AI company runs several, and they fall into three groups:

• Training bots collect content that may be used to train future AI models. Examples: OpenAI's GPTBot and Anthropic's ClaudeBot.
• Search bots index pages so the tool can show and link them in its search answers. Examples: OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic's Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot.
• User bots fetch a page live because a person asked a question that needs it. Examples: ChatGPT-User, Claude-User and Perplexity-User.

The distinction matters. You can block training bots and still let search bots in, so your business keeps showing up in answers. Blocking a search bot does the opposite: OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot won't be shown in ChatGPT's search answers. Anthropic and Perplexity document their bots the same way.

Google works differently. Its AI Overviews are built from the normal Google Search index, so the regular Googlebot rules apply. Google says a page only needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and that "there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode." Its separate Google-Extended setting covers AI training and some other Google AI products, and doesn't affect Google Search.

Fix 1: Let the Right Crawlers In

Your robots.txt file (at yoursite.com/robots.txt) tells bots what they may visit. Some sites block AI bots on purpose. Many block them by accident, through an old rule or a plugin setting nobody remembers.

There's a second layer people often miss: your hosting or security service. Since July 2025, Cloudflare, which sits in front of a large share of the web, has blocked known AI crawlers by default on newly added domains. If your site is on Cloudflare, check the AI crawler setting in your dashboard. Your robots.txt can say "welcome" while the firewall says "no".

Here's part of our own robots.txt. It explicitly welcomes the main AI bots and keeps them out of our form endpoints:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /api/

Fix 2: Make Key Pages Readable Without JavaScript

Some websites send the browser an almost empty page and build the content with JavaScript after it loads. That's common with certain page builders and single-page apps. Google renders JavaScript, but you can't count on every AI crawler doing the same. A bot that only reads the raw page may never see your services, prices or address.

To check, open your homepage, right-click, and choose View Page Source (not "Inspect"). Use Find to search for your main headline and your phone number. If they aren't in the source, a bot that doesn't run JavaScript can't see them either.

Fix 3: Tell Machines Who You Are (Structured Data)

Structured data is a small block of code that states facts about your business in a format machines read reliably: your name, phone number, service area, opening hours and services. Three types matter most for a local business:

• LocalBusiness: who you are, where you operate, and how to reach you.
• Service: what you offer, ideally one entry per main service.
• FAQPage: questions and answers, which map neatly onto the questions people ask AI tools.

Google is clear that structured data isn't required for AI Overviews. It still helps search engines and AI tools get your basic facts right, and it's a one-time job.

Fix 4: Consider an llms.txt File

An llms.txt file is a short plain-text summary of your business and your most important pages, written for AI tools. It's an emerging convention, not a standard. Google says it doesn't need special AI text files, and other AI companies haven't confirmed they read it. So treat it as cheap insurance, not a ranking trick: it takes an hour to write and does no harm.

Ours opens like this:

# WebPioneers

## About
WebPioneers is a founder-led web and mobile app
development studio based in Surrey, BC, run by
Mayank Suman, a senior engineer with 14+ years of
experience in React, Next.js and TypeScript.

Fix 5: Answer the Questions People Actually Ask

AI tools quote pages that answer a question directly. Most small business sites describe services in marketing language ("solutions tailored to your needs") but never answer the plain question a customer types: how much does it cost, how long does it take, do you serve my area, what's included.

Pick the five questions you hear most on the phone. Answer each in two or three plain sentences, on the page where it belongs, with the question as a heading. That helps human visitors as much as it helps AI.

Check Where You Stand in Five Minutes

1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt. Look for Disallow: / under any of the bot names above.
2. If you use Cloudflare, check its AI crawler setting.
3. Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity a question a customer would ask, like "best [your service] in [your city]". Note who gets named and linked.
4. View the source of your homepage and search for your headline and phone number.
5. Paste your homepage into Google's Rich Results Test to see which structured data it finds.

What It Costs

Everything above is free to check yourself, and some of it is free to fix. If you'd rather have someone look for you, our free AI visibility check covers crawler access, llms.txt, structured data, the no-JavaScript test, and what ChatGPT and Perplexity say about your kind of business in your city today. You get a 3-minute video walkthrough and one concrete fix you can make yourself.

If you want it fixed for you, AI Search Visibility is a fixed-price service from C$1,500 for a typical small business site. It works on your current site, WordPress, Shopify or custom, with no rebuild needed.

Get a free AI visibility check for your site →

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