To be cited by ChatGPT, a business needs five things, in this order: crawlers that can reach it, an identity the model can resolve, content that answers real questions, reputation it can verify, and consistent information across every channel. This guide walks through each one.
1. Let the crawlers in
Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for the AI agents. You need two categories allowed, and most sites only think about the first. The indexing crawlers (GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended) build the model's picture of the web. The live-fetch agents (ChatGPT-User, OAI-SearchBot, Perplexity-User, Claude-User) go read your page in real time while a user is waiting for an answer. Block the second group and you disappear at the moment of the recommendation.
2. Make yourself an entity, not a website
A model will not recommend what it cannot identify. Declare who you are in structured data: legal name, registration number, address, phone, logo and, critically, sameAs links to every official profile you own. Without sameAs, your website, your Google Business Profile, your LinkedIn and your Instagram are four unrelated fragments. With it, they are one company with a verifiable footprint. This single property is the most common gap we find, and it is an afternoon of work.
3. Answer the questions customers actually ask
List the ten questions someone would ask ChatGPT before hiring a business like yours ("how much does X cost", "is Y worth it", "who is the best Z in [city]") and publish a direct, honest, complete answer to each. Put the answer in the first sentence and the detail after it. Models extract passages that make sense on their own, away from your page, so each answer has to stand alone. A visible FAQ with FAQPage markup is the highest-return format there is.
4. Build proof the model can check
- Google reviews with your replies attached: volume, recency and response rate all count.
- Mentions in sources the model already trusts: industry directories, local press, trade associations, chambers of commerce.
- Real numbers and named outcomes on your site. Concrete results are citable; adjectives are not.
- Statistics with an attributed source. The same claim with a named source gets cited far more often than without one.
5. Say the same thing everywhere
Name, address, phone, category and description identical on your site, your Google Business Profile, your social profiles and every directory you appear in. Two different phone numbers for the same business is the fastest way to lose the trust of a system whose whole job is cross-referencing sources. Pick one canonical version and enforce it.
6. Measure before and after
GEO without measurement is faith. Run your real customer questions through ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity before you start, then re-measure every month: in how many answers do you appear? With what sentiment? Who appears in your place? 4RED's Visibility X-Ray automates exactly that measurement, and the free version shows your starting point in minutes.
