How to get your business named in AI answers

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Google's AI Mode to recommend a business like yours, the answer is built from pages the assistant can find and trust. Getting named comes down to two things: being easy to find, and being easy to quote.

There is no secret file or special markup that puts you in AI answers. Google says so directly: its AI features rely on the same index and ranking systems as regular search, and it treats “AEO” and “GEO” as ordinary SEO. That is good news, because it means the work is concrete and it pays off in both places at once.

How AI answers pick their sources

Most assistants answer questions about the real world by retrieving web pages first, then writing a summary from what they found. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode pull from Google's search index. To be shown as a supporting link, a page has to be indexed and eligible to appear as a snippet; there are no additional requirements beyond that.

Other assistants run their own crawlers or lean on a search engine's index. The practical consequence is the same everywhere: if a crawler can't reach your page, or your page doesn't clearly say what you do, you won't be part of the answer.

1. Make sure crawlers can reach you

Start with the plumbing, because nothing else matters if it's broken.

• Check that your robots.txt doesn't block search crawlers, and that your host or CDN isn't blocking them either. Google lists both as basic requirements for its AI features.
• Verify your site in Google Search Console and look at the Pages report. Anything listed as not indexed can't appear in an AI answer.
• Make sure your important pages are linked from other pages on your site. A page that nothing links to is hard to discover.
• Keep pages fast and readable on a phone. Google names page experience as part of the same checklist.

2. Say plainly who you are and what you do

An assistant can only repeat what it can read. Vague taglines don't survive summarization. Put one sentence near the top of your homepage that answers the questions a customer would ask: what you do, for whom, and where.

Compare “We craft digital experiences” with “A Montréal studio that designs and ships websites, iPhone and Android apps, and AI automation.” The second one can be quoted word for word in an answer. The first can't be quoted at all.

Then keep those facts identical everywhere they appear: your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories, app store listings. Matching names, cities and services make it easy for any system to confirm they all describe the same business.

3. Answer the questions your customers ask

Assistants get asked specific questions: how much does an app cost, how long does a launch take, do I need a French version of my site. If your site answers those questions well, you become a source worth citing.

Google's guidance puts the emphasis on original, first-hand content with a clear point of view, and calls this the factor most likely to matter over the long run. A summary of advice that already exists everywhere is commodity content. What only you can write is valuable: what you learned shipping a real product, your actual process, your real numbers.

A few formats work especially well:

• Guides that answer one question thoroughly, like this one.
• Case studies with real details: the problem, what you built, what happened after launch.
• An FAQ with short, direct answers to the questions you hear on every first call.

4. Keep your business details current

For local searches, Google points businesses to Google Business Profile as the way to keep their details accurate in AI responses and other results. Fill it out completely: category, service area, hours, website, photos. Ask happy clients for reviews, and answer the reviews you get.

Do the same on Bing Places and Apple Business Connect. Bing's index feeds several assistants, and Apple Maps is the default map on every iPhone.

5. Earn real mentions

When other trustworthy sites mention you, assistants have more reasons to believe you exist and do what you say. The mentions have to be real, though. Google's guidance specifically calls manufactured mentions unhelpful, and its spam systems are built to ignore them.

Real mentions come from ordinary business activity: directory profiles where buyers shop for your kind of service, partners who link to you, local associations, articles and podcasts, and clients who credit you on their site.

What you can skip

A lot of advice about “AI optimization” is noise. Google's own list of things to ignore includes:

• llms.txt files and Markdown copies of your pages. Google Search doesn't use them. They don't hurt, and some other tools read them, but they won't change your Google visibility.
• Chopping content into small chunks. Google says there's no ideal page length and it understands pages that cover several topics.
• Rewriting everything with special phrasing. AI systems understand synonyms; you don't need to stuff every variation of a keyword.
• Special AI schema markup. There isn't any. Structured data is still worth adding because it makes you eligible for rich results, but it isn't a requirement for AI answers.

How to check if it's working

Traffic from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Performance report in Search Console, along with the rest of your search traffic. Check it monthly.

Then do the simplest test there is: ask the assistants. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot the question your customers would ask, such as “who builds apps in Montréal?” Write down whether you're named and what they say about you. If the description is wrong, the fix is usually on your own site or your profiles: the assistant is repeating what it found.