How to Get Your Business Found in AI Search

Introduction

It’s now time to acknowledge the elephant in the room, and that is the way AI has evolved in the past few years. From Generative AI answering questions to AI Search engines such as Perplexity, the way AI answers questions has changed a lot in the past few years.

What used to be potential AI misinformation quickly turned into AI Responses that then cited Google and Bing as sources. Does this type of innovation favor the brevity of information shared online? I think so. The internet is a vast space of information (and misinformation), and AI does a great job of cleaning this up.

So in this article, I will introduce AI Search Optimization (or AEO). I will talk about different ways you can benefit by letting AI search engines crawl your website. There is the old saying: “Bad News is Good News”. This can be applied to Search Engine Traffic as well. I think the more precise the traffic, the more likely one is to make a conversion. In the context of AI Search, if you can get your business suggested by it, then you stand in the top 1% of converting traffic.

Simply put: AEO allows for a new “AI Search Gold Rush”. Where, if you can get mentioned by an LLM, there is a high chance of this traffic converting because of how descriptive the LLM Queries are.

What is AI Search Engine Optimization?

AI Search Engine Optimization: also known as AEO or GEO (Answer Engine Optimization or Generative Engine Optimization, respectively), is the process of optimizing your on-page and off-page SEO strategy so potential customers can find you when searching LLMs for their desired query. There are many AI Search Engines - ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude - to name a few.

With the advancements in LLMs in the past few years, it has led many to wonder: How to get cited by ChatGPT (and other engines)?

In this article, I will talk about several factors that I have been implementing in my new blog to be found by AI search engines, and I will go over several important factors that lead to being found by AI search engines.

How to Let AI Crawlers Access Your Site

In ordinary SEO, there is a robots.txt. This is usually set up to allow Googlebot and Bingbot to crawl one’s site. In AEO, it is the exact same. So use the following code snippet to not disallow the LLM crawlers from accessing the site.

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Or, more simply put.

User-agent: *
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml

Most sites have the latter as their robots.txt. If this is the case for you, just leave it and go on to the next step.

Add Structured Data to you Blog Posts

The next step in this is to add structured data to your blog posts or any post you want to be possibility recommended to AI Search Engines. This looks like this.

type JsonLdProps = {
  data: Record<string, unknown>;
};

export default function JsonLd({ data }: JsonLdProps) {
  return (
    <script
      type="application/ld+json"
      dangerouslySetInnerHTML={{
        __html: JSON.stringify(data).replace(/</g, "\\u003c"),
      }}
    />
  );
}

This component used in a Blog Post this looks like so.

import JsonLd from "@/components/JsonLd";

const person = {
  "@type": "Person",
  name: "Your Name",
  url: "https://www.yourdomain.com/about",
  sameAs: ["https://www.linkedin.com/in/your-profile"],
};

export default function BlogPost() {
  const schema = {
    "@context": "https://schema.org",
    "@graph": [
      {
        "@type": "Article",
        headline: "How to Show Up in AI Search Results",
        datePublished: "2026-11-03",
        dateModified: "2026-11-03",
        author: person,
      },
      person,
      {
        "@type": "FAQPage",
        mainEntity: [
          {
            "@type": "Question",
            name: "What is AI search engine optimization?",
            acceptedAnswer: {
              "@type": "Answer",
              text: "AI search engine optimization is optimizing your website so AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity cite it in their answers.",
            },
          },
        ],
      },
    ],
  };

  return (
    <article>
      <JsonLd data={schema} />
      {/* your post content */}
    </article>
  );
}

This is the basics of using Structured Data in a Blog Post for AEO Purposes. If you are confused at this step you can book a meeting with me and I can do a full Website Audit for SEO and AEO

Write in Quotable Chunks

It is important that if you are optimizing your site for AEO, the posts or pages are completely answer questions in 40-60 words. This is an important AEO Strategy for those doing Generative Engine Optimization. This is so the AI can easily crawl the site and allow it to be read for the query. This is important for AI Search Visibility.

Work on your LLMs.txt file

Next up, we have the LLMs.txt file. This is to be structured like so.

# Your Business Name

> One or two sentences on who you are and what you do.

## Services

- [SEO Services](https://www.yourdomain.com/services): SEO audits and AI search optimization.
- [About](https://www.yourdomain.com/about): Background and experience.

## Blog Posts

- [How to Show Up in AI Search Results](https://www.yourdomain.com/posts/ai-search): A guide to AEO.

GEO is just like SEO

The final step to LLM SEO, to rank in Perplexity and to rule ChatGPT SEO, is off-page seo. Just like regular SEO: off-page SEO is a big piece of the puzzle. To show up in search results requires a lot of off-page SEO work, but I’m thinking it is worth it considering how targeted the LLM Search Traffic is.

Conclusion

That was “How to Get Your Business Found in AI Search”. Thanks for reading, and if you want me to help you get your website found with traditional SEO or AEO, then please follow this link: https://www.brendansblog.xyz/portfolio and book a meeting!

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