I spent 3 weeks asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude about Indian startups.
Out of 50 I tested, 43 got zero citations. Not wrong citations. Zero.
These were real companies. Live products. Some with funding. Some with press coverage.
ChatGPT simply didn't know they existed.
So I built a tool to diagnose why. What I found changed how I think about search entirely.
The shift nobody is talking about
When someone searches "best project management tool for startups," they used to get 10 blue links.
Now they get a paragraph written by an AI that cites 3-4 sources by name.
If your brand isn't one of those citations, you don't exist for that query. Not on page 2. Not at position 11. Completely invisible.
This is called Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): optimizing your brand to be cited by AI systems, not just ranked by search engines.
The rules are completely different from traditional SEO.
What I discovered after auditing 50+ startups
Here's what the data showed:
Problem 1: GPTBot is blocked
Most startup robots.txt files look like this:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin
Disallow: /api
But many also have this (and don't realize it):
User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /
If OpenAI's crawler can't read your site, ChatGPT can't learn about your product. Full stop.
Check yours right now: yourdomain.com/robots.txt
Problem 2: No llms.txt file
Every startup has a sitemap.xml for Google. Almost none have an llms.txt for AI systems.
llms.txt is a machine-readable brand context file that tells AI crawlers who you are, what you do, and what your most important pages are.
Think of it as the AI equivalent of your robots.txt. Instead of telling crawlers what to ignore, it tells them exactly what matters.
Problem 3: Wrong link format in llms.txt
Even the startups that had an llms.txt were making the same mistake I was making:
WRONG - AI systems read these as plain text, not as links
- Documentation: https://docs.yourdomain.com
- Blog: https://yourdomain.com/blog # CORRECT - Markdown link format that AI systems parse as actual links
- Documentation
- Blog I discovered this bug in my own llms.txt after an audit tool flagged "File does not appear to contain any links." I cross-checked Brand24's llms.txt. They use the Markdown format correctly throughout. One format change. Could be suppressing AI citations for weeks.
How to build a proper llms.txt
Here's the structure that works:
markdown# YourStartup
One sentence: what you do and who it's for.
YourStartup is a [category] tool that helps [target user] [primary benefit].
Key Pages
Docs
Blog
Optional
- llms-full.txt: Complete context for AI systems Drop this at yourdomain.com/llms.txt. That's it. AI crawlers from Perplexity, Claude, and others already look for this file. Some systems also pass it through robots.txt. Add this line if you want to be explicit: # robots.txt User-agent: * Allow: /llms.txt
The 3-tier AI citation hierarchy
Getting your llms.txt right is step 1. But AI systems don't just read your own site. They weight third-party citations heavily.
Here's the hierarchy I've mapped out:
Tier 1 - Structured directories (highest trust)
G2, Capterra, ProductHunt
Crunchbase, LinkedIn Company Page
There's An AI For That (for AI tools)
These feed directly into AI knowledge graphs. A complete G2 profile with reviews is worth more than 10 blog posts.
Tier 2 - Community and Q&A
Reddit mentions (especially /r/entrepreneur, /r/SaaS)
Quora answers where you're cited as a tool
Hacker News Show HN posts
Perplexity indexes Reddit deeply. If your product is being discussed there, citations follow.
Tier 3 - Press and backlinks
Guest posts on domain authority 60+ sites
Product reviews on Indie Hackers
Press mentions
This is the traditional SEO layer. Still relevant, but lowest weight for AI citation specifically.
The Wikidata thing nobody mentions
Here's something almost no Indian startup has done:
Create a Wikidata entry for your company.
Wikidata is the structured knowledge base that feeds Google's Knowledge Graph, which feeds Gemini. If you're not in Wikidata, Gemini's factual layer doesn't know you exist as an entity.
It takes 30 minutes. Go to wikidata.org, create a new item, add:
Instance of: business (Q4830453)
Country: India (Q668)
Industry: your category
Official website: yourdomain.com
Founded: your founding date
This is free and permanent. Do it today.
How AI systems score your brand differently
Not all AI systems work the same way. Here's what I've learned from testing:
AI SystemPrimary Citation SignalSecondary SignalChatGPTTraining data + web browseYour robots.txt permissionsGeminiKnowledge Graph (Wikidata)Google Search presencePerplexityLive web search (two-stage)Reddit/community mentionsClaudeAnthropic training + contextThird-party reviewsGrokX/Twitter mentionsWeb searchGoogle AI OverviewFeatured snippetsStructured data (FAQ schema)
The two-stage Perplexity process is interesting: it first selects sources (your domain authority matters here), then absorbs specific answers from those sources (your content structure matters here). You have to win both stages to get cited.
What I built
I got frustrated doing all of this manually for every startup I was checking.
So I built GeoIQAI. It gives any brand a GEO IQ Score from 0 to 100 and breaks it down across all 6 AI systems.
You paste your domain. It checks:
Is GPTBot allowed in robots.txt?
Does llms.txt exist and use correct Markdown link format?
Is the brand cited in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Google AI Overview?
What's the third-party citation footprint?
The score tells you where you're visible and where you're invisible. Before you discover it the hard way (when a competitor gets the citation instead of you).
Built it as an indie founder. Still pre-revenue. But the audit results have been consistently eye-opening.
5 things you can do right now
Check yourdomain.com/robots.txt - make sure GPTBot isn't blocked
Create yourdomain.com/llms.txt - use the template above with Markdown links
Complete your G2 and Crunchbase profiles - structured directories are the highest trust signal
Add FAQ schema to your homepage - Google AI Overview pulls directly from FAQPage schema
Create a Wikidata entry - 30 minutes, permanent benefit for Gemini visibility
The brands that do this in 2026 will own the AI citation layer the way early adopters owned the SEO layer in 2010.
If you check your robots.txt and find GPTBot is blocked, drop a comment — I'm curious how common it actually is.
And if you want to check your full GEO IQ Score across all 6 systems, geoiqai.com — it's free to check.
Building GeoIQAI in public. Day 47. Follow along on X @BeingtauheedTk
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