How to get your website cited in ChatGPT and other AI tools

13 April 2026

Increasingly, people discover information through AI instead of through search engines, whether that's an AI summary on a search results page or an entirely separate tool like ChatGPT or Microsoft CoPilot. For website owners that are used to receiving a steady stream of traffic from Google, this presents a new challenge: How can they be represented in the answers given by ChatGPT and similar tools?

I researched this topic for my latest article for the BBC's Technology of Business site: Businesses scramble to get noticed by AI search.

I interviewed three companies that had taken steps to improve their website: a building supplies business, a spice company and their marketing agency, and a business software company. The strategy of modifying a website to get results in AI engines is called generative engine optimisation (GEO) or answer engine optimisation (AEO).

Although many of the techniques that worked for search engine optimisation are still relevant, some things are new. Search engines look for keywords, but AI tools need to be able to easily process the information on the page. Breaking the content up into digestible chunks helps AI bots, and probably helps human visitors too. Credibility matters, too, so author biographies and clear trust signals like incoming links from high-quality websites are important. Sites that are too broad in their content might appear to lack authority compared to sites with a singular focus.

The article prompted me to reconsider some aspects of my site. For now, I've modified the About Me page to include more proofpoints and to make it easier to understand my experience across books, journalism and copywriting. Beyond that, I'm thinking about curating the content slightly differently and removing some older content so there's a clear focus on my interests today.

To help you get started with optimising your site, HubSpot built a free AEO Grader tool that checks how a website is perceived by OpenAI, Perplexity and Gemini.

For more AEO and GEO tips and to discover the results that are possible today, read my article on the BBC website.

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