How to get cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews

A practical checklist. The research behind it is in our GEO playbook. Score your page with the free AI citation readiness checker.

1. Let the crawlers in. Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended in robots.txt (see ours).
2. Rank in normal search. Practitioner guides stress that Google AI Overviews lean on regular rankings. GEO guide source via search extract
3. Add real statistics. That's the one tactic that held up in a 3,205-page replication across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Mode. Replication source via search extract
4. Don't stuff citations or quotes. The same replication found they didn't help and often hurt.
5. Write modular "evidence containers": definitions, numbers, comparisons and steps in self-contained sections. Q&A formatting alone didn't help. arXiv 2604.25707 source via search extract
6. Get mentioned elsewhere. Practitioner guides say Perplexity weighs corroboration from multiple independent sites. GEO guide unverified
7. Measure. Track whether you're cited and whether your content actually shapes the answer, per platform. See AI visibility tools.