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GEO explainer

How to get cited by AI engines

Optimizer360 GEO team · GEO strategists · 12 Sept 2026

You get cited by becoming the page an engine can retrieve, understand and trust on a real buyer question. The process is baseline, diagnose, build, prove — not a purchased placement.

There is a process. There is not a switch.

1. Baseline the prompts that matter

List the questions a serious buyer asks before they shortlist you. Run them on ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Claude. Write down who is named, who is cited, and how you are framed. If you are absent, that is the gap — not a vanity keyword.

2. Publish an answer, then the essay

The first 40–60 words should answer the H1. Then explain. Add an FAQ that matches visible questions. Link to related definitions, not only your homepage.

3. Make the page machine-readable

Use Article schema with a real date, author (Person) and publisher logo. Use FAQPage only for questions that appear on the page. Add Organization and sameAs so the brand is one entity, not three spellings.

4. Let the engines in

Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended and related agents in robots.txt. Keep a current sitemap. Add llms.txt as a short, factual map of the site.

5. Earn corroboration

Engines cross-check. A claim that exists only on your homepage and nowhere else is weak. Publish sources. Get mentioned on pages the engines already trust — not as spam, as genuine references.

6. Measure weekly

Citations move on the engine’s schedule, not yours. We will not invent a week-count. We will show a baseline on day one and whether the same prompts changed.

Optimizer360.ai assigns a GEO strategist, writer and developer to run this loop. Request an audit if you want the baseline first.

Sources

  • The llms.txt proposal describes a /llms.txt file as a curated overview for language models.

    One discovery file among crawl, schema and content — not a silver bullet.

    https://llmstxt.org/

FAQ

How long until we are cited?

We will not invent a timeline. Engines refresh independently. What we commit to is a baseline and weekly tracking of the same prompts.

Do we need a blog?

You need answerable URLs. A blog is a common way to publish them. Glossary, FAQ and comparison pages work too.

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