How to optimize your website for AI search: the GEO playbook

Optimising your website for AI search comes down to a repeatable sequence: make sure AI crawlers can reach your pages, that your content sits in the HTML they read, and that each passage is structured to be quoted — then measure what gets cited and keep it current. This playbook walks each step and links to the detail behind it.

What "AI search" means here

AI search is any engine that answers a question with cited sources instead of a list of links — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. Each reads a handful of pages and names the few it used, so your goal shifts from ranking to being one of the sources it quotes. Our intro to what GEO is covers the difference from SEO.

Step 1: Make your pages reachable

Access is the foundation everything else rests on. AI engines split their crawlers into two kinds — search and retrieval crawlers that decide citations (OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic's Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and Googlebot) and training crawlers that only affect model training (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended). Confirm your robots.txt allows the search crawlers; blocking a training crawler is fine and doesn't cost you citations. Our crawler-check guide walks the full test.

Step 2: Make your content readable

A crawler that reaches your page still has to read it. Many AI crawlers render little or no JavaScript, so content that only appears after scripts run can be invisible to them. Open View Page Source and search for a sentence from your page — if it isn't there, your content is client-rendered and at risk, and should be served in the HTML instead.

Step 3: Make each passage quotable

Engines lift self-contained passages, not whole pages. Lead each section with the answer, keep paragraphs able to stand on their own, name your entities plainly, and back claims with real evidence. Marking up genuine Q&A with FAQPage schema helps too. Our guide on making pages quotable details the structure.

Step 4: Cover the questions your audience asks

Reach, readability and structure make a page eligible; coverage decides how often you qualify. Build pages that answer the real questions your audience puts to AI — including engine-specific ones, like ChatGPT visibility and getting cited by Perplexity. The more genuine questions you answer well, the more answers you can appear in.

Step 5: Measure what gets cited

AI visibility is measurable, so treat it as a number rather than a guess. Track whether the engines actually cite you for your target questions, and re-check on a regular cadence to see the trend. Citations, not raw traffic, are the metric that tells you GEO is working.

Step 6: Keep it current

AI answers favour maintained content. A page that's accurate today can drift as facts, products and the engines themselves change, so revisit your key pages, refresh what's stale, and keep your dates honest. Freshness is part of staying citable, not a one-time task.

Common mistakes to avoid

A few mistakes quietly undo the work. The wildcard trap — allowing a few named crawlers, then a catch-all that blocks the rest — cuts off AI search crawlers. Padding pages for length rather than coverage hurts both readers and quotability. Optimising for one engine while ignoring the others leaves easy wins on the table. And treating GEO as a one-time project lets pages drift out of date. Steer clear of these and the rest of the playbook holds.

The full picture

Each step has its own detailed guide, and together they form one workflow. Start with what GEO is, confirm access with the crawler check, fix structure with making pages quotable, then work the engine-specific questions — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Agencies running this for clients can follow the freelancer workflow.

The order matters

Run the steps in sequence, because each depends on the one before it. There's no value in perfecting your structure if a crawler can't reach the page, and no value in coverage if the pages you publish can't be read. Reach, then read, then quote, then cover, then measure, then maintain.

Where to start

Begin with the foundation. The free Site Check at Sailiently tests whether AI engines can reach and read a given page and reports exactly what's blocking them; the URL Audit then goes page by page with the specific fixes, grounded in your own content.

Sources

The crawler facts above come from each engine’s own documentation:

• OpenAI — Overview of OpenAI Crawlersofficial source
• Anthropic — Bots & robots.txtofficial source
• Perplexity — Bots guideofficial source
• Google — Google’s crawlersofficial source

Related: Crawler check · Making pages quotable · GEO for freelancers & agencies