One move ahead. How to get your business cited by ChatGPT, Google and other AI.

One Tuesday evening, a woman opens ChatGPT on her phone and types: “I’m looking for a reliable electrician in Longueuil to replace my electrical panel. Who do you recommend?” A few seconds later, the answer is there: three names, one sentence about each, sometimes a link. No second page of results. Three names.

This article asks a simple question: how do you make sure yours is one of them?

There is no secret button, and nobody can guarantee you a spot (be wary of anyone who promises one). But there is a logic, and it looks a lot like chess: the businesses AI names today are often the ones that prepared the ground long before. And the game has barely started: Google only brought its AI Mode to Canada in August 2025, and in French in October 2025.

How an AI decides who to name

Before you play, you need to understand the board. When someone asks a question that needs current information, like the name of a good electrician, most assistants don’t answer from memory alone. They run a search, read a few pages, then write an answer and cite their sources. Simplified, it plays out on four squares.

1. The question“Who do you recommend in Longueuil?” The AI often breaks it into several smaller searches.
2. The searchIt queries an index: Google’s for AI Overviews and Gemini, Bing’s for Copilot, its own crawlers and partners for ChatGPT, its own index for Perplexity.
3. The readingIt reads a few pages, often the raw text only. If it isn’t written on the page, it doesn’t exist.
4. The citationIt names the sources that answer most clearly. That is the square you want.

Each of the moves below targets one of these squares: being found, being read, being believed, and then being chosen.

The opening Let the right crawlers in.

Every major AI sends crawlers to read the web. Most AI companies even have several, with very different jobs: one to train their models, another to feed their search engine, sometimes a third that fetches a page when a user asks for it.

The difference matters, because they are blocked separately. OpenAI says it plainly: a site that blocks OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot, on the other hand, is for training, and blocking it does not remove you from answers.

Google-Extended is not a crawler but an instruction: it governs Gemini training and the use of your pages in Gemini app answers, without removing you from AI Overviews or AI Mode. For those two, Google asks for nothing special: a page that is indexed and eligible for a snippet can appear.

In most cases, there is nothing to add: a crawler that isn’t named in your robots.txt file is allowed in. The danger comes from elsewhere.

• A forgotten blanket ban, like Disallow: / under User-agent: *, left there since launch day.
• An overzealous firewall. Some services now block AI crawlers by default; Cloudflare has done so on new sites since July 2025. Check what is being blocked, or ask your provider.
• A switched-off Search Console setting. Since August 31, 2026, Google lets a site opt out of its generative AI features, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. A site that opts out gets no more traffic or impressions from them. Check that nobody has switched it off for yours.
• Text that only exists with JavaScript. According to a Vercel analysis, the major AI crawlers did not run JavaScript, except Google’s and Apple’s. If your text only appears once scripts load, ChatGPT may see an empty page.

If you still want to spell out your choices, it looks like this:

# AI search: the door is open
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

# Training: your call
# (replace Allow with Disallow to refuse)
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

That is also why ganolyk.ca is written in plain HTML: the text is there on the very first read, for Google and for AI alike.

The development One real answer per page.

Once the door is open, the AI reads. And it looks for one thing: the page that answers the question most clearly. Not the prettiest, not the longest. The clearest.

The trouble is that many small-business websites beat around the bush in their first lines. Compare:

The first sentence could be on any website in the world. The second gives the trade, the cities, the experience, the turnaround and the warranty. An AI can reuse it as is to answer “who replaces roofs in Brossard?”.

In practice:

• Your trade and your city, spelled out, in the page title and in the first sentence. AI does not guess: if Brossard isn’t written anywhere, you are not an answer for Brossard.
• One page per important service, rather than a list of twenty services on a single page.
• Your customers’ real questions, with real answers: how much it costs, how long it takes, whether you travel, what is guaranteed.
• Precise, verifiable facts: years of experience, number of projects, turnaround times, starting prices, certifications.

Research points the same way. In 2024, researchers, including a team from Princeton University, tested what makes a source rise in an AI-generated answer. Adding statistics, quotations and references increased its visibility, by up to 40% on their measure. Keyword stuffing, on the other hand, pushed it down. It was a simulated engine, not ChatGPT itself, but the lesson holds: AI cites what is precise and backed up.

Castling Put your identity somewhere safe.

In chess, castling puts the king somewhere safe. On the web, your king is your identity: your name, address, phone number, hours and services. AI finds them in several places, and compares them.

The good news: you control almost all of those places. Yext analyzed 6.8 million citations made by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: 86% came from the business’s own website (44%) or its directory listings (42%). Forums like Reddit? About 2%.

• Your Google Business Profile. Google says so itself: an up-to-date profile can help your products and services be visible in AI responses as well as in search results. Categories, services, hours, photos, posts: it all counts.
• Bing Places. Copilot relies on Bing, and Microsoft says an up-to-date Bing Places listing helps keep your address, hours and contact details eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses.
• Apple Business Connect, for Maps and Siri, and Yelp, whose reviews, photos and business details now show up in ChatGPT.
• Your Facebook page and the directories in your field: professional association, chamber of commerce, Yellow Pages.

What about structured data? Schema.org markup (LocalBusiness, for example) helps Google and Maps read your details, and Microsoft says structured content helps its systems understand and summarize. But Google is clear: it is not required for its AI features, and there is no special markup for them. We add it, without selling it to you as a miracle.

No time to keep all this up to date? That is the job of our Wake up your online presence option: your Google profile and your Facebook page, kept alive every week.

The middlegame Get people talking about you elsewhere.

Your website says you are the best. Of course it does. AI cross-checks: it also looks at what others say about you.

Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands: how often they were mentioned on the web was far more closely tied to their presence in Google’s AI Overviews than the number of links pointing to their site (a correlation of 0.66 versus 0.22). Correlation does not prove cause, but the trend is clear: what others say about you carries a lot of weight.

• Reviews, often and in detail. Ask every happy customer for one, and answer them all, even the less flattering ones. A review that names the service and the city says more than “great!”.
• Local mentions: the local paper, your trade association, a supplier who features you, the minor hockey team you sponsor, with a link to your site.
• Content people want to cite: a pricing guide, a case study with numbers, photos of real job sites.

The endgame Measure, then play again.

A game is not won in one move. AI answers change from week to week, from one assistant to the next, and sometimes from one person to the next. So you need to measure often, always with the same questions, to see what moves.

• Bing Webmaster Tools has an “AI Performance” report, in public preview since February 2026: it shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot and in Bing’s AI summaries.
• Google Search Console now has a generative AI report: how often your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode (impressions, not clicks). Clicks stay mixed in with the rest in the Performance report.
• Google Analytics shows visits arriving from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai or copilot.microsoft.com. Few for now, they are worth tracking.
• And the simplest of all: ask the same questions yourself, every month.

Would you rather have us handle it? The Growth plan includes monthly SEO follow-up, with a short report.

Blunders to avoid

In chess, a blunder is marked with two question marks. Here are the ones we hear most often.

• “You need an llms.txt file.”

  Google says it ignores it: it neither helps nor hurts you in its results. No other major AI has announced that it reads it. We have one on ganolyk.ca because it costs nothing, but we will never sell it to you as a solution.

• “If I block GPTBot, I disappear from ChatGPT.”

  No. GPTBot is for training; OAI-SearchBot is what feeds search. Same at Google: Google-Extended does not remove you from AI Overviews (it does affect the Gemini app).

• “I rank first on Google, so I’m fine.”

  It is an excellent start, nothing more. Only 38% of the pages cited in AI Overviews rank in the top ten, and ChatGPT, Copilot and Perplexity each have their own sources.

• “AI needs special markup.”

  Google says it plainly: no special schema.org markup is required for its AI features, and there is no need to chop your text into tiny pieces.

• “You can pay to be recommended by ChatGPT.”

  OpenAI now shows ads in ChatGPT, but says they do not influence its answers. According to OpenAI, the answer itself is not for sale.

• “An agency can guarantee I’ll be cited.”

  Nobody controls what an AI answers. What you can do is put every chance on your side, then measure it.

Your list of moves

Ten moves, in the order we would play them. Check them off as you go.

• My robots.txt lets in OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot and Bingbot.
• My host or firewall does not block AI search crawlers, and my site is not opted out of AI features in Search Console.
• The text of my pages is in the HTML, not only loaded by JavaScript.
• My trade and my city are written in the title and the first sentence of my home page.
• Each important service has its own page, with a starting price and a turnaround time.
• The questions my customers ask on the phone have a written answer on my website.
• My name, address, phone number and hours are identical everywhere: website, Google, Bing, Apple, Facebook, Yelp.
• My Google profile is complete, with recent photos.
• I ask every happy customer for a review, and I answer every review.
• Every month, I ask AI the same questions and write down who it names.

The next move

Beginners think about the move they are playing. Good players are already thinking about the next one. AI assistants will not replace Google tomorrow morning, but they are taking their place in your customers’ journey, one question at a time. And getting ready is not a gamble: everything that helps an AI cite you (a clear website, up-to-date listings, real reviews) also helps you on Google, and with customers themselves.

• Tonight: ask the five questions.
• This week: check your robots.txt, your firewall, the AI setting in Search Console and your Google profile.
• This month: rewrite the first sentence of your main pages.
• Every month: ask the same questions again, and note what has moved.

Sources

All checked on October 14, 2026. We cite our sources: that is also what AI likes.

• More than half of Quebec internet users use a generative AI tool (in French), Université Laval, NETendances 2025 survey, March 2026.
• SOCi’s 2026 Local Visibility Index, summarized by Search Engine Land, January 2026.
• Pages cited in AI Overviews and Google’s top 10, Ahrefs, March 2026.
• Brand mentions and AI Overview visibility (75,000 brands), Ahrefs, May 2025.
• 86% of AI citations come from brand-managed sources, Yext, October 2025.
• OpenAI’s crawlers, OpenAI documentation.
• Anthropic’s crawlers, Claude Help Center, April 2026.
• Perplexity’s crawlers, Perplexity documentation.
• AI features and your website, Google Search Central, December 2025.
• Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI, Google Search Central, July 2026.
• Search Console’s generative AI report and control, Search Engine Land, August 2026.
• Google’s common crawlers, including Google-Extended, Google Search Central, July 2026.
• Introducing AI Mode in Canada, Google Canada, August 2025.
• AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft Bing, February 2026.
• Optimizing your content for inclusion in AI search answers, Microsoft Advertising, October 2025.
• The rise of the AI crawler, Vercel, December 2024.
• GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024.
• Cloudflare will now block AI bots by default, MIT Technology Review, July 2025.
• Yelp in ChatGPT, Yelp, August 2026.
• Testing ads in ChatGPT, OpenAI, February 2026.