AI SEO: easy for AI assistants to find and quote

What is AI SEO?

AI SEO is the work that helps AI assistants find your business, understand it and mention it when someone asks for a recommendation. It covers ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. Some people call it GEO (generative engine optimization) or AEO (answer engine optimization). The work is the same: clear facts on your site, the same details on every listing, real reviews, and search crawlers that can reach your pages.

What’s included in AI SEO?

AI SEO from Well Coded covers six things:

1. An AI visibility check. We put 10 to 20 questions your buyers ask to six AI assistants: ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot. We record who gets cited, before the work and again after.
2. Crawler access. Your site lets in the search crawlers: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and Bingbot for Bing and Copilot. We verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools and turn on IndexNow, which tells Bing and other search engines when a page changes.
3. Pages that answer first. What you do, who it’s for, your prices and timelines in plain text, answers to the questions people ask, and structured data that matches what the page says.
4. The same details everywhere. Your name, hours and links on Google (if your business qualifies for a profile), Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and the directories in your field.
5. Review requests. A request that goes to every customer, on the sites that allow requests. Yelp asks businesses not to ask for reviews, so we don’t.
6. A monthly re-check. The AI reports from Bing and Google, and visits from assistants in your analytics.

What we won’t do: promise a citation or a spot in ChatGPT, sell an llms.txt file as a fix, write reviews, or make a near-copy page for every city.

How do AI assistants decide which businesses to mention?

Each AI assistant decides for itself, from the pages and listings its search sources can reach. None of them publishes a full recipe, but the providers and the research agree on the basics:

• Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet, and no special files or structured data are needed (AI features and your website, Google, updated December 10, 2025).
• ChatGPT doesn’t show sites that block OpenAI’s search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, in its search answers (Overview of OpenAI crawlers, OpenAI). Claude and Perplexity run search crawlers of their own (Anthropic’s crawlers, Perplexity’s crawlers), and Copilot runs on Bing.
• For local questions, listings lead. BrightLocal studied local AI answers across Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT. Google Business Profiles were the top source for Google’s own AI tools, and Yelp was ChatGPT’s most common source, appearing in 80% of its answers. About 93% of the cited domains were individual business websites, so your own site still counts (AI directory sources study, BrightLocal, August 26, 2026).

That gives AI SEO two halves: a site that states its facts plainly, and listings and reviews on the sites assistants already read. For what you can check and fix yourself, see how to get your business recommended by ChatGPT.

Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?

No, and no one honestly can. ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode and the other assistants each decide for themselves what to mention, and none of them publishes how. Anyone who promises a citation is guessing.

What Well Coded can do is make your business easy to find and describe: let the search crawlers in, put your facts in plain text, keep your details the same on every listing, and ask every customer for a review on the sites that allow requests. Then we measure each month, so you see what changed instead of guessing.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

No. llms.txt is a proposed file that summarizes a site for AI tools, but no major AI provider says its search or answer system reads one. Google says you don’t need “AI text files” to appear in its AI features (AI features and your website), and Google’s John Mueller said in June 2025 that no AI system currently uses llms.txt (Search Engine Roundtable, June 18, 2025). In Ahrefs server-log data from 137,000 domains, 97% of llms.txt files got no requests at all in May 2026 (PPC Land, on Originality.ai and Ahrefs data, July 2, 2026).

How is AI SEO different from local SEO?

Local SEO helps people nearby find you on Google and the map. AI SEO helps assistants find and describe you, wherever your customers are.

For a business that meets customers in person, most AI SEO is local SEO done well: the same Google Business Profile, listings and reviews feed AI answers, so the two can be one setup. See local SEO and Google Business Profile care.

For a business that only works online, Google doesn’t offer a Business Profile, so local SEO doesn’t apply. AI SEO is the part that does: your site, crawler access, Bing, and the directories in your field.

How do you measure AI SEO?

Well Coded measures AI SEO with three reports, checked every month:

• Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report shows how often your pages are cited as sources in Microsoft Copilot and Bing’s AI answers, and which pages. Microsoft released it as a public preview on February 10, 2026 (Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools).
• Google Search Console shows how your pages appear in Google’s AI features, and has a setting to opt out of them. Google announced both on June 3, 2026, and by August 31, 2026 had opened them to all websites worldwide (Google’s announcement of the new controls).
• Your analytics show visits from ChatGPT, because ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to the links it sends (OpenAI’s publisher FAQ).

The AI visibility check runs before the work and after, with the same 10 to 20 buyer questions, so you can compare who gets cited.

What does AI SEO cost?

AI SEO from Well Coded gets a fixed quote from a written plan, agreed before any work starts, and every project begins with a free 30-minute call. The listings themselves cost nothing: a Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and a Yelp business page are free, and so are Bing Webmaster Tools and IndexNow. The monthly re-check after setup is quoted in the same written plan.

Is AI SEO right for you?

AI SEO fits a business that wants to show up when people ask an assistant for a recommendation, in Las Vegas or anywhere in the US. It matters most for a business that only works online, since Google Business Profiles are for businesses that meet customers in person. If you’d rather have AI draft replies to inquiries or take bookings for you, see AI automation for small businesses.

Well Coded Solutions is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and run by Stefan Kudla. You can read about Stefan’s background. To get started, tell us what people ask about your business.