How do you prepare your company for AI search? Six areas to work on

Start with a small measurement exercise and an access check. If an assistant names competitors in response to a buyer’s question, that alone does not explain why. An important page may be inaccessible, fail to answer the question or offer less useful information than other sources. Save the answer and its links to decide what to investigate first.

Platforms have different requirements. For a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, Google requires a page to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet. Meeting the requirements does not guarantee inclusion. In ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot handles search crawling; GPTBot relates to potential use of content for training. Their permissions are independent. Sources: Google Search Central and OpenAI’s crawler documentation.

Ask a developer to check priority URLs: server responses, redirects, robots.txt, noindex, access to the main text, and blocks imposed by a CDN or security service. An HTTP 200 response alone does not mean a crawler received useful content. Our guide to getting cited by ChatGPT covers this in more detail.

Then work on both your own website and publications about your company. In our analysis of 569 links from four assistants’ answers, 271 links, or 48% rounded, led to vendors’ and agencies’ own websites. The data was collected on 14–15 September 2026 using a specific set of questions. It shows that company pages get cited too; it does not establish how you should divide your budget.

Name your business category, your customer and the specific problem you solve. A buyer should understand whether you are a fit from a single paragraph, without the rest of your website. Concrete service details help more than words such as ‘leader’, ‘ecosystem’ or ‘innovative approach’ without an explanation.

Create a short fact sheet: company name, main website, services, customer segments, geography, limitations and current terms. Compare it with your About page, directory listings and social profiles. For a local business, also check the address, phone number and opening hours; for a shop, check product information and availability.

Wording can vary across platforms. The facts should agree: a discontinued service should not remain listed, an old price should not look current, and software products and agency services should be clearly distinguished. A contractor can find discrepancies and write the copy; someone responsible within your company confirms the facts.

Look for sources that verify a specific fact: a partner directory, integration documentation, a customer review or a joint case study. The links in answers to your buyers’ questions are a useful starting point. Open those pages and examine the information they provide and why it fits the question.

List those pages and identify a possible action: update a profile you control, correct an outdated term, offer the author new data or prepare a joint article. A substantive correction gives an editor a reason to consider an update. The decision to publish remains theirs.

Distinguish independent assessments, partner content and advertising. A page does not become independent just because it is on another domain. Explain the relationship in a joint case study and the commercial nature of a paid placement. Google specifically cautions against inauthentic mentions in its generative search guidance. Our guide to paid list placements can help you assess an offer.

Take an important buyer question and answer it fully: who the service suits, what is included, which limitations apply and what supports the claims. Improve an existing service page first. Create a separate article when a question needs its own explanation, rather than for every wording of a search query.

Choose evidence that fits the claim. Documentation can establish compatibility, a concrete list can define the scope, and a case study can show an outcome when it includes starting conditions, a period and a measurement method. If the effect has not been measured, describe the work completed honestly. A percentage without a comparison base and period cannot establish the result.

Name the author or specialist who checked the page, and date substantive updates. A name alone does not establish quality, but it identifies who is responsible for the information. Google recommends useful content informed by first-hand experience and does not require a special writing style ‘for AI’. The same official guide explains that llms.txt and special markup are not needed to appear in Google Search. These statements concern Google specifically.

Record brand mentions, links to your domain and recommendations for the stated task separately. An assistant can cite your article while recommending a different provider, or name your company without linking to its website. A single combined metric hides these differences.

For an initial check, you could select ten real questions and repeat each twice in one service. This is a suggested starting protocol, not a statistically sufficient sample of the whole market. Save the exact question, date, service and mode, language, region, sign-in and personalisation settings, full answer and source URLs. Start each repeat in a new chat with the same settings. Available controls vary by service; record them rather than calling any new tab a ‘clean session’.

If an answer is wrong, first examine its cited pages and your own information. Correct a source you can control, record the date and repeat the question later. If you cannot identify the source of the error, keep any attribution as an unconfirmed hypothesis. OpenAI does not guarantee inclusion in search results, so one appearance or disappearance of a brand does not prove the effect of an edit.

Compare services and question types separately. A branded question tests how you are described; a question without your name tests whether you are recommended during selection. Track website visits and enquiries separately from visibility: a citation is not a sale. Our free AI visibility check guide explains the procedure. These templates can help you build the first question set:

Delegate tasks with verifiable outputs: an access audit, profile comparisons, page preparation and answer collection. Assign someone inside the company to approve facts and accept the work. Even a strong writer cannot independently confirm your terms, disclose client information or invent a specialist’s experience.

This plan sets a sequence for a small project. If the initial check reveals a serious technical issue, resolve it first and revise the schedule. The first month’s outputs are accessible pages, consistent facts, published supporting material where possible and a repeatable measurement. The plan does not set a deadline for assistants to start recommending you.

When reviewing delivery, ask for specific URLs, a change log and original assistant answers with measurement settings. For external publications, check what actually went live, under which terms and what the article substantiates. Counts of drafts and emails describe the amount of work, but do not yet establish company visibility.

If you have no initial measurement, start with a do-it-yourself check or request the free audit through the form below. To begin, provide your domain, target market and buyers’ language. The findings should help identify which page to improve first and which facts your team needs to gather.