GUIDE 01
How to Get Cited by ChatGPT
Short answer
Getting cited by ChatGPT takes three things: content its crawler can read without JavaScript, an entity that resolves and is corroborated by independent sources, and passages that stand on their own. Ranking in Google is not enough — in a real engagement, a company with 85% presence in Google AI Overviews had 0% in ChatGPT.
The workbook contains the nine steps with a completion test for each, the prompt-set worksheet, the recording table and ready-to-use schema blocks.
What is inside
- Chapter 01 — The data speaks for itself: the 172-prompt measurement, before and after
- Why Claude behaves differently, and what that means for your industry
- Chapter 02 — The nine steps, each with a completion test
- Chapter 03 — The prompt-set worksheet and recording table
- Chapter 04 — From snapshot to trend
Download the workbook
PDF, 15 pages. A business email address is required.
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Why does a site that ranks well get ignored by ChatGPT?
Because two different systems are at work. Google’s AI Overviews run on Google’s index, so a page that ranks is already eligible. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity crawl the web themselves and answer from what they hold. Your Google position is not an input to either process.
We measured the gap on a B2B professional services firm in Greece with strong classic SEO. The same 172 questions, the same week: 85% mention rate in Google’s AI surfaces, 0% in ChatGPT, 9% in Claude, 0% in Gemini.
What actually moves the answer?
Three things, in order of how quickly they pay. Content a crawler can read without JavaScript, because the major AI crawlers do not reliably execute it and a browser-rendered site may be retrieved almost empty. An entity that resolves cleanly, meaning one organisation, one named person, one consistent description everywhere. And corroboration on sources you do not own, which is the slowest lever and the one that decides the outcome.
Three months of that work on the same client moved ChatGPT from 0% to 65%, Gemini from 0% to 34%, and Claude from 9% to 19%. Google barely moved, because it was already saturated.
Questions we are asked
How do I get my business mentioned by ChatGPT?
Serve your content as server-rendered HTML, allow the AI crawlers explicitly in robots.txt, make your organisation resolve as a single consistent entity with a named person behind it, write self-contained passages that survive being extracted, and build corroboration on independent sources. The technical work lands in weeks; mention rate moves over quarters.
Does ranking in Google mean ChatGPT will cite me?
No. Google’s AI Overviews are built on Google’s index, so ranking helps there. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity crawl independently and answer from what they hold. In a measurement we ran, a company with 85% presence in Google’s AI surfaces had 0% in ChatGPT.
How long does it take?
The technical and entity work takes weeks and is entirely within your control. Mention rate moves over quarters, because it depends on sources you do not own. Anyone offering a date is guessing.
Does llms.txt help?
Publish it, because it costs twenty minutes and is a defensible bet on agentic retrieval. Do not buy it as a ranking factor. Google has stated it does not use the file, while separately adding a check for it to Lighthouse — both are true, and they concern different layers.
Contact us
Send us the brief or book a short call. You get concrete next steps in reply.