How to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT

Step 1 — Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt

Several AI providers publish named crawlers. If your robots.txt blocks them, those crawlers are asked not to read your site. Check each provider’s current documentation, and decide for yourself which crawlers you want to allow.

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

Add these to your /robots.txt if you want these crawlers to read your site. If your robots.txt has no rule for them, the result depends on your other rules.

Step 2 — Add Organisation schema

Structured data states plainly what your business is. Without an Organization schema block, that information is left for tools to infer from your text. Add this to your homepage's <head>:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Your Business Name",
  "url": "https://yoursite.ch",
  "description": "One sentence: who you help, what problem you solve.",
  "areaServed": { "@type": "Country", "name": "Switzerland" }
}
</script>

Step 3 — Write answer-first

Tools that summarise pages often draw on the opening text. If that paragraph is "Welcome to our website" or a mission statement, it says little that can be quoted. Consider opening each page with a direct answer to the question it targets.

Step 4 — Add FAQ sections with schema

A question with a clear, factual answer is an easy format for people and tools to read. Marking it up with FAQPage schema makes the structure explicit. Write the questions your customers actually ask before calling you. This does not guarantee any AI tool will use them.

Step 5 — Create an llms.txt file

/llms.txt is an emerging standard: a plain-text file at your domain root that describes who you are, what you do, and what your key pages cover. Support among AI tools is limited and varies, so treat it as optional.

# Your Business Name

One-sentence description of who you serve and what problem you solve.

## Services
- Service 1: brief description
- Service 2: brief description

## Location
City, Switzerland

What a clear business page looks like

A page that contains concrete, attributable facts is easier for a person or a tool to interpret. It should identify the business, describe the service, and give a useful answer without guessing. Vague positioning copy says little; specific service and location statements say more.

If your site is technically sound but not mentioned

Passing a technical checklist is a foundation, not a result. Even with robots.txt, schema, answer-first copy and FAQs in place, an AI assistant may still draw on other sources it already knows. We cannot say how any assistant makes that choice.

At that point the work moves beyond your own pages: look at which pages and profiles appear in answers to your target question, then consider whether you can give clearer evidence about your business. Testing documented buyer questions is what a tailored diagnostic does.

An indicative timeline (not a promise)

1. Week 1: unblock AI crawlers, add Organisation schema, publish llms.txt, and rewrite key pages in answer-first format.
2. Weeks 2–6: publish clear pages for the buying questions customers ask, including FAQs, examples, comparisons, and original observations.
3. Weeks 4–12: build third-party validation through legitimate profiles, directories, partner mentions, reviews, and specialist publications.
4. Months 3–6: re-measure the same prompts and report what changed, including unchanged or mixed results.

A practical readiness test

Before asking what ChatGPT says about your business, test whether a person can find the same answer on the page in under one minute. If the answer is not explicit on the page, a tool has little to work from.

1. Open the target page and copy the first paragraph into a blank document.
2. Check whether it names the business, service, audience, and geography directly.
3. Find one FAQ answer that matches the exact question a buyer would ask ChatGPT.
4. Inspect the page source for Organization, Article, and FAQPage schema.
5. Open /robots.txt and confirm GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot are allowed.
6. Open /llms.txt and confirm the page is listed or described.
7. Ask the target prompt in the AI systems you care about and record which domains are cited instead.
8. Compare those cited domains for source authority, third-party mentions, reviews, freshness, and specificity.

• If the page cannot pass this test, consider rewriting it.
• If the page passes this test but is not mentioned, compare it against the pages that appear in answers.
• If competitors appear instead, consider clearer examples, stronger entity signals, more specific local context, and third-party corroboration. None of this guarantees a change.