AI search
AI search visibility checklist for ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI Overviews
Jasper Verelst 8 min readAI assistants have become a discovery channel with no rank tracker and no position. What they do have is a retrieval step, and retrieval rewards content that is parseable, self-contained and attributable.
Work down this checklist in order. The early items are binary and cheap; the later ones compound.
1. Access: can they read you?
Nothing works until the crawlers can fetch the page and render its main content.
- Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot and Google-Extended in robots.txt.
- Serve the main content in the initial HTML; do not require client-side interaction to reveal it.
- Keep response times low and avoid interstitials that hide content.
- Keep private paths such as checkout, share links and authenticated areas disallowed.
2. Structure: can they quote you?
Retrieval operates on chunks. Every chunk should be able to stand on its own in an answer.
- One question-shaped heading per section.
- First sentence answers the heading completely.
- Name the subject in every passage instead of relying on pronouns.
- Use short lists and tables for comparisons and steps.
- Keep one idea per paragraph and sentences under roughly 25 words.
3. Trust: are you safe to cite?
Assistants prefer sources they can attribute confidently. This is where experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust translate directly into machine-readable signals.
- A named author with a real biography and external profiles.
- Organisation and WebSite structured data with consistent identifiers.
- Visible publication and update dates.
- Concrete first-hand detail: numbers, screenshots, methods, limitations.
- Citations to primary sources where you make a factual claim.
4. Coverage: do you answer the whole question space?
Assistants synthesise. If your page answers three of the five sub-questions a user has, you become a partial source and often lose the citation to a page that answers all five.
Build a question inventory per topic from People Also Ask, support tickets, sales calls and the assistants themselves, then make sure each question has a passage that answers it directly.
5. Measurement: a monthly routine
Fix a list of questions per market. Run them across two or three assistants each month. Record mention, link and the page used, then act on the pattern rather than any single answer.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
Allow their crawlers, structure each section so the first sentence answers a question-shaped heading, name entities explicitly, add author and organisation signals with visible dates, and cover the full question space around your topic.
Does structured data help with AI search?
Yes, indirectly. Organisation, WebSite, Article and Person markup make authorship, dates and entity identity unambiguous, which improves attribution confidence and therefore citation rates.
How do I track AI search visibility?
There is no position to track. Maintain a fixed list of 20 to 40 questions per market, run them monthly across several assistants, and log whether you were mentioned, whether you were linked, and which page was used.
Should each market have its own pages for AI visibility?
Yes. Assistants answer in the user's language and prefer sources they can quote directly in that language, so a genuine native-language page consistently outperforms relying on translation of your English page.
Written by Jasper Verelst
SEO consultant with 10+ years in search content and 3 years writing for generative engines. Creator of GSEO Editor and Smart GSEO Translator. About Jasper · LinkedIn · Full profile
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