AI search optimization: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Claude

What AI search optimization means for a business

AI search optimization is the work of making your website reachable, readable and worth quoting for the AI answers your buyers read: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Claude, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. In practice it is five steps: let each assistant's search crawler in, make your pages eligible for Google's AI features, answer real buyer questions with facts you can prove, keep your business details consistent everywhere, and measure each surface on its own.

Each surface gets its information from a different place, according to the companies' own documentation:

The surfaces disagree often enough that one check says little about the others. In the AIGROW Index, any two assistants shared 21% of the names they gave, and 61% of the businesses in a ranking were named by only one assistant. BrightLocal's September 2026 study of 200,085 local searches found Google Maps named a tracked business in 66% of searches, against 32% to 38% for the AI surfaces it tested.

Step 1: check that each assistant can reach your site

Google, OpenAI, Anthropic and Perplexity each name their crawlers and keep search apart from training. This is what each company says its crawlers do:

Search and training are separate choices in each company's documentation. A business that wants to be found usually allows the search crawlers and then decides about training on its own terms. A robots.txt that does this explicitly looks like this:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /


User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /


User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /


User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /


# Training is a separate choice: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended

If your robots.txt names none of these crawlers and has no "Disallow: /" under "User-agent: *", they are already allowed. Then check the layer robots.txt cannot see: Google lists the CDN and hosting set-up among the things that must allow crawling, and OpenAI and Perplexity publish IP ranges for firewall allow lists. OpenAI and Perplexity say a robots.txt change takes up to about 24 hours to reach their systems.

Step 2: make your pages eligible for Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google says there are no extra technical requirements for its AI features: a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, and the site must be included in the Search generative AI setting in Search Console. Work through it in this order:

1. Inspect the page you want found with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console. Confirm it is indexed and that Google picked the canonical URL you expect.
2. Look for snippet controls. nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex all limit what Google can show, in AI features as well as ordinary results.
3. Open Settings, then Search generative AI, in Search Console. Including your site is the default; a property can also inherit the setting from a parent property, so check which one applies.
4. Bring your Google Business Profile and, for shops, Merchant Center up to date. Google says both can help products and services appear in AI responses.
5. If you use structured data, keep it matched to the text visible on the page. The local business schema generator and the schema markup validator help with the mechanics.

Google is just as clear about what you can skip:

Expect gaps. Google shows an AI Overview only when it judges it adds to classic results, so many searches never trigger one, and meeting every requirement does not guarantee crawling, indexing or a link. The Generative AI performance report in Search Console shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Step 3: answer the questions buyers actually ask

Google's guide to its generative features says content people find unique and useful will likely do more for your presence in those features, in the long run, than any other suggestion in the guide. It asks for first-hand experience, a point of view of your own and clear headings, rather than a summary of what is already online. The other assistants read the same pages through their own crawlers, so one good page serves all of them.

Start from your enquiries. Write down the five questions customers ask before they book, then check whether one page on your site answers each one plainly near the top. Take a roof repair firm as an example:

Two rules keep the page useful. Improve the strongest existing page for each question instead of writing near-copies for every town, and date any fact that changes, such as prices or hours. Pages like this answer a buyer whether they arrive from Google, an assistant or a link from a friend.

For what changes between classic SEO and this work, see the GEO vs SEO guide.

Step 4: keep your business facts the same everywhere

Assistants describe a business from what is published about it. Your website, your Google Business Profile, the directories and review sites in your trade, and any press or association pages should give the same name, address, phone number, hours, services and service area.

Your own site carries real weight here. In BrightLocal's study, business websites made up 93% of the unique domains used as sources and 42% of all citations.

A quick consistency check takes an hour:

1. Write a short fact sheet: legal and trading name, address, phone, hours, services, area served, year founded.
2. Compare it with your website footer and contact page, your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing, and the three directories that rank highest when you search your trade and town.
3. Fix differences at the source, starting with the profiles you control.
4. Keep the fact sheet and repeat the check after any move, rebrand or change of hours.

The free AI recommendations course has a checklist for keeping these facts current.

Want to know where your business stands? The free checker shows whether ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok name it.

Step 5: measure each surface on its own

Each surface has its own way to check it, and most cost nothing:

Answers change with the settings. In the AIGROW Index, with web search switched on, 43% of the names were ones the model also gave without it, across 3,260 answers. Record whether web search was on each time you check, and compare like with like.

Repeat checks matter as much. In the Index, an assistant asked the same question again repeated 56% of its names, so one screenshot is a weak basis for a decision. The guide on how to measure AI search visibility sets out the formulas, the sample sizes and a worked example.

For paid trackers, the comparison of AI SEO tools lists what each covers, with prices checked in October 2026.

A four-week plan

After that, review once a month: one more buyer question answered, one listing checked, one round of measurement. Keep the old page versions and the dates of each change, so you can see later what moved and when.

Where AIGROW helps

The free AI scan derives five questions from your website and puts them to the models behind five assistants without web search, then reports how many answers named you. It takes about three minutes after it reads your homepage, with no account and no card. It measures what the assistants say; Google AI Overviews are checked in Search Console.

The AI visibility audit measures 20 to 40 of your own buyer questions across four assistants, with every answer dated and re-runnable, a map of the domains cited and a fix list ordered by impact. Agencies that do this work for clients can use client seats and white-label services. Neither can promise a mention.

Both show what the assistants say now and what to fix on your side.

Sources

Official pages read on 20 October 2026:

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• Google Search Central: optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search
• Google Search Central: list of Google's common crawlers
• Search Console Help: Search generative AI control
• Search Console Help: Generative AI performance report
• OpenAI: overview of OpenAI crawlers
• Claude Help Center: how Anthropic crawls the web and how to block it
• Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers
• Bing Webmaster Blog: AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools
• BrightLocal: local AI visibility study, September 2026

AIGROW data: AI Visibility Report, October 2026 edition and the Index method.