How to get your company to show up in ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews answers

To improve the odds of your company showing up in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews, make sure of four things: that your pages can be read by search bots, that they answer the customer's questions directly, that the company is described the same way everywhere and that other trustworthy sites talk about it. Nobody can guarantee a citation. What you can do is become a strong candidate.

This is the practical checklist. The concept behind it, and what changes compared with SEO, is in GEO: what generative engine optimization is. To see how it fits into the rest of your marketing, read the guide to AI in marketing for B2B companies.

Before the checklist: what you can and can't control

It's worth aligning expectations with decision-makers. AI answers change from one question to another, from one day to the next and from one person to another. A company can show up today and not tomorrow, without having changed anything.

What's under your control:

• whether the pages can be found and read;
• whether the content answers the right questions well;
• whether the company's description is clear and consistent;
• whether the company is mentioned in relevant places in its industry.

What isn't: the final answer, the order of citations and the source each tool prefers. Anyone promising a guaranteed position in an AI answer is promising something they don't control.

1. Technical access: can AIs read your site?

Without access, nothing else matters. Check:

• Google indexing. AI Overviews use pages from Google's regular index. The page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet in search. Search Console shows this.
• robots.txt. Make sure it isn't accidentally blocking the bots you want to allow. Each AI company documents its own, and some separate the search bot from the model-training bot. At Google, AI Overviews depend on Googlebot; Google-Extended controls other AI uses and doesn't affect Search.
• Content in the HTML. If the main text only appears after clicking tabs or loading scripts, some bots may not read it. Ideally, important content is in the HTML delivered by the server.
• Pages without snippet blocking. Directives like nosnippet prevent the text from being used in results. Use them only where it makes sense.
• Speed and errors. Slow pages or pages that return errors get crawled less often.

What about llms.txt? It's a community proposal for pointing AIs to your most important pages. It can be useful and costs little, but there's no guarantee the tools use it. Google, for example, says you don't need to create a specific file for AI features in Search. Don't trade content work for it.

2. Citable pages: does the content answer the question?

AI looks for excerpts that answer well. A citable page usually has:

• A direct answer in the first paragraph. Two or three sentences that answer the question in the title, without beating around the bush.
• Subheadings phrased as questions. The way the customer asks, not the way the company talks internally.
• Sections that stand on their own. Each block makes sense even when read out of context.
• Lists and tables for comparisons. Criteria, steps and differences become easier to extract.
• Original information. Process, criteria, examples and limits that only people who work in the field know.
• Clear dates and authorship. Who wrote it, when it was updated, who the company behind it is.

A simple test: take a paragraph from the page and read it on its own. If it answers a question without needing the rest, it's citable. If it starts with "as we saw above," it isn't.

Producing this content with help from AI is possible, as long as there's review and original information. See how in AI content without losing quality.

Want pages that AIs can cite and that lead the prospect to your sales team? Discover Nexo's AI for marketing

Example: the same section, before and after

Imagine an industrial maintenance company with a service page that starts like this: "We are a benchmark in complete solutions, with commitment and quality in every delivery." The sentence doesn't answer any question. An AI has nothing to cite.

The rewritten version starts with the customer's question: "Preventive compressor maintenance: we serve industrial companies in the Porto Alegre metro area with scheduled visits, a technical report after every visit and emergency service during business hours." Right below, a list of what's included, what isn't and how hiring works.

The second version says what the company does, where, for whom and how. It's useful for the buyer reading it, and it gives the AI a clear excerpt to use when someone asks about that service in the region. The example is illustrative; adapt it to your business.

3. The company as an entity: does the AI know who you are?

To recommend a company, AI needs to understand what it does, where it operates and for whom. That comes from several sources at once. The more they agree, the clearer the company becomes.

Entity checklist:

• A complete "About" page. Legal name and trade name, city, what it does, for whom, since when, who's in charge.
• A standardized short description. One sentence about the company, used identically on the website, the Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directories.
• Structured data. Organization markup with name, logo, address and links to official profiles. It isn't a requirement for AI Overviews, but it helps any system connect the dots.
• Separate service pages. One page per service, with a clear name. A generic page with everything mixed together makes it harder to associate the company with each service.
• Identified authors. Content signed by people or by a team with its own page.

4. External mentions: do other sites talk about the company?

AIs also learn about a company from what others say. You don't need to be in the major press. For B2B, the places that tend to count most are:

• industry associations and organizations;
• relevant supplier directories;
• partners who mention the company on their sites;
• events, talks and interviews in industry publications;
• real customer reviews on public platforms.

The caution here is ethical and practical: no paid reviews, invented testimonials or networks of sites created just to generate mentions. Besides violating platform rules, it usually gets discovered and hurts the brand.

5. Measurement: how do you know it's working?

Set up a simple routine:

1. A fixed list of questions. The questions customers ask before buying, always written the same way.
2. Periodic testing. Ask the questions in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, on fixed dates. Record whether the company shows up, which page is cited and which competitors appear.
3. Referral traffic. Check your site analytics for visits coming from AI tools. Some of them show up identified, some don't.
4. Self-reported source. Add the option "AI recommendation, such as ChatGPT or Gemini" to the "how did you hear about us" field on your form and in the first WhatsApp conversation. Save the answer in the CRM.

Step 4 is what turns GEO into a marketing and sales issue. With it, you can see whether people who arrived through an AI become opportunities and customers, and compare them with other channels.

Common mistakes

• Creating pages just for AIs, repeating the same thing in different words.
• Hiding important content behind tabs or scripts.
• Blocking bots in robots.txt without knowing what each one does.
• Letting the company's description differ on each channel.
• Testing once and drawing conclusions.
• Promising the board that the company will show up in ChatGPT.

Conclusion

Showing up in AI answers doesn't depend on tricks. It depends on technical access, pages that answer well, a clearly described company and mentions in relevant places. It's well-executed SEO work, with attention to the excerpt, the question and the brand.

Start with the questions that come before a purchase, adjust the pages that should answer them and log in the CRM when a lead arrives through an AI recommendation. That's how the effort becomes sales data, not just curiosity. If you'd like support with implementation, check out the GEO: AI optimization service.

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