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“GEO” (generative engine optimization) is a handy label for making a site discoverable and understandable to AI-mediated search. In practice, the documented work is mostly familiar: let the right crawlers in, put the tool’s purpose in visible text, make controls readable to browsers and agents, and measure real traffic. No checklist guarantees a citation or placement, and no vendor’s documentation describes a universal ranking formula across assistants. This guide separates what each platform actually documents from guesswork.
What is actually documented, and for whom
Scope matters, because advice from one vendor does not transfer automatically to another.
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- Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode): Google Search Central’s “AI Features and Your Website” documentation says a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet in ordinary Google Search. There are no added technical requirements, and, in Google’s words, “Indexing and serving isn’t guaranteed.” These statements apply to Google Search features only.
- OpenAI (ChatGPT search and ChatGPT agent in Atlas): OpenAI’s publisher documentation and its “Publishers and Developers – FAQ” describe separate crawlers and interface guidance for Atlas.
- Anthropic (Claude): Anthropic documents separate bots for training, search and user-directed retrieval.
Google also says its Search systems do not treat llms.txt as a special visibility signal, that no special GEO markup is needed, and that there is no universal page length or “chunking” rule. Its documentation puts it this way: “You don’t need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features.”
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Step 1: Make sure the right crawlers can reach your pages
Check that important pages are not accidentally blocked by robots.txt, CDN or firewall bot rules, login walls, or hosting settings. For Google, the test is ordinary Search eligibility: use Search Console and URL Inspection to see what Googlebot actually receives.
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For other assistants, read each vendor’s current crawler page separately, and do not treat “AI bots” as one setting.
Crawler roles by vendor
| Vendor | Bot | Documented role |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | OAI-SearchBot | Search discovery in ChatGPT; OpenAI recommends allowing it to help appear in ChatGPT search results |
| OpenAI | GPTBot | Collecting content that may be used in training |
| OpenAI | ChatGPT-User | Some user-initiated actions and page visits |
| Anthropic | ClaudeBot | Potential training collection |
| Anthropic | Claude-SearchBot | Search quality and search results |
| Anthropic | Claude-User | Retrieval in response to an individual user’s query |
Allowing a training bot is not the same as allowing search, and blocking one does not imply blocking the others. Anthropic states its bots honor robots.txt.
Deciding your policy
For each choice, weigh four things: purpose (search, training or user-initiated retrieval), scope (which paths or subdomains), business objective (visibility, data-use preference, or both), and measurement (server logs, Search Console, referral analytics). A tool site might, for example, allow search bots on its tool and documentation pages while making a separate decision about training bots. That is a business choice, not a technical requirement.
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Keeping a page out of results
OpenAI’s publisher FAQ notes that a noindex directive can be used if you don’t want a page surfaced as a link and title in the Atlas circumstance it describes. The crawler has to be allowed to fetch the page to read the directive, so a robots.txt block and a noindex tag can work against each other.
Step 2: State what the tool does in visible text
Interactive tools often render as a widget with almost no words around it. Google says important information should be available as text, and its guidance favors useful, reliable, people-first content. For each tool page, write in plain HTML text:
- what the tool does and who it is for;
- the inputs it accepts, including formats and limits;
- the outputs it produces, ideally with a worked example;
- important limitations, such as accuracy caveats, privacy handling or unsupported cases.
This is clarity for readers first. It does not promise that any wording earns an AI citation. Let the length fit the content: Google says there is no ideal length for AI search and no need to split content into tiny pieces, since its systems can understand context across a page.
Make sure the descriptive text and key results are in the delivered page or reliably rendered, and link the page from elsewhere on the site so crawlers can find it through ordinary internal links.
Step 3: Make controls understandable to agents and people
Browser agents work with the rendered page. Google describes agents as potentially using rendered visual output, the DOM and the accessibility tree. OpenAI says ChatGPT Atlas uses ARIA tags to interpret page structure and interactive elements, and its publisher FAQ states: “Making your website more accessible helps ChatGPT Agent in Atlas understand it better.”
- Prefer native elements (
button,label,select,input) over clickabledivs; add ARIA only where native semantics fall short. - Give every control a descriptive accessible name, such as “Convert to PDF” rather than “Go”.
- Expose state: expanded or collapsed, pressed, selected, invalid, busy.
- Announce results and errors so they exist in the accessibility tree, not just as a color change or canvas drawing.
- Test the main task at narrow widths and by keyboard and screen reader.
These are ordinary usability and accessibility practices. They are supported by vendor documentation, but passing them does not mean any specific agent has been verified to complete your workflow; check by trying it.
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Step 4: Use structured data honestly
Google says structured data is not required for generative AI search and that there is no special schema.org markup for it. It remains useful within overall SEO, including rich result eligibility, provided it matches what visitors can see. Do not add markup describing features, ratings or prices the page does not show.
Step 5: Treat sitemaps as hints
A sitemap can signal your preferred canonical URLs, but Google calls submission a hint: it does not guarantee that the sitemap is fetched or its URLs crawled. Keep lastmod truthful. Google says it uses the value when it is consistently and verifiably accurate, and it should reflect a significant change to main content, structured data or links, not a copyright-year update.
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- Google: use Search Console for diagnostics and performance reporting. Google cautions that third-party services have no access to its internal ranking or AI systems.
- ChatGPT: OpenAI says referral URLs carry
utm_source=chatgpt.com, so you can segment that traffic in your analytics. - Server logs: confirm which documented bots are requesting your pages and whether they receive successful responses.
Third-party “AI visibility scores” reflect that tool’s own sampling, not an official ranking signal. No primary vendor documentation supports specific claims about GEO traffic lift or conversion gains, so be skeptical of any that appear without a published source.
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Priority order
| Priority | Area | Check |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Indexability | Pages reachable, indexable, snippet-eligible; bot policy deliberate |
| 2 | Visible clarity | Purpose, inputs, outputs and limits in text |
| 3 | Interactive accessibility | Native elements, names, roles, states |
| 4 | Measurement | Search Console, referral tags, logs |
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need an llms.txt file?
Google says its Search systems do not use it as a special visibility signal. Other vendors’ documentation reviewed here does not establish a requirement either.
Is blocking GPTBot enough to stay out of ChatGPT search?
Not necessarily. OpenAI lists GPTBot (training) and OAI-SearchBot (search) as separate crawlers, so each needs its own decision.
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