A practical checklist to get recommended by ChatGPT and other AI assistants
Ten concrete steps — from comparison pages to FAQ schema and third-party listings — to improve how often AI assistants recommend your brand.
“Answer engine optimisation” (AEO) and “generative engine optimisation” (GEO) are new names for an old idea: make it easy for the systems people use to find you. Here is a checklist you can work through, roughly in order of impact.
1. Measure a baseline first
Write 20–50 questions your buyers really ask — “best X for Y”, “X vs Y”, “alternatives to Y”, “how do I…”. Ask them across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini and record whether you are mentioned and where. Without a baseline you can’t tell what worked.
2. Say clearly what you are
Your homepage, title tag and meta description should state in plain language what you sell, who it is for and your category. Assistants frequently paraphrase this text.
3. Build pages for the questions you lose
For every buyer question where competitors are named and you are not, ask: does a page exist on my site that answers this directly? If not, create it — a use-case page, an integration page or a guide.
4. Publish honest comparison pages
“You vs competitor” and “alternatives to competitor” pages are often retrieved for comparison prompts. Keep them factual; exaggerated claims tend to backfire with both readers and models.
5. Get listed where the answers come from
Look at which domains are cited in answers that mention your competitors but not you. Those directories, review sites, roundups and communities are your outreach list.
6. Add structured data
Use schema.org markup: Organization, Product or SoftwareApplication, and FAQPage for genuine FAQs. It won’t guarantee anything, but it removes ambiguity.
7. Keep pricing and facts crawlable
If pricing, plans and key facts are hidden behind scripts or forms, assistants may quote outdated third-party information instead.
8. Publish an llms.txt
An /llms.txt file is an emerging convention: a short, plain-text summary of your site with links to the most useful pages. It is cheap to add.
9. Earn mentions, not just links
Consistent, independent mentions of your brand alongside your category terms — in articles, podcasts and communities — feed both future training data and today’s search results.
10. Re-measure every week
Track your visibility score and share of voice over time and connect changes to the work you shipped.
Mentioned runs steps 1, 5 and 10 for you automatically and turns the results into a weekly action list. Start with the free audit.