Showing up in AI answers

A client will ask how to show up in ChatGPT or in Google's AI answers. An industry of new acronyms has grown around the question, and most of it sells something. This chapter starts from what Google documents, then covers what is worth doing for any reader, human or machine.

What Google says you need

Google's page on AI features and your website, last updated 10 December 2025 and checked for this chapter on 14 October 2026, says four things that matter here:

• There are no extra requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations. You do not need new files, AI text files or special schema.org markup.
• The page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, which means meeting the normal technical requirements.
• The normal fundamentals apply: let Google crawl the page (robots.txt, and your host or CDN), link to it internally, keep important content as text, and make structured data match the visible page.
• It shows up in your reports. Appearances in AI Overviews and AI Mode are included in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type.

So most of the work is chapters 4 to 7 of this guide: titles, content, structured data and technical health. Nothing here replaces them. Other assistants work differently, and what they cite varies by product and changes without notice. Be honest with clients that nobody can promise placement.

Publish plain facts

What you can add is clarity. An answer engine, like a person in a hurry, quotes whatever states a fact most plainly. For a client that means one page, usually the About page, that says in full sentences what the business is, where it works, who it serves, what it offers and how to reach it. Use the same name, address and phone number everywhere: the site, the Google Business Profile, the directories. If three versions exist, nobody can tell which one is right.

Using only the client brief above and the facts below, write an About page of 250 to 400 words.

- Open with one sentence that says what the business is, where it works and who it serves.
- Then short sections: what we do, where we work, who we work with, how to reach us.
- Plain sentences. State facts, not slogans. No "leading", "premier", "best in class" or similar.
- Where a fact is missing, write [CLIENT TO CONFIRM: what is needed]. Do not invent anything.

Facts: {paste the facts}

A worked example is on this site. Bluprent's about page states what the product is, who it is for, what it costs and how it handles data, and the entity map lists the things the site is about with links to the page for each. We publish them for the reasons above. We have made no claim that they have earned any citation, and that is the claim to avoid with a client as well.

llms.txt, if you want one

llms.txt is a proposal for a plain-text file at the site root that summarises the site and lists its key pages in a form a language model can read quickly. Google's page above says AI features need no such file, so do not sell it to a client as a ranking lever. It is cheap, and Bluprent publishes one, generated from its page list. If you add one for a client, keep it to the facts and the pages that exist.

Write an llms.txt file for {client site}.

Format: a first line "# {business name}", then a blockquote line summarising the business in one or two sentences, then a "## Pages" section with one line per page in the form "- [Page name](URL): one sentence on what the page covers".

Use only the pages I list and only facts in the client brief. Don't add pages. Pages:
{URL | title | what it covers}

Ask an assistant what it knows

This is a cheap test, and a good thing to show a client. Open a fresh chat with no brief, ask what the assistant knows about the business, and read the answer. Treat it as a smoke test, not a measurement. Answers vary from one run to the next, and an assistant without web access is answering from old training data. What you want to learn is which facts it gets wrong or cannot find, because those are the facts the site and listings do not state clearly.

What do you know about {business name} in {city}? Cover what they do, where they work, who they serve, how to contact them and any prices. For each statement, say whether it comes from your training or from a web search, and give the source URL if you have one. If you don't know, say so. Don't guess.

For each wrong or missing fact, find where the site is unclear and say the fact plainly in text on the page. Then check the other places the fact lives. A wrong phone number is usually an old directory listing, not the site.

Don't bother with

• Tools or agencies that promise a place in ChatGPT. No one controls it. Google says what it requires, and for everything else the honest answer is to be indexed, clear and consistent.
• Special markup for AI. Google says none is needed.
• Rewriting every page as questions and answers. Write for the reader first. A page that reads like bait for a model reads badly to a person.
• Reporting AI mentions as a number. You cannot measure it well yet. Report what Search Console shows and what you changed.

Next

• Chapter 9: The monthly report that keeps the care plan
• The checks that make a page eligible in the first place
• Google: creating helpful, reliable, people-first content (Google Search Central)