How ChatGPT picks the sites it cites
ChatGPT answers in one of two ways. Either it answers from memory, with what it learned during training. Or it searches the web, reads a few pages and cites its sources with the answer. For a question about a provider, a price or a place, it usually searches the web.
When it searches, it keeps the pages that answer the question clearly. Then it cross-checks them against what other sites say about you: directories, reviews, articles. A business that answers well on its own site, and that gets talked about elsewhere, is more likely to be cited.
Gemini, Claude and Google’s AI answers work the same way, broadly speaking. The differences are explained further down.
The steps you can take yourself
None of these steps requires a developer. Do them in order: each one builds on the one before.
1. Write down your customers’ questions
Write ten questions, the way your customers ask them. Not “accountant Lausanne” but “Which accountant in Lausanne for a Sàrl that’s just starting out, and how much does it cost?” The questions people ask you on the phone are often the most useful.
2. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google
For each question, note whether you’re cited, who’s cited instead of you, and which sources appear with the answer. Use a private window or an account with no history. Otherwise, the assistant takes your past conversations into account. Repeat it on another day, because the answers change. The resulting table is your baseline.
3. Answer at the top of your pages
One page for each important question. The question as the heading, then the answer in one or two sentences, with the number: the price, the lead time, the area. The details come after. That’s the passage assistants pick up.
4. Show your facts, with their date
Your prices, business hours, service area and lead times must be written on the page, not in an image or a PDF. Date them, so it’s clear they’re current. “Price on request” gives an assistant nothing to cite.
5. Let AI bots read your site
Your robots.txt file must not block the bots that search on behalf of assistants, especially OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot for Claude and Googlebot for Google. Some hosting providers and security services block them by default. Ask whoever manages your site to check.
6. Take care of your Google Business Profile and reviews
Gemini and Google’s AI answers rely on Google, Business Profile included. Check the category, hours, services and photos. Reply to every review, in a few useful sentences.
7. Register your site with Google and Bing
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free. They tell you whether your pages are being found, and they let you submit a new page. Bing matters here: ChatGPT partly relies on it to search the web.
8. Get people talking about you elsewhere
Assistants cross-check what they read. List your business in the Swiss directories for your trade, with your trade association and with your chamber of commerce. Use the same name, the same address and the same phone number everywhere. An article in the local press, or a partner’s page that mentions you, counts too.
9. Keep your pages up to date
Reread your important pages every quarter. Change what’s out of date, and show the date of the update.
Gemini, Claude, Perplexity: how the assistants differ
- Gemini and Google’s AI answers rely on Google Search. A site that ranks well on Google, with a complete Business Profile, has a head start.
- ChatGPT has its own search, which partly relies on Bing. That’s why it pays to register your site with Bing.
- Claude also searches the web when the question calls for it, and cites the pages it read.
- Perplexity shows its sources as links with every answer. It’s the easiest way to see who gets cited on your questions.
The steps above work for all of them. Getting cited by Gemini or Perplexity isn’t a separate job: it’s the same one.
What doesn’t work
- Asking ChatGPT to recommend you. What you write to it stays in your own conversations. It doesn’t change what it tells your customers.
- Dozens of pages churned out by AI. They all look alike and bring nothing new. So they have little reason to be cited.
- Links or mentions bought in bulk. Directories nobody reads and mass-produced sponsored articles don’t help, and can hurt you on Google.
- Text hidden for bots. What the AI reads must be what your customer reads.
- An offer that guarantees a citation. No one controls what an AI assistant answers. A promise of a position or a score doesn’t hold up.
How to tell if it’s working
Go back to your list of questions every month, with the same assistants. Note whether you’re cited, and based on which sources. A single answer doesn’t tell you much. The trend over three or six months does.
Look at your visits too. In Google Analytics, some of the visits from assistants show up under their own names: chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com or claude.ai. Visits from Google’s AI answers are mixed in with the rest of your visits from Google.
What we do, and what it costs
If you’d rather hand this work to us, we start with an audit, for CHF 800. We ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Google’s AI answers your customers’ questions. We check your site, your Google Business Profile and your campaigns. You get a written action plan, in the order you should tackle it.
After that, the monthly work is included in our SEO & AEO plans.
| Offer | What’s done | Price |
|---|---|---|
| SEO, AI visibility and Google Ads audit | Your customers’ questions put to AI assistants, a check of your site and your Google Business Profile, and a written action plan. Credited in full if you sign a 6-month plan within 30 days. | CHF 800 |
| SEO & AEO | Four new pages a month, written to be cited, technical SEO, quality links, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and question tracking. | CHF 3,500 a month |
| Report & maintenance | The month’s report, in your site’s admin, and site maintenance. On top of SEO & AEO taken alone, included in the Growth plan. | CHF 800 a month |
Final prices, with no VAT on top. Plans have an initial 6-month term, then run month to month, with 30 days’ notice. What each price covers, and the prices published elsewhere, are on our AEO pricing page. For the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO, see our guide GEO vs SEO.
The method, on one of our sites
We first applied these steps to one of our own sites. Two weeks after the pages launched, AI assistants had become its top source of visits. Over the four weeks to October 30, 2026, they brought in more than half of its visits. That’s a past result, not a promise for your industry.
What we don’t promise
We don’t promise a spot in the answers, or a citation score. Assistants’ answers change from one question to the next and from one day to the next, and no one controls them. Every month, a report shows what the work changed on your tracked questions. And our guarantee covers the indicator agreed at the start, such as requests or calls: if it misses its target after 90 days, the 4th month is free.