How to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT and Claude

Someone asks ChatGPT or Claude a question your business could answer, and your name never comes up. Meanwhile you rank fine on Google for the same topic. That gap is normal, and it's not really about SEO. ChatGPT and Claude aren't reading the web the way Google does, so being findable on Google doesn't automatically mean being citable inside an AI answer.

Ranking and getting cited are different problems

If you've read the complete guide to Answer Engine Optimisation, you already know the basic shift: traditional SEO gets you a spot on a results page, AEO gets your content pulled directly into the answer itself. This post is the practical follow-up, specifically for the two tools your customers are most likely already using: ChatGPT and Claude.

The two tools don't even look at the same web. ChatGPT's web search runs on a Bing-based index and cites the pages it draws from. Claude, when web search is switched on, uses Brave Search as its backend, a completely different index from both Google and Bing. If your content isn't indexed and crawlable on the index a given tool actually uses, that tool can't cite you, no matter how well you rank anywhere else.

Step one: check whether the AI bots can even reach you

Before anything about content quality, there's a simple technical gate: your site's robots.txt file has to allow the bots these tools use to crawl and cite you. If any of these are blocked, that platform is locked out of citing you entirely:

• GPTBot and ChatGPT-User, OpenAI's bots for ChatGPT
• ClaudeBot and anthropic-ai, Anthropic's bots for Claude
• PerplexityBot, for Perplexity
• Google-Extended, for Google AI Overviews and Gemini
• Bingbot, which also powers Microsoft Copilot

This takes two minutes to check: open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser and look for a Disallow rule targeting any of these. A lot of sites block AI bots by accident, usually a leftover rule from a plugin or a developer being cautious about scraping, without realising it also blocks citation.

ChatGPT rewards a different kind of content than Claude does

Once a bot can reach you, the two tools weigh what they find differently. (If you're still working out which tool your team should actually be using day to day, Claude vs ChatGPT for business covers that separate question.)

ChatGPT leans on domain authority and freshness. It's drawing on a Bing-based index plus its own training knowledge, so sites with more established authority and content that's been updated recently have a real edge. If a page hasn't been touched in a year, ChatGPT is more likely to reach for something newer, even if yours is technically more accurate.

Claude is more selective, and rewards precision over polish. Because it's working from Brave Search results (when web search is on) rather than a broad web index, and because it's built to be cautious about what it treats as a reliable source, Claude tends to favour content with specific, verifiable detail over content that's confidently written but vague. A page that says "we help businesses grow" is easy to skip. A page that says exactly what it does, for whom, and how, is easier to cite accurately.

What this means in practice: don't write one generic "AI-optimised" page and assume it works everywhere. A page that's specific, current, and clearly structured will do reasonably well on both, but if you only have time to fix one thing for Claude specifically, fix vagueness. If you only have time to fix one thing for ChatGPT specifically, fix the "last updated" date.

Write so a paragraph can stand alone

Both tools pull passages, not whole pages. That means every important claim on your site needs to make sense if it's lifted out and dropped into a chat window with no surrounding context. A few concrete habits that help:

• Answer the question in the first sentence of a section, not the third paragraph. If a heading asks "what is X," the next sentence should define X directly.
• Keep one idea per paragraph. A paragraph doing three jobs at once is harder for either tool to extract cleanly.
• Use a real FAQ section with questions phrased the way a person would actually ask them. This is exactly what the FAQ section at the bottom of this post is doing, and why every post on this blog ends with one.

A quick example: imagine a fictional bookkeeping firm, Larch & Co, with a page that opens "We're passionate about helping small businesses thrive financially." Nothing there is a citable fact. Rewritten as "Larch & Co is a bookkeeping firm for businesses under 20 employees, offering monthly reconciliation and quarterly tax prep starting at a fixed monthly fee," every clause is something an AI tool could lift directly into an answer about bookkeeping options.

A starting checklist, not a full audit

You don't need to fix everything at once. In order of effort versus impact:

1. Check robots.txt for accidental blocks on the bots listed above.
2. Pick your 5 most important pages (the ones answering questions you'd want to be cited for) and rewrite the opening paragraph of each to state the answer directly.
3. Add a genuine FAQ section to those same 5 pages, using questions people actually ask.
4. Put a visible "last updated" date on anything time-sensitive, and actually update it when things change.
5. Test it. Ask ChatGPT and Claude the exact question one of those pages answers, and see whether you show up. If not, you now know which of the four steps above to revisit.

That last step matters more than people expect. It's the difference between guessing you're invisible to AI search and actually knowing. And if you're new to Claude specifically and haven't turned on web search yet, this plain-English tour of Claude is a good place to start before testing your citations.

FAQ

Does ranking well on Google mean I'll get cited by ChatGPT or Claude too?

Not automatically. Google AI Overviews draw from Google's own index, so strong Google SEO does help there. But ChatGPT runs on a Bing-based index and Claude uses Brave Search, so being blocked, un-indexed, or simply overlooked on either of those means you won't get cited by that tool even if you rank first on Google.

How do I know if AI bots are blocked from my site?

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser. Look for any Disallow rule listed under User-agent: GPTBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, or Bingbot. If one of those bots is disallowed, that platform cannot crawl or cite your content, and the fix is usually a one-line change from whoever manages your site.

Is this something I need special tools for?

No, the check itself is free. Testing whether you're cited just means asking ChatGPT and Claude the questions you care about and seeing what comes back, the same way you'd Google yourself. Paid monitoring tools exist for tracking this at scale over time, but you can start with a manual monthly check and no budget at all.

Should I write different content for ChatGPT versus Claude?

You don't need two separate pages. Write content that's specific, current, and structured so a paragraph can stand alone, and it will perform reasonably on both. If you're prioritising one, lean toward freshness and domain authority for ChatGPT, and toward precise, verifiable detail over confident-sounding generalities for Claude.

If you've read this far and haven't actually tested whether your own business shows up, that's the next ten minutes worth spending, before any of the rest of this. Book a strategy call if you'd rather have someone else run the check and hand you the fix list.