How to get found in ChatGPT, Perplexity and AI search results

You need a baseline to know if any of this is working. Most teams have never actually asked an AI model about their own category.

First step: Write 15-20 real buyer questions and run each through ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview, logging whether your brand appears and what's cited instead.

Tools

ChatGPT, Perplexity, a spreadsheet

Effort

1 day

Cost

$0

Models extract answers from the clearest, most direct statement on a page. Pages that bury the answer under three paragraphs of scene-setting get skipped.

First step: Pick your 10 highest-value pages and rewrite the opening so the direct answer to the page's core question appears in the first 40 words.

Tools

Your CMS, Google Docs

Effort

2-3 days

Cost

$0-$1,500 if outsourcing the edit

Vague claims like 'many companies see improvement' get filtered out. A stated figure with a source attached gets picked up and quoted directly.

First step: Audit your top pages for any unsupported claim and replace it with a specific number, date, or named study.

Tools

Your existing data, published research

Effort

2-3 days

Cost

$0

AI models weight citations from sites with an established trust signal — review platforms, trade press, Wikipedia-adjacent sources — more heavily than a brand's own blog.

First step: List the 10 sites your competitors get quoted or reviewed on, and pitch a comment, data point or guest contribution to three of them this month.

Tools

HARO/Qwoted, a media list, email

Effort

Ongoing, 2-3 hours/week

Cost

$0-$300/month for a PR tool

Question-and-answer formatting is easier for a model to extract cleanly than a long paragraph, and it maps directly onto how people phrase prompts.

First step: Add a 4-6 question FAQ block to your top 10 pages using the exact phrasing your buyers use, not internal jargon.

Tools

Your CMS, schema markup plugin

Effort

1-2 days

Cost

$0

Structured data doesn't guarantee a citation, but it removes ambiguity about what a page is answering, which helps both traditional and AI crawlers parse it correctly.

First step: Add FAQPage and Article schema to your top 20 pages and validate with a schema testing tool.

Tools

Google's Rich Results Test, Schema.org markup

Effort

1 day

Cost

$0

Models favour primary sources over secondary summaries. A survey or benchmark with your own numbers becomes something other content — and models — cite back to you.

First step: Pick one data set you can credibly gather (customer survey, product usage stats, pricing analysis) and publish it with a clear methodology section.

Tools

Typeform, a spreadsheet, a writer

Effort

3-4 weeks

Cost

$1,500-$6,000

Several AI tools pull location, pricing and review data from these profiles directly, independent of your own website.

First step: Update your Google Business Profile, G2 and Capterra listings with current pricing, features and a response to your three most recent reviews.

Tools

Google Business Profile, G2, Capterra

Effort

2-3 hours

Cost

$0

AI models update their training and retrieval sources on their own schedule. A monthly check tells you what's working without over-reacting to daily noise.

First step: Re-run your original 15-20 test prompts each month and log whether citations changed, adding new prompts as your content expands.

Tools

ChatGPT, Perplexity, a spreadsheet

Effort

2 hours/month

Cost

$0