How to show up in ChatGPT and Google: SEO and GEO explained without the hype

Two years ago the question was "how do I rank first on Google?". Today many clients also ask how to show up in ChatGPT, because their customers don't just search anymore: they ask an AI who the best dentist nearby is, which helmet to buy or who designs logos in Bogotá. And on Google, many searches now start with an AI-generated summary before the links.

There's a lot of hype around this: courses with "secret tricks", magic files and promises to get you into ChatGPT in a week. In this article I go through what the official sources, Google and OpenAI, actually say, what GEO is and what you can check on your site today.

SEO and GEO: what each one is

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the work of getting your site to appear in search engines like Google or Bing. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the same goal applied to engines that generate answers, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews, so they mention you or cite you as a source.

The good news is that they aren't two separate worlds. GEO relies almost entirely on good SEO. If Google can't read your site properly, it's very hard for an AI to understand it any better.

What Google says about appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google explains it in its official documentation on AI features and your website. These are the key points:

• There are no additional requirements. Google says, in so many words, that there are no extra requirements or special optimizations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
• The page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet in Google Search.
• No special files are needed, whether AI text files or special structured data markup, to appear in these features.
• Best practices are the usual ones: allow crawling, link your pages internally, offer a good page experience, keep important content in text and make sure structured data matches what's visible on the page.
• Traffic is measured in Search Console, inside the "Web" performance report.

In other words, to Google, GEO is SEO done right. Nobody has a secret shortcut.

What OpenAI says about appearing in ChatGPT

OpenAI publishes the list of its crawlers and what each one does. Two of them are worth knowing:

They're independent: you can block GPTBot so your content isn't used for training and still allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in search. OpenAI notes that after you change your robots.txt, it takes about 24 hours for its systems to adjust.

This is the first thing I check in an audit: many sites block every AI crawler "just in case", sometimes without knowing it, because of a hosting setting or a security plugin.

How to check your robots.txt in two minutes

1. Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in your browser.
2. Look for lines that say User-agent: OAI-SearchBot or User-agent: * followed by Disallow: /. If they're there, you're blocking access.
3. If there's no rule for OAI-SearchBot and the general rule allows access, you're fine.

On my own site I allow OAI-SearchBot, GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and the Google and Bing crawlers. The only thing I block is the admin panel.

What helps an AI understand and cite you

Beyond letting the crawlers in, AIs cite pages that answer a question well. This is what helps most, based on what I see in the sites I audit:

• Direct answers in text. If someone asks "how much does a dental cleaning cost in Medellín?", the page that answers with a clear range in its first paragraph has an edge over the one that hides the figure in an image.
• One page per topic. A service page for each service, not everything mixed into one.
• Verifiable facts about your business: name, city, hours, prices or ranges, years of experience, real cases with numbers.
• Real frequently asked questions, written the way your customers would ask them.
• Structured data that matches what's visible on the page: organization, services, articles and FAQs.
• Speed. A slow page loses visits and signals. I explain it in why your online store loads slowly.
• Mentions outside your site: Google Business profiles, industry directories, press and reviews. AIs cross-check sources.

What about llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposal for giving language models a plain-text summary of your site. I use it on my website because it's easy to maintain and does no harm. But let's be clear: Google doesn't require it, and its documentation says no special files are needed to appear in its AI features. If someone sells you llms.txt as the way to show up in ChatGPT, be skeptical.

Two examples from my work

For MotoFaro, a motorcycle accessories comparison site I built in Next.js, SEO was the architecture from day one: every product and every comparison has its own indexable page, with structured data and text content. Results measured with PageSpeed Insights: 99 on desktop and 100 for technical SEO.

For Orbidental, a store with more than 3,000 products, the job was rebuilding the store without losing rankings: PageSpeed went from 40 to 97, and Core Web Vitals went from "Failed" to "Passed" in Google's report.

How to measure whether you show up in AI

• Search Console: traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the "Web" performance report. Look at which long, question-style queries bring you visits.
• Web analytics: check visits coming from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and other assistants. Many tools already show them as referrals.
• Manual testing: ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity what your customers would ask, and note whether they mention you, who they cite and which source they use.

A 10-step checklist for today

1. Make sure your site is in Search Console and your important pages are indexed.
2. Check your robots.txt and allow OAI-SearchBot if you want to appear in ChatGPT.
3. Make sure your pages can be shown with a snippet (no accidental nosnippet).
4. Put your key facts in text: what you do, where, for whom and since when.
5. Create one page per service.
6. Add real FAQs with direct answers.
7. Check that your structured data matches what's visible.
8. Test your mobile speed on PageSpeed Insights.
9. Complete your Google Business profile and your industry's directories.
10. Ask two or three AIs about your category every month and write down the results.

If you want to know how Google and ChatGPT see you today, my SEO + GEO audit reviews your site's technical setup and content, tests your visibility in ChatGPT and AI Overviews, and gives you a prioritized 90-day plan, with a video walkthrough and a 45-minute call. It costs USD 400 and is delivered in 10 business days.