How do you get cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity?

You cannot guarantee a citation in ChatGPT or Perplexity, because neither publishes how it picks sources, but you can control the things both depend on: letting their crawlers in, keeping your pages indexable, and writing answers clear enough to be quoted. Everything beyond that is unproven, and anyone selling a fixed outcome is guessing.

Can you actually optimise for ChatGPT and Perplexity?

Only in the loose sense that you can make your site easy to find, read and verify. There is no ranking guide from OpenAI or Perplexity comparable to Google's documentation on its AI features, and Google's guidance covers Google alone. So "ChatGPT SEO" and "answer engine optimisation" are best read as ordinary SEO with a different target. If you want the definitions first, start with what generative engine optimisation is; if you are weighing up a paid package, read whether AI SEO is a separate service.

How do ChatGPT and Perplexity find pages to cite?

Both answer many questions from live web retrieval rather than memory alone. ChatGPT's search feature uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, and Perplexity uses PerplexityBot. If a page can't be fetched, or isn't indexed anywhere those systems look, it can't be cited. That makes the entry ticket the same as for Google: a page that is crawlable, loads properly and says something useful. Pages that rank well in ordinary search also tend to be the ones assistants find, though no one outside these companies can say how much that overlap matters.

Are you accidentally blocking AI crawlers?

This is the one check that is quick and unambiguous. Open yourdomain.co.uk/robots.txt and look for rules naming the bots below. Some security plugins and hosting defaults block them without telling you.

Crawler	Operator	What it is used for
OAI-SearchBot	OpenAI	Finding pages for ChatGPT search results
GPTBot	OpenAI	Collecting training data (separate from search)
PerplexityBot	Perplexity	Indexing pages for Perplexity answers
ClaudeBot	Anthropic	Collecting training data
Google-Extended	Google	Controls use for Gemini; does not affect Google Search or AI Overviews

Allowing or blocking training crawlers is a business decision, and blocking GPTBot does not by itself stop ChatGPT search citing you. If you want citations, don't block the search-facing bots.

What actually improves your chances of being cited?

The same things that make a page worth ranking, with the emphasis on being easy to lift. Put the direct answer in the first paragraph, use headings that match real questions, and back claims with specifics such as prices, timescales and named places. Say who wrote the page and why they know the subject. Keep your business name, address and phone number consistent across your site, Google Business Profile and directories, so a system cross-checking sources finds the same facts everywhere. For a local business, being mentioned on other credible sites (trade bodies, local press, supplier pages) gives assistants more than your own site to corroborate.

You don't need to chop pages into fragments or write in an "AI style". Plain, well-organised writing is what both readers and these systems handle best. The same principles apply to Google's version of this problem, covered in how to appear in Google AI Overviews.

Does llms.txt help you get cited?

There is no confirmed evidence that it does. Google has said Search does not use it, and no major assistant has confirmed relying on it either. Adding one is harmless and quick, but it shouldn't displace crawler access and page quality on your to-do list. The llms.txt guide covers what it is and where the claims run ahead of the facts.

How can you tell whether ChatGPT or Perplexity mentions you?

Imperfectly. Ask each assistant the questions a customer would ask ("who's a reliable electrician in Newport?"), note whether you appear and which sources it links, and repeat monthly. Answers vary between runs and between users, so treat a single result as an anecdote and a pattern over several weeks as a signal. Your analytics may also show referrals from chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai. What doesn't exist is a Search Console-style report for either platform, so any tool that gives you a precise "AI visibility score" is estimating from samples. It can be a rough trend line, not a measurement.

Is it worth the effort for a local business?

The groundwork is, because it also helps Google rankings and costs little. Chasing citations specifically is harder to justify: assistant referrals are still small next to search traffic for most small businesses, the behaviour of these systems changes without notice, and a tactic that works this month can stop next month. A sensible order is robots.txt first, then your key service pages, then a monthly spot-check of what the assistants say. Do the checks above, keep your content genuinely useful, and spend the remaining budget on the SEO that demonstrably brings enquiries. If you'd like those checks done on your site, that sits inside AI search optimisation, alongside a normal SEO audit.