Quick answer
To get cited in Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT, publish pages that answer specific questions in the first lines, use clear headings and lists, mark up your business with schema, keep facts consistent across the web, and keep doing classic SEO. AI tools mostly pull from pages that already rank and are easy to quote.
A customer used to type “best HVAC company Jacksonville” and click through ten blue links. Now many of them read a summary at the top of Google, or ask ChatGPT and get three names back. If your business isn't one of those names, you never get the visit.
The good news: getting cited isn't a separate discipline that replaces SEO. It's SEO with a few habits added on top.
What hasn't changed
AI Overviews are built from pages Google already indexes and trusts. ChatGPT and Perplexity search the web and lean on pages that rank well. So a site that's slow, thin or blocked from crawling won't be cited, however well its paragraphs are formatted.
- Technical health: pages crawlable, indexable and fast.
- Content that matches search intent better than the competition.
- Authority from links and mentions on trusted sites.
Write answer-first
AI systems look for a passage they can lift and quote. Make that easy. Under each important heading, give the direct answer in the first 40–60 words, then explain. A heading phrased as the question people ask (“How much does local SEO cost?”) followed by a clear answer is the most quotable format we've found.
Be clear about who you are
Language models think in entities: a business, a place, a service, a person. The clearer and more consistent your entity signals, the more confidently a model can recommend you.
- Same business name, address and phone on your site, Google profile and directories.
- Organization or LocalBusiness schema on your site, with links to your social profiles.
- An about page with real people, their roles and experience.
- Mentions of your brand on industry sites, local news and review platforms.
Use structure machines can parse
Comparison tables, numbered steps, short FAQ sections and descriptive headings all help. So does FAQ-style structure in the content itself, even where Google no longer shows the rich result. A tight FAQ block that answers the exact follow-up questions people ask is one of the quickest wins here.
How to tell if it's working
Measurement is still rough. Google Search Console includes AI Overview impressions in its normal performance report without separating them. Practical checks we use: search your main questions in Google, ChatGPT and Perplexity every month and record who gets cited, and watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in GA4.
If you'd like a review of how visible your business is in AI search, it's part of our SEO services. And because good content does most of the work here, our content marketing team writes every page with this format in mind.
