Answer engine optimisation

AI answer engines usually run a web search, read the top results and write a summary with links to the pages they used. Being one of those sources rests mostly on the same things as SEO: pages that can be crawled and indexed, and content that is clear, specific and trustworthy. Google states that optimising for its AI Overviews and AI Mode is still SEO, and that no special files or markup are needed.

Habits that help: answer the question directly near the top of the page, back claims with specific facts and sources, keep pages up to date, earn mentions on other reputable sites, and serve content as HTML rather than only through JavaScript, since many AI crawlers do not run scripts. Search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot (for ChatGPT) and PerplexityBot need to be allowed in robots.txt for a site to appear in those tools.

Measuring it is still rough. Search Console shows impressions in Google's AI features, and analytics tools show referrals from sites such as chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. Promises of guaranteed placement in AI answers deserve caution.