How to boost your AEO (answer engine optimization): 10 actions to get cited by AI

AEO stands for answer engine optimization: making a brand easier for AI assistants to find, understand and cite. The same work is called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AI SEO. It does not mean writing SEO content with an AI tool. This guide is for marketing managers and agency owners: a work plan you can defend, not a list of hacks.

What does it mean to boost your AEO?

AI answers are built on search. Google writes that AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in its core ranking systems. Microsoft says Copilot relies on the same index as Bing. So boosting your AEO is mostly search and content work, aimed at a new question: when an engine looks for sources to build an answer, can it find your pages, read them, trust them, and see other sites it trusts mention you?

For definitions, read our guide to AEO and AEO vs GEO vs SEO. This page is the practical part. Google itself warns that much of what is sold under these names does not work:

Which 10 actions raise your chances of being cited?

1. Open access to the crawlers that feed AI answers (documented)

Each engine reads the web with named crawlers, and most of them follow robots.txt. Blocking one, in robots.txt or at your CDN or firewall, can keep you out of that engine's answers, whatever the quality of your pages. Check these user agents first:

• Googlebot for Google Search, AI Overviews and AI Mode. There is no separate AI Overviews crawler.
• Google-Extended for Gemini training and for grounding in the Gemini app. Google wrote on 30 October 2026 that sites that specifically allow it are eligible to appear in Gemini app responses.
• Bingbot for Bing and Microsoft Copilot.
• OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search. GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler and can be blocked on its own.
• PerplexityBot for Perplexity, Claude-SearchBot and Claude-User for Claude, Meta-WebIndexer for Meta AI.

Then check what robots.txt does not show: a firewall or bot protection that refuses these crawlers (Perplexity warns that Cloudflare Bot Fight Mode cannot be bypassed with custom rules), a noindex or nosnippet directive on pages you want cited, and, for Google, the Search generative AI setting in Search Console, which must stay on Include for your site to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode.

2. Serve your main text without JavaScript (documented for Bing and Claude)

Google says it can process JavaScript as long as it is not blocked. Other engines are less forgiving. Bing's guidelines list hiding critical content behind client-side rendering among the things to avoid, and Anthropic documents that Claude's web fetch tool does not support pages rendered with JavaScript.

The test: load the page with JavaScript turned off and check that the headings, the answer, the author and the date are in the HTML. Server rendering or static generation fixes it. Every GeckoBoost plan, the free trial included, runs this check weekly on your home page, next to the crawler checks of action 1.

3. Publish pages that each answer one question (documented)

Engines rank passages, not only pages. Perplexity documents that it scores results at both the document and sub-document levels, and Bing that pages focused on one primary topic are more likely to be selected for grounding. In practice:

• One topic per URL, with the question in the H1 or an H2 and the answer in the first lines below it.
• Paragraphs that still make sense when quoted alone: name the product or the brand instead of writing "it" or "this".
• Tables for comparisons, prices and steps, and a visible FAQ built from the questions your buyers really ask.
• First-hand material: your own numbers, cases, prices and opinions. Google calls generic advice "commodity content".

Google also says you do not need to cut your text into tiny chunks or write in a special style for AI. Our guide to appearing in ChatGPT applies the same rules to one engine.

4. Make your entity data consistent (documented for Bing, heuristic elsewhere)

An engine has to understand that your brand, your product and your company are one entity. Bing asks for clear and consistent naming for people, organizations, products and locations. Use the same name, legal entity, address and one-line description on your site, your LinkedIn page and your directory profiles.

Structured data helps describe that entity (Organization with legal name, logo, founder and sameAs links to your profiles), but it supports understanding rather than drives citations. Google says no special schema.org markup is needed for its AI features, and Bing that structured data does not guarantee visibility. The markup must match what the page shows.

5. Earn genuine mentions on the sites engines cite (heuristic)

In our collection of 10 November 2026, ChatGPT mostly cited software vendors' own pages and "best agencies" lists written by agencies that rank themselves in them. No vendor documents brand mentions as a signal for AI answers, so this action is heuristic. Bing does say that external links from relevant websites support discovery and grounding eligibility.

What works within the rules: give list authors and journalists something worth quoting (your own data, a public price, a documented method), and correct wrong facts about you where you find them. What to avoid: paid or fake mentions. Google writes that seeking inauthentic mentions across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem, and Bing lists artificial social promotion schemes as abuse.

6. Complete your directory and review profiles (documented for Business Profile and Bing Places, heuristic for the rest)

Google writes that Merchant Center feeds and Google Business Profiles can help your products and services be visible in AI responses. Microsoft recommends Bing Places for Business so that address, hours and contact details stay current. OpenAI says ChatGPT's local answers draw on trusted third-party providers such as business listings.

For B2B companies and agencies, the directory and review profiles cited in our collection included G2, Clutch and Sortlist, with one or two citations each, so the signal is weak. Fill every profile with the same facts as your site (action 4), ask real clients for reviews when you have them, and never write reviews yourself.

7. Answer your target questions on YouTube (heuristic)

YouTube was the domain cited most often in our collection: in 24 of 124 answers, on 14 queries, almost all through Google AI Mode and AI Overviews. In the Google results pages we read the same day, YouTube was among the sources of 22 of the 37 AI Overviews. ChatGPT cited neither YouTube nor Reddit in the same sample.

The heuristic: one short video per target question, with the question as the title, the answer in the first seconds, chapters and an accurate transcript. Bing asks that video is never the only source of information and that it comes with captions or transcripts, so embed each video on the matching page, next to its text.

8. Take part in Reddit threads, openly (heuristic)

Reddit came second in the same collection, cited in 20 of 124 answers on 13 queries, again mostly by Google AI Mode and AI Overviews.

Answer under your own name or your brand's, say who you work for, follow each subreddit's rules on self-promotion, and put the answer in the comment itself rather than only a link. Fake accounts praising one vendor are what Bing lists as artificial social promotion.

9. Measure each engine separately (documented tools, heuristic method)

Engines disagree with each other. The same brand can be named by Gemini and ignored by ChatGPT on the same question. Measure per engine, per country and per language, with the same questions every time.

Free first-party data covers part of the picture. Google Search Console has offered a generative AI performance report since June 2026, with impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode but no clicks and no queries. Bing Webmaster Tools has an AI Performance report for Copilot and Bing summaries, based on a sample of citations. Neither shows ChatGPT, Perplexity or your competitors. Referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com in your analytics give a floor, not a total.

That gap is what a tracking tool covers. GeckoBoost asks your buyers' questions on a fixed schedule to up to seven engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude as an option on the Pro and Agency plans), records which brands and sources each answer names, and turns the gaps into an action plan. Plans start at €79 a month excluding VAT, with a 14-day free trial, see pricing.

10. Keep a steady update rhythm (documented for Bing, heuristic elsewhere)

Bing documents freshness signals: accurate lastmod values in the sitemap, ETags, and IndexNow to announce a change as soon as it is published. Its AI Performance announcement adds that regular updates help AI systems reference the current version of a page. Google publishes no freshness signal for its AI features, and Perplexity says a model predicts which URLs need to be indexed.

Among the 27 top-ranking pages we analysed on 10 November 2026 for ten AEO, GEO and AI visibility queries, 22 showed a modification date and 16 had been updated since May 2026. The heuristic: review your key pages every quarter, change the visible update date only when the content really changed, and keep URLs stable, with a 301 redirect when one has to move.

What should you not do?

Several popular tactics are useless or risky according to the vendors themselves. All of these are documented:

• Fan-out page factories. Mass-producing pages for every variant of a question to steer AI answers falls under Google's scaled content abuse policy.
• Hidden text for models. Bing lists prompt injection and content designed to manipulate language models as abuse that can lead to removal.
• A different page for bots. Serving AI crawlers another version than people see is cloaking, which Bing lists as manipulation.
• Counting on llms.txt. Google says Search does not use it and that it won't help or hurt your visibility, and no other vendor whose documentation we read says it uses one. Keep it if another service reads it, but do not expect a lift.
• Buying answers. OpenAI says ads do not influence ChatGPT's answers, Google that paid ads do not influence its organic AI responses, and Anthropic that Claude shows no sponsored links.

Can anyone guarantee a citation in ChatGPT or Google?

No. The engines say so themselves, and anyone who sells AEO work, us included, should say the same.

What an honest provider can commit to is a method and a measurement: which questions, which engines, which countries, how often, and what changed after each action. That is how our AI visibility audit and our AEO services are scoped.

In what order should you work?

1. Week 1: measure the starting point

   Run the free checker, then list 20 to 50 questions your buyers ask, by country and language.

2. Week 1: fix access

   Actions 1 and 2. They are quick and documented, and a block here makes everything else useless.

3. Weeks 2 to 6: pages that answer

   Actions 3 and 4, starting with the questions where competitors are named and you are not.

4. Months 2 and 3: presence off your site

   Actions 5 to 8, starting with the sources the engines already cite for your questions.

5. Every month: measure and update

   Actions 9 and 10. Compare with the starting point engine by engine, and read changes as trends rather than proof: answers move between collections even when nothing changed on your side.

Where do you start today?

If you would rather have the work done with you, book a demo and we will go through your first results together. Terms you meet on the way are explained in the glossary.