How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

To be recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot or Google's AI Mode, your business has to be findable by the search systems those assistants use, readable on pages they are allowed to fetch, and described the same way across the web. That is most of what AI search optimisation, also sold as GEO or AEO, involves. Google is blunt about it: optimising for its generative AI features is still SEO. No one can guarantee you a mention, and anyone who promises one is guessing.

How AI assistants choose sources

When a question needs current or local information, assistants search the web, read a set of pages and write an answer with links. Google calls this grounding, and says AI Overviews and AI Mode may also use "query fan-out", running several related searches at once to gather sources.

Each assistant relies on a search system:

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode use Google's index. A page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and the site must not have opted out in Search Console, a setting covered below. Google brought both to the Middle East and North Africa in 2025, with Arabic support.
• ChatGPT search uses OpenAI's crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and also sends rewritten queries to third-party search providers; OpenAI's help centre lists Microsoft among them. For local questions it uses your approximate location from your IP address, so "good restaurants near me" becomes a search that includes the city.
• Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI-generated summaries cite web pages, and Bing Webmaster Tools now reports those citations. Bing says it respects robots.txt and other content owner controls.
• Perplexity uses PerplexityBot to surface and link websites in its results.
• Claude uses Claude-SearchBot to index content for its search answers.

So the price of entry is ordinary SEO: be indexed by Google and Bing, and let the search crawlers in.

Which crawlers to allow in robots.txt

AI companies separate crawling for search from crawling for training, so you can allow one and block the other.

Three caveats:

• User-triggered visits work differently. When someone asks an assistant a question, it may visit pages directly as ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User or Claude-User. OpenAI says robots.txt rules may not apply to those visits, and Perplexity says its user agent generally ignores them.
• Changes take a day. OpenAI and Perplexity both say a robots.txt change can take up to about 24 hours to take effect.
• Firewalls block silently. Bot protection on a CDN or host can refuse crawlers that robots.txt allows. OpenAI's guidance for advertisers lists firewall rules, CAPTCHAs and JavaScript challenges among the usual causes, and Perplexity publishes firewall settings for its bots.

A common choice, staying visible in ChatGPT search while opting out of training, looks like this:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

Our own robots.txt allows every crawler and keeps only the /api/ path out. Pages that only come together in the browser are another hidden barrier, since Google notes that not all bots can run JavaScript; our technical SEO guide covers rendering.

Google has one more switch. Since the end of August 2026, every site can use the Search generative AI control in Search Console to exclude its content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the AI features in Discover. Excluding means no links, impressions or traffic from those features, and Google says the setting isn't used as a ranking signal for the rest of Search. For a business that wants customers, the default, include, is usually the right choice.

How do you appear in ChatGPT search results in Dubai?

1. Check access first. Allow OAI-SearchBot, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools, which can import sites already verified in Google Search Console, and confirm your key pages are indexed by both Google and Bing.
2. Write the facts as text. Say what you do, for whom, in which emirates and areas, your hours, languages, prices or what drives them, and any licences buyers care about. Google lists keeping important content in text form among the basics for its AI features.
3. Name the place. ChatGPT can turn "near me" into a search that includes the city, so pages that plainly state Dubai and the areas you serve give that search something to match. Don't create a page per district with the names swapped; that is doorway spam.
4. Keep your details identical everywhere. Use the same name, address, phone number and hours on your site, Google Business Profile, Bing Places and the directories your customers use. Bing says Bing Places helps keep details current and eligible for AI answers, and OpenAI says ChatGPT may draw on third-party providers for nearby business listings.
5. Earn reviews and mentions honestly. Google says its AI features can reflect what is said about businesses across the web, but that chasing inauthentic mentions isn't as helpful as it might seem. Our guide to ranking on Google Maps in Dubai covers reviews in detail, and our local SEO guide covers listings and citations.
6. Cover Arabic if your customers ask in Arabic. Google's AI Mode works in Arabic, and no assistant can quote an Arabic answer you haven't written.

What makes a page worth citing

Google's advice for its AI features is the advice for Search: original, helpful content, a clear structure and a page that works. It singles out "non-commodity" content, meaning experience and detail beyond common knowledge, and lists things you can ignore, such as special AI files, chopping text into small chunks and rewriting pages for AI. Bing, for its part, suggests clear headings, tables and FAQ sections, evidence for claims and keeping content fresh.

In practice, pages worth quoting answer the question in their first lines, use headings that match how people ask, give specifics such as prices, timelines, requirements and areas served, and show who wrote them, when they were reviewed and where the facts come from. Our guide to an SEO content strategy covers planning pages like that.

Structured data helps machines identify your business. Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features, but Organization markup helps it tell your business apart from others, and the sameAs property can list your profiles on other sites. Our site describes the business as a ProfessionalService, with its address, phone number, hours, languages and the subjects we cover; sameAs is generated from our list of social profiles and left out while that list is empty. Neither OpenAI's nor Perplexity's crawler documentation mentions structured data.

Is llms.txt worth adding?

llms.txt is a proposal, first published by Jeremy Howard in September 2024, for a Markdown file at /llms.txt that gives AI tools a short summary of a site and links to its key pages. It is a convention, not a standard. Google says Google Search ignores llms.txt files, so they neither help nor harm your rankings there. OpenAI and Perplexity publish llms.txt files for their own developer documentation, but neither company's crawler documentation says its search bot reads them on other sites.

We publish one anyway because it costs almost nothing to maintain. It is generated from the same data as the site, listing our services, free zone guides, tools and every guide with its short answer, so it can't drift out of date. Treat it as optional, and do it after everything above.

Measuring AI visibility

• Google Analytics 4 has an AI Assistant channel for visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Copilot and Grok. Clicks from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode count as Organic Search instead.
• Search Console's Generative AI performance report, available to all sites since the end of August 2026, shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device.
• Bing Webmaster Tools' AI Performance report, in public preview since February 2026, shows how often your pages are cited in Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partner experiences, with the grounding queries behind those citations.

Treat every number as a floor. GA4 can only credit an assistant when the visit carries that information, and on consent-first sites like ours it only counts visitors who accept analytics cookies. Asking ChatGPT about your business yourself is a spot check, not a measurement, because answers vary with location, phrasing and the user's saved memories.

Red flags in AI search optimisation services

• guaranteed placement in ChatGPT answers or AI Overviews
• tools claiming to see inside Google's AI systems, when Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems
• plans to publish hundreds of pages, one for every possible prompt, which Google treats as scaled content abuse
• paid "mentions", reviews or forum posts
• an llms.txt file sold as the main deliverable

If you want a clear view of how AI assistants see your business today, our SEO and AI search team can check access, content and listings and tell you what to fix first.

Sources

• OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
• OpenAI Help Center: Searching the web with ChatGPT
• Perplexity: Perplexity crawlers
• Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features
• Search Console Help: Search generative AI control
• Bing Webmaster Blog: Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools