85.7% of brands are completely invisible when someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to recommend a tool in their category. I know because I measured it. Across 2,014 companies, the vast majority score between 0 and 20 on AI visibility. They have decent websites. Some rank on Google. It does not matter.
Score 0-20 in AI search (Loamly, 2,014 companies)
Ordered by impact, backed by citation data
AI-referred visitors vs organic (Microsoft Clarity)
I analyzed those 2,014 companies across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. 85.7% of them score between 0 and 20 on AI visibility. That means when someone asks those platforms about their category, their brand simply does not appear.
Most of those brands have decent websites. Some rank on Google. A few have been around for years.
It does not matter. AI platforms build their answers from different signals. If you have not addressed those signals, you are invisible regardless of your Google ranking.
Here is what to do about it, ordered by impact.
Step 0: Check Your Baseline First
Before fixing anything, measure where you stand.
Open ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Ask each one: "What are the best [your category] tools for [your use case]?" Ask it three different ways. Note whether your brand appears. Note which competitors do.
That manual test takes 10 minutes and tells you a lot. For a faster automated scan, run a free report at Loamly. It queries all four platforms and scores your visibility in under 60 seconds.
If you score below 20, read the rest of this post carefully. Most of the fixes below have compound effects. They reinforce each other.
Why You Are Invisible
The most common reasons brands do not appear in AI search fall into four buckets.
No external brand presence. Your website exists, but nothing else does. No directory listings, no third-party mentions, no community presence. AI platforms weight external signals heavily. If the only place that talks about you is your own website, they have little evidence you exist.
Stale content. Kevin Indig analyzed 1.2M citations and found content under 30 days old gets 3.2x more AI citations than older content. Most brands publish a blog post and forget it exists.
Blocked crawlers. GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot are blocked by default on many older robots.txt configurations. If AI crawlers cannot read your site, they cannot cite it.
Missing structured signals. No schema markup, no Q&A structure, no entity relationships. How AI platforms find and cite content is a mechanical process. If your content is not structured for extraction, it gets skipped.
The 10-Step Fix
Brands with 3.2x more mentions than links get disproportionate AI visibility (Digital Bloom). Your website content alone is not enough. AI platforms weight your external presence more than your on-site optimization.
1. Unblock AI Crawlers
This is the most common fixable mistake. Check your robots.txt right now.
If you see User-agent: * with Disallow: /, you may be blocking everything including AI bots. Add explicit allow rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended.
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /This costs nothing and takes five minutes. Do it first.
2. Build Your Entity Footprint
15 or more entity mentions produces a 4.8x citation boost (Kevin Indig, 1.2M citation study). An entity is how AI systems represent your brand in their knowledge graph.
Create or claim: Google Business Profile, LinkedIn company page, Crunchbase profile, Wikidata entry if you qualify, and three to five industry-specific directories. Add Organization schema to your homepage with consistent name, URL, logo, and social profile links.
The consistency matters. Your brand name should be spelled identically across every listing. Variations confuse entity resolution and reduce your citation probability.
Full guide: E-E-A-T and entity footprint for AI citations.
3. Build a YouTube Presence
Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found a 0.737 correlation between YouTube presence and AI citation rates. That is the strongest predictor identified in any published study. Stronger than backlinks (0.218). Stronger than web mentions (0.664).
YouTube is the number one predictor of AI visibility, and most B2B brands have no channel at all.
You do not need production value. You need consistent output. Two videos per month explaining your category, your product, and your customers' problems. That is enough to register.
4. Build Reddit and Community Presence
Reddit accounts for 46.7% of Perplexity's top cited sources (Profound data, 200M+ prompt database). That number surprised me when I first saw it. It should change how you think about community investment.
This does not mean spamming subreddits with promotional posts. It means genuinely participating in communities where your customers ask questions. Answer questions thoroughly. Mention your product only when it directly solves the problem being discussed.
One substantive Reddit answer in the right subreddit can drive more AI citations than ten blog posts.
5. Update Your Top 10 Pages
Content freshness is not just a Google ranking factor. It directly affects AI citation rates.
Identify your ten highest-traffic pages. Add a meaningful update to each one. New data, an updated example, a section you missed the first time. Even a 200-word addition with a fresh date counts.
Set a calendar reminder to do this monthly. The compounding effect of consistently fresh content is one of the most reliable GEO improvements I have seen.
6. Restructure Content for Extraction
Three structural changes produce measurable citation improvements.
First, use Q&A headings. Phrasing your H2s as questions (instead of generic labels) produces a 2x citation boost (Kevin Indig). "What is [concept]?" and "How does [process] work?" outperform "Overview" and "How It Works."
Second, front-load your key claims. 44.2% of AI citations come from the first 30% of an article (Kevin Indig). Put your most important, most quotable statements in the opening sections. Do not bury your insight at the bottom after paragraphs of setup.
Third, write for extraction. A short, standalone paragraph that fully answers a question is more likely to be cited than a long narrative that requires context to understand.
7. Add Schema Markup
82% of ChatGPT-cited URLs come from domains that have schema markup (Digital Bloom). Schema is not just for Google.
At minimum, implement Organization schema on your homepage, Article schema on blog posts, FAQPage schema on any Q&A content, and Product schema if you have products.
The schema markup guide for AI visibility covers the exact markup that drives citations on each platform.
8. Create an llms.txt File
844,000+ sites have already adopted llms.txt. It is a plain text file at your domain root that tells AI systems what your site is about and which pages matter most.
Think of it as robots.txt for AI, but instead of blocking access you are actively guiding the AI toward your most important content.
The format is simple: a short description of your company, then a list of your key pages with one-line summaries. A good llms.txt takes 30 minutes to write and signals to AI crawlers that you understand how they work.
Full instructions: llms.txt guide.
9. Get on Lists and Roundups
41% of ChatGPT citations come from list mentions and roundups (Bailyn research). This is the single largest citation driver for ChatGPT.
Being included in "best [category] tools for [use case]" articles on third-party sites is more valuable for AI visibility than almost anything you can do on your own site. Identify 10 to 20 roundup articles in your category. Reach out to the authors. Offer a genuine review copy or a quote. Follow up.
This takes weeks to months. Start now.
10. Build Referring Domain Diversity
Referring domains is the strongest predictor of ChatGPT citation rates in a 129,000-domain study by SEJ. Not domain authority. Not backlink count. Domain diversity.
A brand cited by 50 different domains is more likely to appear in AI responses than a brand with 500 backlinks from 10 domains. Breadth signals that many different sources have independently verified your existence.
Guest posts, podcast appearances, original data that gets picked up, industry partnerships. Anything that earns a link from a new domain you have never appeared on before.
Platform-Specific Quick Wins
Different platforms weight different signals. This table shows where to focus first based on how each platform builds its answers.
| Platform | Primary Source | Top Signal | Quick Win |
|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Bing index | List mentions (41%) | Get on Bing-indexed roundup articles |
| Claude | Brave Search | Database listings (68%) | Add Crunchbase, G2, Capterra profiles |
| Perplexity | Real-time web + Reddit | Freshness + community | Update content weekly, engage on Reddit |
| Google AI Mode | Google index | Rankings + Shopping Graph | Maintain Google rankings, add structured data |
87% of ChatGPT-cited URLs appear in Bing's top 10 results (Digital Bloom). If you rank on Bing for category terms, you are much more likely to be cited by ChatGPT.
For Claude, database listings dominate. 68% of Claude's citation weight goes to authoritative databases (Bailyn). This is why Crunchbase, G2, and industry directories matter so much for Claude specifically.
For Perplexity, freshness wins. Content updated in the last 30 days is prioritized. Combine that with Reddit presence and you can see meaningful Perplexity visibility within a few weeks.
Platform-specific deep dives: ChatGPT optimization and Claude and Perplexity optimization.
Realistic Timeline
These improvements compound. The quick wins stack with the medium-term work. Do not wait for step 1 to fully resolve before starting step 3.
1 to 2 weeks (quick wins):
- Unblock AI crawlers
- Create llms.txt
- Add schema markup
- Update your top 10 pages
- Restructure content with Q&A headings
1 to 3 months (medium-term):
- Build entity footprint across directories
- Start YouTube channel, publish first 4 to 6 videos
- Begin Reddit participation in 2 to 3 relevant subreddits
- Reach out to roundup article authors
3 to 6 months (long-term):
- Referring domain diversity via guest posts and original data
- Consistent content freshness cadence
- Entity recognition begins appearing in AI responses consistently
Most brands I have seen start noticing changes in Perplexity first, usually within 3 to 6 weeks of consistent freshness updates combined with community presence. ChatGPT typically follows 4 to 8 weeks later as Bing indexes the new citations.
FAQ
Does Google SEO still matter for AI visibility?
Yes, but differently. 87% of ChatGPT-cited URLs are in Bing's top 10, and Google rankings correlate with AI citations too. But ranking alone is not enough. A brand that ranks #3 on Google but has no external entity footprint and no community presence will still be invisible in AI. You need both.
How long does it take to start appearing in ChatGPT?
It depends on your starting point. If you are blocking AI crawlers and fixing that today, you might see changes in 2 to 4 weeks. Building entity footprint and getting list mentions typically shows results in 4 to 12 weeks. There is no guarantee of timing because AI platforms update their indices on their own schedules.
Can I pay to appear in AI search results?
ChatGPT began testing ads in February 2026. Perplexity pulled its advertising program after user backlash. Google AI Mode runs Shopping ads. But organic AI citations are not for sale. The steps in this post are about earning citations through legitimate signals.
What if I do all 10 steps and still do not appear?
Check whether your brand name is too generic. Brands whose names are common words in other languages (or overlap with major established brands) face an entity disambiguation problem. AI platforms struggle to correctly resolve which entity the user means. The fix is building very strong entity signals that tie your brand name to your specific domain and company details. More schema, more consistent cross-platform listings, more content that contextualizes your brand name alongside your specific category.
Run Your Free Report
Want to see exactly where you stand right now? Run a free report at Loamly. It scans ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google in under 60 seconds. No credit card.
You will see your visibility score across all four platforms, which competitors are appearing in your place, and which of the 10 steps above will have the most impact for your specific brand.
The full AI SEO guide for 2026 covers the strategy layer if you want to go deeper after completing these steps.
Last updated: February 25, 2026
Stay Updated on AI Visibility
Get weekly insights on GEO, AI traffic trends, and how to optimize for AI search engines.
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Related Articles
The 15 Search Queries Your Competitors Are Not Appearing In (And Why You Should Target Them)
Most companies optimize for 20-40 queries where they already win, missing hundreds of high-value queries where competitors haven't established dominance.
The AI Search Visibility Stack: 7 Essential Components Every Company Needs in 2026
AI search visibility needs 7 components: monitoring, content optimization, entity mapping, audience research, competitive intel, integrations, measurement.
Check Your AI Visibility
See what ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity say about your brand. Free, no signup.
Get Free Report