To rank in ChatGPT and other AI search engines, you make your brand easy for a model to describe, build consistent mentions across the sources it trusts, publish content that directly answers buyer questions, and measure what the assistants actually say so you can close the gaps. There is no single setting to flip — it's the compounding result of those four moves.

Here's how to do each, in order.

1. Make your brand machine-describable

AI assistants can only recommend what they can clearly understand. Audit your own site the way a model reads it:

State, in plain text near the top of your homepage, what you do, who it's for, and what's distinct about you. Avoid burying it in a slogan or an image.
Make sure that text is server-rendered — if your key copy only appears after JavaScript runs, non-JS crawlers and some AI retrievers see an empty page.
Add structured data (Organization, Product, FAQ) so the facts are unambiguous.

2. Build third-party consensus

Models trust a fact more when many independent sources repeat it. Your own site claiming you're "the leading X" means little; ten review sites, directories, and articles describing you as an X in your category means a lot.

Get listed in the directories and comparison sites your category uses.
Earn reviews on the platforms buyers actually consult.
Pursue editorial mentions that place you next to the right competitors and category terms.

This is what shifts how a model "thinks" about your category — and where you sit in it.

3. Publish answer-shaped content

Assistants that browse the web retrieve and quote pages that directly answer the question being asked. Write for that:

One page per real buyer question, with the answer in the first sentence, then the supporting detail.
Use clear headings that match how people phrase questions.
Keep comparisons honest and specific — models (and readers) reward concreteness over hype.

4. Measure across every assistant, repeatedly

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity each draw on different data and retrieval, so they answer the same question differently — and each answer drifts over time. You cannot manage what you don't measure.

Track a representative set of prompts across all four platforms and watch:

Visibility — are you named at all?
Rank — first or buried?
Share of voice — versus the competitors named beside you.
Citations — which pages get pulled in.

A realistic timeline

GEO is not instant. New third-party mentions and content take time to be re-crawled and absorbed. Expect to see retrieval-based assistants (Perplexity, ChatGPT search) reflect changes first, with training-based recall shifting more slowly. The teams that win treat it as an ongoing program, not a one-time fix.

Where to start

Begin with measurement — you can't prioritize fixes blind. geopsy runs your prompts across every major assistant, scores your visibility, and turns the gaps into a ranked to-do list. For definitions of each metric, see the help center, and for the bigger picture read what GEO is.