How to get your brand cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity

When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity to recommend a vendor, they don't get ten blue links. They get three to five names, each with a sentence of reasoning. If your brand isn't on that list, you're invisible. Page two doesn't exist here. Generative engine optimization (GEO), also called answer engine optimization, is the work of getting into that short list and being described accurately when you land there.

This is what we do by hand at MentionShare. The method below is the same one we run on real audits, distilled down.

Definition, GEO (generative engine optimization): the practice of making a brand retrievable, quotable, and correctly described so AI engines name and recommend it when buyers ask which provider to use.

What actually gets a brand cited by AI engines?

Five levers, working together. Miss one and you stay off the list.

Are you indexed where AI retrieves, including Bing?

You cannot be cited if the engine can't retrieve you, and Bing is the blind spot. This is the single most common failure we find.

• Make sure your key pages are crawlable and actually indexed. That means not blocked by robots.txt, not stuck behind JavaScript that renders nothing to a crawler, not orphaned with no internal links.
• Register and verify with Bing Webmaster Tools, not only Google. ChatGPT's browsing and Microsoft Copilot lean heavily on Bing's index. If Bing can't see you, ChatGPT often can't either. Most teams optimize for Google and never check Bing.
• Give every important page a clean, unique title and a real, descriptive meta description. These are frequently what gets pulled into a citation snippet.

Can an AI lift a clean answer from your page?

Write passages a model can extract and drop into an answer with zero editing. AI engines reward the lift, not clever prose.

• Put the direct answer in the first sentence of a section, then support it. Answer-first, always.
• Use plain declarative statements: "MentionShare runs GEO audits by hand for B2B and B2C brands." A model can quote that. It can't quote a paragraph that buries the point in the fourth line.
• Structure with real headings, short paragraphs, bullets, and tables. A crisp definition or comparison table is disproportionately likely to be cited.
• Add a one-line summary or TL;DR near the top. It's often the exact chunk that gets lifted.

Do trusted third-party sources mention you?

Models weight what other credible sites say about you, not only what you say about yourself. Most AI-cited sources are ones a brand can influence, its own pages plus its profiles on trusted sites, so go get those right.

• Claim and complete your listings on the review sites, directories, and industry hubs relevant to your category. That means the directories and comparison sites your buyers already read before they shortlist.
• Keep Wikipedia, Crunchbase, G2, and similar entity sources accurate and current. These are the "encyclopedic authority" signals ChatGPT leans on.
• Get named in genuine editorial roundups ("best X for Y"). A third-party "top providers" list is one of the highest-leverage things you can earn, because those lists are exactly what models quote when asked to recommend.
• On Perplexity specifically, community sources matter. A substantive, accurate presence in relevant Reddit and forum threads gets pulled surprisingly often.

Is your content fresh?

Recently updated content gets cited far more often than stale pages. Freshness is a ranking signal and a trust signal. A model would rather quote a page dated this quarter than one that looks abandoned.

• Revisit your cornerstone pages on a schedule. Update figures, dates, and examples, and show a visible "last updated" date.
• Publish on live topics while they're live. New questions have few good answers, so fresh, clear content wins the citation before the space gets crowded.

Are you a consistent entity across the web?

Models build one internal picture of who you are from everything they read. Contradict yourself across sources and you dilute that picture, or the model states something wrong about you.

• Use the same brand name, one-line description, category, and core claims everywhere: your site, your listings, your social profiles.
• Add structured data (Organization and, where relevant, FAQ schema) so machines parse your identity unambiguously.
• Audit what AI already says about you and correct the sources feeding any errors. This is the step generic scanners miss. A hallucination about your pricing or product only gets fixed when a human traces it to the source and rewrites it.

How do ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews differ?

The five levers apply everywhere, and each engine has a bias worth playing to.

• ChatGPT leans on Bing's index and encyclopedic authority. Wikipedia, established reference pages, and well-structured factual content carry weight. Priorities: fix Bing indexing, get your entity right on authoritative reference sites.
• Claude favors clear, accurate, well-attributed content. When it searches the web it answers with citations, and it leans toward sources it can verify and trust, so specific, checkable claims travel further than vague marketing copy. Priorities: publish precise, clearly-sourced content, keep your facts consistent and easy to verify, and back claims with named references.
• Perplexity favors freshness and community sources. It cites recent content and pulls from Reddit, forums, and discussion threads readily. Priorities: publish and update often, and build a genuine, accurate community footprint.
• Google AI Overviews rewards E-E-A-T, experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trust. Named authors, real credentials, original data, and strong domain reputation move the needle, and an AI Overviews citation follows the same signals. Priorities: bylines with real expertise, first-hand insight, and clean technical SEO.

Optimize for all four and the overlap does most of the work. Clarity, trust, and freshness are universal.

Where does this leave you?

Getting cited is no trick, and it's no keyword you stuff in. It comes down to being the most retrievable, quotable, consistently described option in your category, and catching the moments AI gets you wrong before a buyer does. Run the five levers, then measure whether you actually show up. If you're not sure where you stand today, that's the whole point of a baseline audit: ask the real questions your buyers ask, and see who AI names.