More people now ask ChatGPT where to buy, who to hire and which tool to use. If ChatGPT can't read your site, it can't recommend you. "ChatGPT SEO" is the work of making sure it can, and the tools below help you check where you stand.
This guide covers how ChatGPT finds pages, the free checks every site should run, and the paid tools that track whether AI assistants mention you over time.
How ChatGPT finds and cites websites
When ChatGPT answers with search turned on, it fetches pages from the web and links to the ones it uses. OpenAI documents three crawlers, and they do different jobs:
- OAI-SearchBot fetches pages so ChatGPT search can show and cite them. Block it, and ChatGPT search can't link to you.
- GPTBot collects content that may be used to train OpenAI's models. Blocking it doesn't stop you appearing in ChatGPT search.
- ChatGPT-User visits a page when a user asks ChatGPT to open a specific link.
ChatGPT also draws on third-party search results, so being well indexed in Bing as well as Google helps. Like most AI crawlers, OpenAI's bots generally don't run JavaScript, so text that only appears after scripts run may be invisible to them.
The free ChatGPT SEO checks
These five checks cost nothing and fix most of the reasons a site never shows up.
1. Check that AI crawlers are allowed
Open your robots.txt (yoursite.com/robots.txt) or run it through our free robots.txt checker. Make sure OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude's crawlers aren't blocked. Many sites blocked "all AI bots" in 2023 and forgot. You can block GPTBot (training) and still allow OAI-SearchBot (search).
2. Check what AI crawlers can actually read
Our free AI search visibility checker loads your page without JavaScript, the way most AI crawlers see it. It shows how much text is readable, which AI crawlers your robots.txt allows, and whether you have structured data and an llms.txt file. If your main content comes out empty, that's the first thing to fix.
3. Describe your business clearly in structured data
Organization structured data (JSON-LD) tells machines your business name, logo, website and social profiles. Add Product, LocalBusiness or FAQ markup where it fits. Test your markup with our free schema markup validator.
4. Publish an llms.txt file
llms.txt is a short Markdown file that summarises your site for AI assistants and links to your most useful pages. No assistant has said it uses llms.txt for ranking, but it takes five minutes and some AI tools already read it. Generate one with our free llms.txt generator.
5. Ask ChatGPT yourself
The simplest test is still the best. With search turned on, ask ChatGPT the questions your customers ask, such as "best sourdough bakery in Leeds" or "affordable SEO tool for WordPress". Note whether you appear and which pages are cited. Repeat in Perplexity and Claude. Answers change from day to day, so test a few questions monthly, not once.
Paid tools that track AI mentions over time
If you want this tracked automatically, a newer category of tools runs a fixed set of prompts through AI assistants every day and reports how often your brand appears. Typical options:
| Tool | What it does | Starting price |
|---|---|---|
| Otterly.AI | Tracks a set of prompts across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews | About $29/mo for 15 prompts |
| Semrush AI visibility | AI visibility inside the Semrush suite | Bundled with paid Semrush plans |
| Ahrefs Brand Radar | Brand mentions across AI answers, on top of Ahrefs | Paid add-on |
| Peec AI, Profound | Prompt tracking and competitor share of voice for brands and agencies | From about $95/mo to enterprise |
Prices are entry prices as of November 2026 and change often.
Two cautions. First, prompt tracking measures a small sample of possible questions, so treat the numbers as a trend, not a precise score. Second, AI visibility tools tell you whether you appear. They don't fix the reasons you don't, and for a small business the reasons are usually the basics above.
What actually gets a small site mentioned
In our experience the sites that get cited aren't doing anything exotic:
- Their pages can be read without JavaScript and AI crawlers aren't blocked.
- Each important page answers one question clearly, in plain sentences an assistant can quote.
- Titles and meta descriptions say exactly what the page is about.
- They rank reasonably well in normal search, which feeds the AI answers.
That last point matters. Good SEO and good AI visibility mostly overlap, because AI assistants lean on the same signals and often on the same search results.
Where RareMatter fits
RareMatter is our AI SEO tool for small sites. It checks AI crawler access on every scan, and its AI SEO expert drafts fixes for the titles, descriptions, headings and canonicals that make pages clearer to both Google and AI assistants. On WordPress, the free plugin publishes an approved fix in one click, and RareMatter measures the clicks each fix earned in your own Search Console.
Start with the free AI search visibility checker. It takes about ten seconds and tells you whether ChatGPT can read your site at all.