The short answer
To rank in ChatGPT, let its crawlers read your site, put a direct answer at the top of each page, and get mentioned on the third-party pages it cites for your category. Then track your target questions each week, because answers change. There’s no fixed ranking to climb. Each answer is written afresh from pages found in a live search, so the job is to be on those pages.
What we found in 30 AI answers
For the AEO Index, we asked ChatGPT and Perplexity one buyer question in each of 15 software categories, such as “what is the best CRM for startups?”, and saved the answers and their citations. It’s one run per engine, from the US, in October 2026, so read these as a snapshot.
- ChatGPT cited about 17 sites per question. Perplexity cited about 9. Getting onto one of those pages is a much larger target than being “the” answer.
- About 70% of the sites ChatGPT cited weren’t run by a software vendor. They were review sites, comparison articles and lists. For most buying questions, your own site is a minority of what gets read.
- Vendor sites still count. The other 30% were vendors’ own pages, well above Perplexity’s 18%. ChatGPT reads the product pages of the brands it’s considering, so yours need to state plainly who you’re for and what you cost.
- The engines read different sites. They cited 375 sites between them, counting each question separately, and only 22 were used by both on the same question. In 2 categories they had no site in common.
- A few publishers recur. techradar.com, zapier.com, softwarecompare.net were among the most-cited sites overall, but plenty of small sites were cited too.
You can see the sites behind any category, such as CRM or help desk, on its own results page.
How to rank in ChatGPT, step by step
1. Let ChatGPT read your site
Allow OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User in robots.txt, and make sure your content is in the HTML rather than loaded by JavaScript afterward. Nothing else works until this does. The free AEO audit checks it in about 30 seconds.
2. List the questions that matter
Write down 20 to 50 questions a buyer would ask: “best X for Y”, “X vs Y”, “X alternatives” and “is X worth it”. Rank them by how close they are to a purchase, and start with the closest.
3. See who’s winning today
Ask each question in ChatGPT with search on, logged out. Record who’s named, in what order, and which sources are cited. That source list is your to-do list. Repeat each question a few times, because a single answer can mislead.
4. Put the answer first
Give each page a plain answer in its first two sentences, then back it up. Add real numbers, dates and named sources. Research on generative engine optimization found that statistics, quotations and citations can raise visibility in AI answers.
5. Say what you are, consistently
Use the same one-line description on your homepage, pricing page, docs and every directory listing: who you’re for, what you do, what it costs. Vague positioning is hard for an AI tool to repeat. Mixed facts lead to wrong answers.
6. Publish comparison pages
Write “X vs Y”, “X alternatives” and “best X for Y” pages, including rivals fairly and stating who should pick them. If you don’t describe the comparison, someone else’s page will.
7. Get onto the pages ChatGPT cites
Go through the source list from step 3. Ask to be added to the lists, correct wrong details, and fill in review and directory profiles. Answer real questions in community threads with your name on them. This step moves buying questions the most, and it’s the slowest.
8. Rank in regular search
ChatGPT finds pages through web search, so pages that are indexed and rank well are easier for it to find. See AEO vs SEO for how the two work together.
9. Track it weekly
Re-run the same questions each week and record your share of answers, the order you’re named in, and what’s said about you. Add AI referral traffic from your analytics. A trend across many questions tells you far more than one screenshot.
What doesn’t work
- An llms.txt on its own. It’s cheap to add, and we use one, but it won’t get you named without the rest.
- Mass-produced articles. Pages with nothing new give an AI tool no reason to cite you.
- Prompt stuffing. Hidden text aimed at AI tools is a risk, and it does nothing for what other sites say about you.
- Chasing one engine. As the data above shows, ChatGPT and Perplexity read mostly different pages.
Doing this yourself, or getting help
All of this can be done in-house if someone owns it each week. Steps 1, 4 and 5 are a few days’ work. Steps 6, 7 and 9 never finish. If you’d rather hand it over, that’s what our AEO agency does. See exactly what’s included.
