What is AI SEO?
People use the phrase in two ways, and both are worth knowing:
Getting your brand named and your pages cited inside AI answers. This is what this guide is about, and what others call GEO or AEO.
Using AI tools to research, brief, draft or audit. Useful, with limits; see using AI for SEO below.
Google's own view is plain: optimizing for its generative AI features is optimizing for search, so it is still SEO.1 The work is familiar. The target is new: one of the few brands an answer names, ideally with your page as a cited source.
The three layers of AI SEO
Every AI answer that uses the web follows roughly the same path: find pages, judge them, then write an answer that names a few brands. Each step is a layer you can work on.
1. Be readable
For Google's AI features, a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet; there are no extra technical requirements.2 Other engines use their own crawlers, so robots.txt decides whether they can read you at all (more below).
2. Be the best source
Google says creating unique, non-commodity content will likely matter more to your presence in generative AI search than anything else in its guide.1 In practice: first-hand experience, clear facts (price, who it's for, limits), and comparisons you can stand behind. In the GEO research paper, methods such as adding citations, quotations and statistics improved visibility in generative engine responses by up to 40%, while keyword stuffing did not help.8
3. Be named
Answers draw on what the web says about you: review sites, forums, comparison articles, videos. Google notes its AI features can show what's being said across blogs, videos and forums, and warns that seeking inauthentic mentions isn't as helpful as it seems.1 Earn real mentions where rivals are already listed and you are not.
What Google says about AI SEO
Google published a full guide to its generative AI features in 2026. The useful parts, in short:1
Google also recommends checking advice and tools against its guidance: no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.1 That includes us. What a tool like AY Rank can do is ask engines the same questions every day and record what they answer.
The other engines read with their own bots
ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity send their own crawlers. Each company splits search bots from training bots, so you can stay in answers while opting out of model training:
| Bot | What it does | Block it and… |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | Surfaces sites in ChatGPT's search features.3 | Not shown in ChatGPT search answers (navigational links may remain). |
| GPTBot | Crawls content that may be used to train OpenAI's models.3 | Opted out of training only. |
| Claude-SearchBot | Improves search result quality for Claude users.4 | May reduce your visibility in Claude's search results. |
| ClaudeBot | Collects content that may help train Anthropic's models.4 | Opted out of training only. |
| PerplexityBot | Surfaces and links sites in Perplexity; not used for model training.5 | Perplexity recommends allowing it to appear in results. |
Try the three sample files below. They are read with the same rules our crawler check uses.
User-agent: GPTBot Disallow: / User-agent: ClaudeBot Disallow: / User-agent: Google-Extended Disallow: / User-agent: CCBot Disallow: / User-agent: * Allow: /
Using AI for SEO, safely
AI tools are good at the slow parts of SEO: grouping questions, drafting outlines, summarizing what rivals cover, checking pages against a brief. Google allows AI-assisted content when the work meets its Search Essentials and spam policies.1
Drafts edited by someone who knows the subject. Facts checked. A clear byline and an honest note on how the page was made, which Google's "Who, How, and Why" questions ask for.7
A page for every variation of a query, made mainly to manipulate rankings or AI answers. Google calls that scaled content abuse.1
AY Rank's content autopilot follows the first column: it drafts pages from your plan, fact-checks them, and nothing is published until you approve it.
A weekly AI SEO workflow
Pick the questions that sell
"Best X for Y", "X vs Y", "alternatives to Y", "is X good for Z". Write them from your offer, your buyers and your rivals.
Read today's answers
Ask each engine. Note who is named, in what order, and which pages are cited.
Fix readability first
Unblock search bots, fix indexing and snippet blocks. These are the fastest wins.
Close one content gap
Publish or improve the page an answer should have cited: a comparison, a pricing explainer, a clear "who it's for".
Earn one fair mention
Find a source engines cite that lists rivals but not you, and give it a reason to include you.
Re-ask and keep score
Same questions, same engines, every week. Keep what moved the numbers.
How to measure AI SEO
Answers change from one run to the next, so measure many questions on a schedule, never one answer once.
| Metric | What it tells you | Where to get it |
|---|---|---|
| Named rate | Share of answers that name your brand. | Answer tracking |
| Position | Where you appear when named. | Answer tracking |
| Share of voice | Your mentions against rivals in the same answers. | Answer tracking |
| Cited pages | Which pages engines read, and whether they name you. | Answer tracking |
| AI impressions | How often Google showed your links in AI features. | Search Console |
Search Console's generative AI performance report shows impressions of your links in AI Overviews and AI Mode; it does not report clicks.6 It also covers only Google. Answer tracking fills the rest: AY Rank asks your questions on six engines every day. See how AI visibility tracking works or create an account.
Sources
- Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search · Google Search CentralLast updated 10 Jul 2026. Checked 30 Oct 2026.
- AI features and your website · Google Search CentralLast updated 10 Dec 2025. Checked 30 Oct 2026.
- Overview of OpenAI crawlers · OpenAIChecked 30 Oct 2026.
- Does Anthropic crawl the web, and how can site owners block the crawler? · Claude Help CenterChecked 30 Oct 2026.
- Perplexity crawlers · PerplexityChecked 30 Oct 2026.
- Generative AI performance report (Search) · Search Console HelpImpressions only. Checked 30 Oct 2026.
- Creating helpful, reliable, people-first content · Google Search CentralLast updated 5 Oct 2026. Checked 30 Oct 2026.
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimization · Aggarwal et al., arXiv 2311.09735 (KDD 2024)Abstract. Checked 30 Oct 2026.