Published by Gist GEO · About our content
First, check you are asking the right question
"What is [your brand]?" and "what's the best [your category] for [someone like your customer]?" are two different tests. Most brands pass the first. The second is the one your buyers run.
Ask the second kind, in a few different wordings, before you decide you have a problem.
The three usual causes
1. You are not on the pages it reads
This is the most common one. AI assistants build recommendations from sources: review sites, list articles, forums, publishers. If the top sources for your category don't mention you, the assistant has nothing to repeat.
What to do
- Collect the websites cited under answers to your buying questions.
- Rank them by how often they appear.
- For the top five, check whether you are on the page. If not, ask what it would take: a product sample for a reviewer, a pitch to the author of a list, a genuinely useful reply in a forum thread.
2. It can't read your own site
If your pages block AI crawlers or load their content with scripts, the assistant may know your name but none of the details that would make it recommend you.
What to do: work through Can AI read my website? and My site loads content with JavaScript.
3. Your site never says what you are, in plain words
A homepage that says "Reimagining how teams flow" tells a person very little and an AI even less. If nothing on your site states what you sell and who it is for, you won't be matched to questions about your category.
What to do: put one plain sentence near the top of your homepage and your About page.
Reimagining how teams flow.Acme is project management software for marketing teams of 5 to 50 people.The second version contains the category, the customer and the size of team. Those are the words people use when they ask.
What not to do
- Don't stuff pages with keywords. Assistants read for meaning, and so do the people who arrive afterwards.
- Don't invent reviews or plant fake forum posts. It is dishonest, it tends to get found out, and it poisons the sources you need.
- Don't expect overnight results. Changes on your own site can show up fast. Changes that depend on other websites take as long as those websites take.
Questions marketers ask
Can I pay to be included in the answer?
Not in the answer itself. Some platforms sell advertising that appears next to answers, which is a separate thing and is labeled as advertising. The recommendation comes from what the assistant has read.
I rank first on Google for my category. Why am I still missing?
Page one of Google and the AI answer are two different lists. An assistant often rewrites the question, reads several sources and names the brands those sources agree on. If the reviews and list articles in your category leave you out, a top ranking for your own page may not be enough.
How do I know which websites AI is using?
Look at the links under the answer. Ask the same question a few times and note which sites keep coming back.