Prepare your website for AI search

What are AEO, GEO, and SEO?

These terms overlap and are used differently across the industry. They are useful descriptions of goals, not separate certifications. Google says its AI Overviews and AI Mode use the same SEO foundations as Search, with no additional technical requirements. Eligibility does not guarantee inclusion. Read Google’s guidance on AI features.

1. Choose a page and a reader’s question

Start with an important public page: a service description, a product page, or an article that answers a question customers ask. Write down what a visitor should learn or accomplish there. A homepage scan cannot tell you whether every article or product page is ready.

For example, a repair service page might need to explain its service area, the problems it handles, how estimates work, and how to book. Those details are more useful than adding a generic paragraph about being the best provider. Scan representative pages separately and compare findings in the context of each page’s purpose.

2. Fix access and indexing problems first

A broken URL, an unintended indexing block, or a bot challenge can prevent useful content from being reached. Open the exact URL you scanned and check that it shows the intended page. Ask your developer to investigate unexpected redirects, server errors, or firewall restrictions before spending time on wording or optional markup.

AEO test reads the HTML returned by the server without running the page’s JavaScript. If the report sees little text but your browser shows a full page, your content may load later. That difference is a reason to investigate rendering, not proof that every search engine sees an empty page. Use your search engine’s webmaster tools to check its own view of the URL.

Use the search indexing troubleshooting guide to distinguish crawl access, noindex instructions, canonical choices and sitemap discovery before deciding what to change.

3. Make the answer useful and easy to verify

Use a descriptive title and headings that help readers find the relevant section. Give a direct answer, then explain conditions, exceptions, and evidence. A comparison can benefit from a table; a process can benefit from numbered steps. Choose the format that helps your reader rather than adding every format to every page.

Show who is responsible for the information where it matters. Link to original sources for factual claims and explain your own experience when it is relevant. Update information when it changes; changing a date without reviewing the content does not make it more reliable. Avoid adding filler to reach a word count.

4. Describe the page accurately

Give each important page a specific title and an honest description. Link related pages with meaningful link text, and make your business or project background easy to find. A service page and a how-to article have different jobs; their descriptions should reflect that.

Structured data is a machine-readable description of a page. Use types that fit its actual content and keep the markup consistent with what visitors see. Google does not require a special AI schema or an AI text file for its AI search features. An llms.txt file is an optional experiment, not a substitute for accessible, useful pages. See Google’s technical guidance.

5. Choose crawler permissions deliberately

Search access and model training are different decisions. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and GPTBot for content that may be used in model training. You can allow the search crawler while disallowing the training crawler. ChatGPT-User handles certain user-initiated visits and is not the control for search inclusion; robots.txt rules may not apply to those visits. Read OpenAI’s crawler documentation.

Googlebot controls crawling for Google Search, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google-Extended is a separate control for model use in other Google systems. Allowing Googlebot does not guarantee indexing or appearance in an AI answer. Read Google’s guidance on AI search access.

Do not enable every crawler just to increase a score. Decide which uses you want to permit, then check the provider’s current guidance. A robots.txt rule expresses a policy; a firewall or hosting setting can still block a permitted crawler. Ask your developer to verify actual requests if a crawler cannot reach a page.

For examples and a troubleshooting workflow, read the guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt.

6. Improve the experience people actually get

Open the page on a phone. Check whether text appears promptly, the layout stays steady, and important actions work. Large images are only one possible cause of slow loading: fonts, scripts, styles, and server response time can also delay visible content.

AEO test’s performance results are mobile lab measurements from PageSpeed Insights. They describe one simulated visit and can vary between runs. Use the evidence to investigate a slow page, and compare with real visitor measurements when available.

For a reading order and a practical handoff checklist, use the guide to PageSpeed results and slow LCP. It also explains why text can load slowly without a large image.

How to turn a report into a short action list

Start with access failures and broken page fundamentals, then pick the content or experience changes that matter most to your visitors. Open each finding to read its evidence before changing anything. A missing author on an article deserves a different response from a missing author on a calculator.

After publishing a fix, run a new scan of the same URL and compare the evidence. Then monitor whether relevant visitors find and use the page. A higher readiness score is not a ranking or citation guarantee. Read the methodology for scoring and scan limits, or learn about AEO test.