AEO Marketing: What ChatGPT Cites and How to Test It
AEO marketing is the work of getting your business named and cited inside the answers of ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and it starts with testing what ChatGPT cites for your buyers' questions today.
That test matters because buyers have changed where they ask. In BrightLocal's survey of 1,002 US adults, published in February 2026, use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% the year before to 45%. If a buyer asks ChatGPT who to hire and the answer names your competitors, your website never got a chance to make the case.
Key points
- AEO marketing aims for a place inside the written answer, not only a spot in a list of links.
- OpenAI says sites that opt out of its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers, so check that setting first.
- The pages ChatGPT cites for your questions (your site, other sites that mention you, or directories) tell you where to put the work.
What is AEO marketing?
AEO marketing (answer engine optimization) is the practice of making your business easy for answer engines to find, understand and cite. The goal is to be named, and ideally linked, when ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews or AI Mode answer a question your buyers ask. You measure it by whether you appear in those answers, and how.
You'll also see it called GEO or AI SEO. It sits on top of SEO rather than replacing it. Google Search Central says "the best practices for SEO remain relevant" for AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations to appear in them (page last updated December 2025). A Battery Ventures overview from November 2025 says the most advanced brands treat AEO as an extension of SEO. So the website basics you already have still count. AEO marketing adds a check your SEO reports don't give you, on what the answer itself says about you.
What does ChatGPT actually cite for local questions?
The clearest public teardown is BrightLocal's. In November 2024 it ran 800 manual local business searches in ChatGPT and sorted the sources ChatGPT showed into business websites, business mentions (articles and lists on other sites) and directories.
| What BrightLocal measured | What it found | What to check in your own test |
|---|---|---|
| All local sources | 58% business websites, 27% business mentions, 15% directories | Whether your own site is among the cited websites |
| Transactional searches (ready to hire or buy) | 72% business websites | Whether your service pages answer "who does this near me" plainly |
| Informational searches (still researching) | 43% business websites, 35% business mentions, 22% directories | Whether other sites mention you when buyers research |
| Reddit and Quora | Did not appear as sources in that study | Whether forums show up for your questions now |
Two limits apply. BrightLocal says the results are specific to the time of collection, and they cover local searches only. The Battery Ventures overview, writing about AI answers in general, says only a small percentage of answer content comes from a brand's own site, and it attaches no figure to that. The two describe different sets of questions, so neither tells you what ChatGPT cites for yours. Your own test does.
How do you test what ChatGPT cites for your business?
When you finish, you'll have one sheet that shows, for each buyer question, whether ChatGPT named you, whether it linked you, and which pages it cited instead.
- Check that the door is open. Open your site's robots.txt file and look for OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's crawler documentation says sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that a robots.txt change can take about 24 hours to register for search. GPTBot is a separate setting that covers model training.
- Write the questions your buyers ask, in their words. Include both kinds BrightLocal separated: ready-to-hire questions ("who's a good emergency plumber near me") and research questions ("how much does a water heater replacement cost").
- Ask each one in a fresh chat with no history about your business. Check that the answer lists the web pages it used. An answer with no sources can't show you what was cited, so ask again and request a web search.
- Ask again, more than once. One chat is one sample. Record every run, and write results as a count against total runs (named in some runs out of all runs), never just the best one.
- Log each run. Note whether you were named, whether you were linked, and every cited page, sorted into your site, a competitor's site, a third-party mention, or a directory.
- Open the pages that were cited. Read each one next to your own page. Note what it states that yours doesn't, such as the service area, a price range, or a direct answer to the question. Treat each difference as a guess to test. Battery Ventures puts it plainly: "Nobody truly knows how LLMs decide which sources to include in their answers."
- Change one thing, then re-run the same questions and compare the counts with your first runs.
How do you read the results?
The cited pages point to the job.
- Competitors' own pages are cited and yours isn't. That's page work. Put a plain answer to the buyer's question near the top of the page that should win, then re-test.
- Articles and local lists are cited. You need mentions on those kinds of sites. BrightLocal's study points to local link-building and brand awareness for this.
- Directories are cited. Check that your listings on those exact directories are complete and current.
- You're named but described wrongly. Find the page the wrong detail came from and get it corrected at the source.
Can you see ChatGPT traffic in your analytics?
Only part of it. Seer Interactive's testing found ChatGPT tends to add utm_source=chatgpt.com to links it shows as sources, but "just because a link is supplied as a source does not guarantee UTMs will always be included." Seer notes some of that testing was done on earlier versions of ChatGPT (the article was updated in June 2026). Battery Ventures adds that because few users click citations, most LLM-related traffic shows up as direct.
So a flat analytics report doesn't prove ChatGPT ignores you, and a spike doesn't tell you which answer sent it. Your logged test runs are the closer measure.
Is AEO marketing worth your time?
The test above needs a ChatGPT account and your time, not a new tool. The bigger risk is paying for promises. Since, in Battery Ventures' words, nobody truly knows how LLMs decide which sources to include, anyone who promises you placement in its answers is promising something they can't control. It's for you if your buyers ask around before they hire. BrightLocal put use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations at 45% in its February 2026 survey.
Run the test on your own questions this week, so you know where you stand before you spend anything. If you want the same check across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, read Vector Index's guide to answer engine optimization. It explains what an AI answer is built from and how Vector Index measures where a business appears in sampled answers, so your AEO marketing starts from a measured baseline instead of a guess.
FAQ
Is AEO marketing different from SEO?
It builds on SEO. Google says SEO best practices remain relevant for AI Overviews and AI Mode, with no special optimizations required. What AEO marketing adds is checking the answers themselves, to see if they name you, link you and describe you correctly.
Does blocking GPTBot keep my business out of ChatGPT search?
No, according to OpenAI. GPTBot covers content used for model training, and OAI-SearchBot covers search. OpenAI says each setting is independent, and that opting out of OAI-SearchBot is what keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link.
Does ChatGPT cite Reddit for local businesses?
In BrightLocal's November 2024 test of local searches, Reddit and Quora did not appear as sources at all. That was one study at one point in time, so check whether forums show up in your own runs.
Can anyone guarantee my business gets cited in ChatGPT?
Battery Ventures' November 2025 overview says nobody truly knows how LLMs decide which sources to include, so treat a guarantee as a warning sign. Sound AEO marketing promises measurement and clear recommendations, not placement.