Getting cited by AI answers: what to do, and what to skip

If you run a small business, you have probably been pitched “AI search optimisation” by now. A special file, a special markup, a monthly retainer to “get you into ChatGPT”. The pitch works because the worry is real: more people ask an AI tool a question and read the answer instead of a list of links.

My view after looking at what Google itself says: most of the new advice is old advice with a new name, and a few of the new tricks are noise.

What Google actually says

Google’s documentation on AI features and your website says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no other special optimisations are necessary. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. That is the same bar as any normal result.

This is Google speaking about its own product, so it does not cover every AI tool. But the other tools also work from the open web, and the same kind of page tends to serve them all.

What this means in practice

The work is less exciting than the pitches, which is probably why nobody sells it loudly.

Make sure the page can be found at all

Check that the pages you care about are not blocked in robots.txt, are not set to noindex by accident, and are linked from elsewhere on your site. A lot of small business sites carry a leftover block from the build phase. Search Console will tell you in a few minutes whether a page is indexed.

Put the answer in the text

If your opening hours, prices, service area or process live only in an image, a slider or a PDF, you have made them harder for everyone to read, machines included. Write the answer as plain text on the page, near a heading that names the question.

A good test: take the five questions customers ask you most, and see whether each one has a short, direct answer on your site. This is the same exercise I describe in who are you talking to, and it serves human visitors first.

Be specific, and be someone

An AI answer has to pick between pages that say the same thing. “We provide tailored solutions” gives it nothing to pick. A page that says what you do, for whom, where, with a real example and a named person behind it, is a page worth quoting. Generic copy is a problem for visitors and for AI tools alike, which is part of why I wrote about AI slop on websites.

Keep the facts current and consistent

If your site, your Google Business Profile and your social pages give three different phone numbers or prices, a system that reads all of them has no way to know which is right. Pick one source of truth and update the others from it.

What I would skip, or treat as optional

• Special AI markup. Structured data still has a purpose for the result types Google documents, such as reviews or business details. It is not a secret channel into AI answers, and the markup has to match what is visible on the page anyway.
• An llms.txt file as a ranking tactic. It is a proposed convention, and I have not seen a reliable source showing it earns citations. If you want one for tidiness, it takes ten minutes. Do not pay for it as a strategy.
• Anyone promising a position. Nobody controls what an AI tool says. A consultant who guarantees citations is guessing, or selling something else.
• Volume. Fifty thin articles written with AI will not help. One page that answers a real question better than the others will.

How to know if it is working

Ask the questions your customers ask, in the tools they use, and see whether your business comes up and what it says about you. Do it monthly, write down the results and fix what is wrong or missing on your own site. It is crude, but it tells you more than a dashboard of invented “AI visibility scores”.

Also keep an eye on your normal numbers. Search Console and your analytics will show whether the pages that answer real questions bring visits and enquiries. If they do, that is the result you wanted. If visits come and no one gets in touch, the problem is on the page, not in the AI.

Where to start

Pick your three most important service pages. Check they are indexed, that the key facts are in plain text, and that each one says something only your business could say. That is the whole job for a first month.

If you want someone to check this for you, my SEO and AI search audit goes through exactly these points and tells you what to fix first. Or send me your site and I will tell you what I see.