How to Rank in AI Search: ChatGPT, Perplexity & Google AI Overviews

Your potential customers aren't just Googling anymore.

They're asking ChatGPT. They're querying Perplexity. They're getting answers from Google's AI Overviews before they ever see a blue link.

And if your brand isn't showing up in those AI-generated responses? You're invisible to a growing chunk of your market.

This isn't speculation. Over 400 million people use ChatGPT every week. Perplexity processes billions of queries monthly. Google's AI Overviews now appear on roughly 30% of US searches. The shift is happening now.

The question is: how do you get cited?

The New Search Landscape

Let's be clear about what we're dealing with.

Traditional search gives you a list of links. You optimise to rank higher on that list. Users click through to your site.

AI search is different. These systems read your content, synthesise it with other sources, and generate a direct answer. Sometimes they cite you. Sometimes they don't.

When they do cite you, it's powerful. It's not just a link - it's an endorsement. The AI is essentially saying "this source is trustworthy enough to answer this question."

When they don't? Your content might inform the answer, but users never know you exist.

The stakes are high. Research shows 65% of searches now end without a click. Users get their answers directly from AI responses. If you're not being cited, you're not being discovered.

Platform-by-Platform Breakdown

Each AI search platform has different biases and citation patterns. Understanding these is crucial.

ChatGPT Search

ChatGPT has over 800 million weekly active users. It's the gorilla in the room.

What ChatGPT prioritises:

Wikipedia is king. Studies show Wikipedia accounts for nearly 48% of ChatGPT's top citations. If you can legitimately earn a Wikipedia mention, do it.
Established publications. Forbes, TechCrunch, major news outlets get cited heavily.
Reddit. About 11% of ChatGPT citations come from Reddit. Authentic community discussions matter.
Recent content. ChatGPT prefers fresh information, especially for time-sensitive queries.
Clear, authoritative writing. Technical jargon without context gets ignored. Write for humans first.

The key insight: ChatGPT pulls from sources that already have strong authority signals. If your domain has backlinks from Wikipedia, major publications, and active Reddit discussions, you're far more likely to be cited.

Perplexity AI

Perplexity is growing fast and has a different user base - often professionals doing deep research rather than casual browsing.

What Perplexity prioritises:

Reddit dominates. Nearly 47% of Perplexity citations come from Reddit. Authentic community content performs extremely well.
YouTube. About 14% of citations. Video content with good transcripts can rank.
Business publications. Gartner, CNBC, MarketWatch get cited more on Perplexity than on Google.
Fresh content. Perplexity heavily weights recency.
Unique data and insights. Surface-level content rarely makes the cut. Perplexity users want depth.

The key insight: Perplexity rewards genuine community participation and original research. If your brand is being discussed authentically on Reddit, you'll get cited.

Google AI Overviews

Google's AI Overviews are powered by Gemini 2.0 and appear above organic results.

What Google AI Overviews prioritise:

Your organic ranking matters most. Over 99% of sources cited in AI Overviews come from the top 10 organic results. If you're not ranking traditionally, you won't appear in AI summaries.
Reddit and community content. About 21% of AI Overview citations come from Reddit.
YouTube. Nearly 19% of citations.
Quora and LinkedIn. Also heavily represented.
E-E-A-T signals. Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness still rule.

The key insight: You can't skip traditional SEO. Google's AI Overviews build on organic rankings, not around them.

Other AI Search Platforms

The landscape keeps expanding:

Claude (Anthropic): Still primarily a conversational AI rather than a search engine, but increasingly used for research. No formal crawling system yet, but your content's presence in training data matters.

SearchGPT: OpenAI's dedicated search product. Early signs suggest it leans heavily on authoritative sources with strong link profiles.

Microsoft Copilot: Powered by Bing's index. If you rank well on Bing, you're likely to appear here too.

Gemini: Google's AI assistant, integrated with Google Search. Similar ranking factors to AI Overviews.

The common thread across all of them? Authority wins. The sites that AI trusts are the sites that humans have already validated through links, mentions, and citations.

The Universal Ranking Factors

Despite their differences, all AI search platforms share common preferences.

1. Authority and Trust Signals

This is the foundation. AI systems learn to trust sources the same way humans do.

What builds AI trust:

Backlinks from authoritative domains (Wikipedia, major publications, .gov, .edu)
Mentions in community platforms AI already trusts (Reddit, Hacker News, Stack Overflow)
Consistent brand signals across the web
Named authors with verifiable credentials
Primary source citations in your content

This is where building quality backlinks becomes crucial. The sources AI cites most are exactly the sources that provide the strongest backlink signals.

2. Content Structure for Extraction

AI needs to extract information from your content. Make it easy.

Lead with answers. Don't bury the answer in paragraph five. Put it first, then elaborate.

Use question-based headings. "How Does X Work?" matches how users query AI. "Our Process" doesn't.

Add FAQ sections. Explicit Q&A formats are catnip for AI systems. Use FAQPage schema markup.

Include tables and lists. Structured data is easier to parse than walls of prose.

Add summary sections. "Key Takeaways" or "TL;DR" blocks signal the most important points.

3. Evidence and Verifiability

AI prefers content it can verify.

Include statistics. Numbers make claims concrete. "AI search grew 30% in Q4" beats "AI search is growing."

Cite your sources. Link to primary research, official documentation, credible publications.

Be specific. Vague claims get ignored. Specific, verifiable statements get cited.

4. Freshness

All AI platforms weight recency, especially for evolving topics.

Display "last updated" dates prominently
Actually update your content regularly
Cover current developments in your industry
Don't let cornerstone content go stale

5. Technical Accessibility

AI crawlers need to access your content.

Don't block AI bots. If you block OAI-SearchBot, you won't appear in ChatGPT. If you block PerplexityBot, you're invisible to Perplexity.
Ensure fast loading. Slow sites get deprioritised.
Use semantic HTML. Clean structure helps AI parse your content.
No login walls on content you want indexed.

Practical Optimisation Strategies

Let's get tactical.

Audit Your Current AI Visibility

Before optimising, know where you stand.

For each of your core topics, query ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google with relevant questions. Track:

Were you mentioned?
Were you cited with a link?
Which competitors appeared?
What types of sources were cited?

Calculate your "Share of Voice" in AI search. If you're mentioned in less than 10% of relevant queries, you have a visibility problem.

Optimise Existing Content

Take your best-performing pages and restructure them for AI:

Add a direct answer in the first paragraph
Convert subheadings to questions
Add an FAQ section with schema markup
Include a summary/key takeaways section
Update statistics and add source citations
Ensure the page loads fast and renders without JavaScript

Build Authority in AI-Trusted Sources

This is the long game, but it's the most important.

Reddit: Participate authentically in relevant subreddits. Don't spam. Provide genuine value. Over time, your brand gets mentioned by others.

Wikipedia: If you qualify for a Wikipedia page, ensure it exists and is accurate. Don't edit your own page - that violates their rules. Earn coverage that Wikipedia editors will cite.

Publications: Pursue PR and thought leadership. Guest posts on authoritative sites. Original research that journalists will cover.

Community platforms: Hacker News, Stack Overflow, Quora, LinkedIn - wherever your audience discusses your topics.

The goal is to build a web of mentions and backlinks from exactly the sources AI trusts most. This is what Revised helps with - finding domains that already have organic backlinks from Wikipedia, Reddit, and other high-authority sources, then redirecting that authority to your site.

Create Citation-Worthy Content

AI cites sources that are genuinely useful. That means:

Original research and data - Run surveys, analyse trends, publish findings
Comprehensive guides - Be the definitive resource on your topic
Expert perspectives - Unique insights that can't be found elsewhere
Practical tools - Calculators, templates, frameworks people actually use

Thin content optimised for keywords won't get cited. Substantial content that genuinely helps people will.

Measuring Success

Traditional SEO metrics don't capture AI visibility. You need new approaches.

Manual tracking: Regularly query AI platforms for your core topics. Note mentions, citations, and competitor presence.

Referral traffic: Check analytics for traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and AI-related referrers.

Brand mention tools: Monitor when your brand appears in AI responses.

Citation tracking: Tools like Profound track AI citations at scale. Worth exploring as the space matures.

Case Study: What Actually Works

A YC-backed B2B SaaS startup implemented a focused AI search strategy. Within 30 days:

156% increase in AI citations
89% improvement in ChatGPT ranking for their core category
17% increase in qualified leads

What did they do? Three things:

Restructured content for answer extraction. Rewrote key pages with question-based headings and direct answers in the first paragraph.
Built authority on AI-trusted platforms. Invested in authentic Reddit participation, earned a mention on Wikipedia through PR, and got discussed on Hacker News.
Added schema markup and statistics. Made content machine-readable and verifiable.

The takeaway: this isn't magic. It's systematic execution of the fundamentals.

The Robot.txt Question

Here's a decision you need to make: do you allow AI crawlers?

If you allow them:

Your content can appear in AI search results
You may get cited and receive referral traffic
Your content may also be used for AI training

If you block them:

You won't appear in that AI's search results
You prevent training on your content
You lose a growing traffic channel

The key bots to know:

GPTBot - Used by OpenAI for training (not search)
OAI-SearchBot - Used by ChatGPT for search results
PerplexityBot - Perplexity's crawler
Googlebot - Powers AI Overviews (and regular search)

Most publishers who want visibility allow the search-specific bots while considering whether to block training bots. But there's no perfect answer - it depends on your business model.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Ignoring traditional SEO. For Google AI Overviews especially, organic ranking is a prerequisite. GEO builds on SEO, not around it. Over 99% of AI Overview citations come from the top 10 organic results.

Blocking AI crawlers without understanding trade-offs. Some publishers block AI bots to prevent training on their content. That's a valid choice, but understand that you won't appear in those AI's search results either.

Thin content. AI systems are trained on the entire internet. They've seen every trick. Only genuinely useful content gets cited. If you wouldn't cite it yourself, AI won't either.

Ignoring community platforms. Reddit, Hacker News, and similar sites drive a huge share of AI citations. If you're not present there, you're missing a major channel.

Expecting instant results. AI models update periodically. Your optimisations may take weeks or months to reflect in responses. This isn't like traditional SEO where changes can show in days.

Over-optimising for one platform. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google have different citation preferences. A strategy that works on one might not work on another. Diversify.

Focusing on content structure without building authority. You can have perfectly structured content that never gets cited because you lack authority signals. Structure and authority work together.

The Authority Advantage

Here's the uncomfortable truth: you can't hack AI search.

These systems are explicitly designed to surface trustworthy sources and filter out manipulation. The only sustainable strategy is to actually be authoritative.

That means:

Publishing original insights and data
Getting cited by sources AI already trusts
Building a genuine reputation in your niche
Creating content that experts would endorse

The websites that earn backlinks from Wikipedia, get discussed on Reddit, and attract coverage from major publications are the same websites AI systems cite.

This isn't a coincidence. AI learns from human preferences. The trust signals humans have valued for decades - authoritative links, genuine recommendations, expert endorsements - are exactly what AI uses to decide who to cite.

Revised helps here. We find domains with existing backlinks from Wikipedia, Reddit, Hacker News, and other high-trust sources, then redirect that authority to your site. It's not about gaming AI. It's about capturing the genuine authority signals that both humans and AI value.

What's Next

AI search is still early. But the trajectory is clear.

Within a few years, most information queries will be answered by AI. The websites that adapt - by building genuine authority, structuring content for synthesis, and earning trust from the sources AI values - will thrive.

Everyone else will wonder where their traffic went.

Start with an audit. See where you stand today. Then systematically build the authority and content structure that AI search rewards.

The shift is happening now. The question is whether you'll be cited or invisible.

Want to build the authority that AI search rewards? Revised helps you acquire backlinks from the exact sources ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews trust most. See how it works.