How to show up in AI search.

Type how to rank in ChatGPT into Google and you'll find agency after agency with a method. Almost none of them quote the two companies that decide it. Both publish guidance, both are free to read, and both are duller and shorter than the sales pages built on top of them.

So this page quotes them, puts them in plain words, and says what's left for you to do.

What Google says

Google publishes a page for site owners about its AI features. Two of those features are worth naming, because people use the words loosely. AI Overviews is the written answer that appears above the ordinary results. AI Mode is the separate tab where you can keep asking follow-up questions.

That rules out most of what's being sold. There's no switch. The structured data in that last quote means the hidden list of plain facts behind a page, and Google is saying you don't need a special AI version of it. Anybody offering you an AI search package that is separate from making your website readable is selling you a switch that doesn't exist.

That isn't the same as saying nothing matters. Google's own list of what does help is the ordinary list, and most breeder sites fail most of it. It is: not being blocked, pages that link to each other so nothing is stranded, your facts written as text rather than baked into a photograph, and a business listing that says the same thing your website says.

What OpenAI says

OpenAI runs several automated readers, and they do different jobs. One of them exists purely to put websites into ChatGPT's search results. It's called OAI-SearchBot.

Two things worth pulling out of that, and a webmaster just means whoever looks after the site.

This one is a real switch, and it's the only one on this page. A robots.txt file is a small text file sitting at the top of your website that tells automated readers what they're allowed to look at. If yours turns OAI-SearchBot away, your site isn't in ChatGPT's search results, however good it is. Plenty of sites have this set wrongly without the owner ever choosing it, because a plugin, a host or a previous designer set it years ago.

The decisions are separate. Being findable in ChatGPT and having your writing used to train a model are two different permissions. You're allowed to say yes to one and no to the other, in the same file.

To see yours, type your own address followed by /robots.txt into the browser bar. On this site that is breederwebstudio.com/robots.txt, and you're welcome to look at it.

What nobody controls

An AI answer about breeders in your state isn't assembled from your website alone. Part of it comes from Reddit threads, breed club pages, directories and other people's posts, and you own none of those.

So here's the limit. You can make yourself easy to read, easy to place and easy to stand behind. Nobody can promise you the sentence that comes out the other end, and a guarantee is the clearest sign that you're being sold something.

The four things left to do

In the order they're worth doing.

• Let the readers in. Check your robots.txt. This takes a minute and it's the only item here that can be switched from off to on.
• Put the facts in text. Price, breed, town, health testing, what a deposit reserves. A photograph of a price list is a blank space to everything reading your site, and so is a header image with your cattery name in it.
• Give the engines something to attach you to. Your town written in the sentences, not only in the footer. The breed said outright. A named person behind the pages rather than a logo. Behind each page, a short list of plain facts naming the business, the town and the breed, so none of that has to be worked out from your paragraphs.
• Say the same thing everywhere. Your website, your Facebook page, your TICA or CFA listing and your Google Business Profile should give the same name, the same town and the same contact details. A business whose details disagree across the web is a business nothing can be confident about.

How to see where you stand

Ask ChatGPT the question a buyer would ask, without naming yourself. Something like: who breeds Ragdoll cats in Washington State, and what should I ask them. See who gets named and what the answer knows about them. Then do the same in Google's AI answers and in Perplexity, because they don't agree with each other.

It's a look, not a measurement. Run it twice and you may get two different answers, which is exactly why this site publishes findings and never a score out of ten.

What we do about it

Every build here includes the parts above that aren't a matter of opinion: the settings file, the facts written as text, the layer of plain facts behind each page, and a named human standing in front of it. It isn't sold as an AI package, because there's no such thing, and the guidance quoted above is the reason.

Prices are on the packages page and they're the same for everybody. If you would rather start by seeing what your current site says about you, the free check reads it and lists what's missing, with no email required.

Questions

How do I get my business to show up in AI search?

There's no separate setting for it. Google says in its own documentation that there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations to appear in its AI answers. What's left is the ordinary work: let the automated readers in, put your facts in text rather than inside photographs, name the person behind the business, and keep your details the same everywhere you appear.

Can anyone guarantee ChatGPT will name my business?

No, and be careful with anybody who says otherwise. Part of any AI answer is built from pages you don't own, such as Reddit threads, directories and breed club listings. You can make yourself easy to read and easy to place. Nobody can promise the sentence that comes out.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Google says no, in those words: you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in its AI features. We keep one on this site because it costs nothing. Nobody should charge you for one, and nobody should tell you it is the reason you appear.

Should I block AI crawlers from my site?

They're separate decisions and you can take them separately. OpenAI runs different readers for different jobs, and its documentation says a site owner can allow the search one in order to appear in search results while refusing the one that collects training material. Blocking everything also removes you from the answers.

Is this different from ordinary search work?

It differs less than the marketing suggests. Almost everything that makes a page legible to ChatGPT or to Google's AI answers is the same thing that makes it legible to a person in a hurry. The one genuinely new item is the settings file question, because a site can be invisible to ChatGPT search and perfectly fine on Google.

Where this came from

The quotes above are from the companies themselves, read on 30 August 2026. You don't have to take any of this from us.

• Google Search Central: AI features and your website
• OpenAI: documentation on its crawlers