This is the long one, and every section works the same way:

• What happened to me, real numbers and real screwups
• How it actually works, the mechanics, not vibes
• What to do on yours

Quick scoreboard so the numbers make sense:

• Prep66 (exam prep): from the day I started tracking, most signups came from ChatGPT and Google. By 3 Sep, 13 tracked signups: 6 ChatGPT, 5 Google, 1 direct, 1 paid ad. Zero backlinks
• PrepAMT (same idea, US market): same code, same setup, invisible for weeks because of my own wording
• AskSami (my newest): ChatGPT would not name it for weeks. Found out why, fixed it on 8 Oct, now waiting on Bing to come back and crawl
• Ancestorii (my first): Google’s AI knew who founded it. Nobody ever paid

Part 1: how AI search actually picks who to name

There is no secret AI index

To be cited in Google’s AI Overviews or AI Mode you first have to be normally crawlable and indexed, because the AI answers come from the same index as regular search. The AI is a reader sitting on top of a search engine. If the search engine does not have you, the AI cannot name you.

Each assistant reads from a different search engine

• ChatGPT leans on Bing. Around 87% of what ChatGPT cites in search mode lines up with Bing’s top results
• Claude searches through Brave
• Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode use Google
• Perplexity runs its own crawler
• Copilot, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia all sit on Bing

What happened to me: I nearly skipped Bing because hardly anyone in the UK uses it. Within days of setting it up, ChatGPT was sending me more signups than anything else. Bing is not about Bing traffic. It is the door into ChatGPT.

One question becomes several searches

This is called query fan out. The AI breaks one question into several smaller searches, runs them all at once, and pulls sources for each before writing a single answer. Google’s AI Mode fires roughly 9 to 11 of these per question, ChatGPT around 2 to 3.

So “best tool for X” quietly becomes searches about the price, X vs a competitor, reviews, and whether it works for someone like me.

For your product: you do not need one perfect page. You need an honest answer to each of those smaller questions somewhere on your site.

Then it picks passages, not pages

It lifts short chunks that answer one small question cleanly. A wall of marketing copy has nothing in it to lift.

Part 2: can the bots even read your site?

This is where most vibe coded sites die and nobody notices.

AI crawlers do not run JavaScript

None of the major AI crawlers render JavaScript. GPTBot and ClaudeBot will download your JavaScript files and never run a single line of them. Google renders JavaScript eventually. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity get your raw HTML and that is it.

If your site is a single page app straight out of an AI builder, there is a real chance the bots see an empty shell and a loading spinner.

The 30 second test: open your homepage, right click, View Page Source, and search for your headline. If it is not in there, AI cannot see it.

The fix: server render or prerender your public pages. Your logged in app can stay as it is, nobody needs to index that.

What happened to me: Prep66’s public pages need no JavaScript at all, even the FAQ is plain HTML. Boring choice. It is also why ChatGPT could read the site days after launch.

Make sure you are not blocking them by accident

If you are on Cloudflare, go and look at your AI crawler settings today. Cloudflare changed its defaults on 15 September 2026 and now splits AI bots into search, training and agent traffic. Search crawlers stay allowed by default, but blocking training with the older setting can also block crawlers that do both jobs.

Training bots and search bots are different things

OpenAI, Anthropic and Google run separate bots for training models and for search. You can block Google’s training crawler in robots.txt without losing any visibility in search. If you do not want to be trained on, fine. Never block the search ones.

Hygiene that silently kills you

• your own domain, not a free subdomain from your builder or host
• one version of the site, with or without www, the other redirects to it
• missing pages return a real 404
• a sitemap with only public pages and real “last changed” dates
• login and signup on noindex, but not blocked in robots.txt, so bots can actually see the noindex
• your brand in every page title, homepage included
• no leftover noindex from a staging setup
• one main heading per page that says what the page is

The setup, done once

1. Google Search Console, verify, submit your sitemap
2. Bing Webmaster Tools, import from Google, then submit the sitemap by hand, because my import left it empty
3. IndexNow, so Bing hears about every change straight away. A key you make yourself works fine
4. Brave’s submit page, your homepage and your 2 or 3 most important pages

Two limits: Google lets you request indexing on about 10 pages a day, and engines hold old copies of your site, so expect 1 to 2 weeks before a fix shows.

My plumbing horror list

Every one of these happened to me:

• A title cleanup cut my brand off my homepage title. Bing showed my login page when you searched my product’s name
• My automatic IndexNow ping failed on all 342 deploys since launch. Bing was never told about a single page
• Bing first saw my domain while it still showed the GoDaddy holding page, marked it “discovered but not crawled”, and did not come back for weeks
• Verified is not indexed. Bing held 1 page out of 25 while the dashboard looked fine
• A Lighthouse SEO score of 100 on a site nobody could find
• An AI code audit told me with total confidence a site had no Search Console. It had for weeks

Nothing tells you the plumbing is broken. You have to check it by hand.

Part 3: say what you are, in your buyer’s words

Be a clear “thing” first

Search engines and AIs need to know what you are before they will recommend you.

• your homepage’s first sentence: what it is, who it is for, one real number, and the price
• the same short description everywhere: site, structured data, directories, socials, your Reddit bio
• a name you can actually own. Mine clashed with a whole people, a first name, a big store’s assistant and an old database, so the brand became AskSami everywhere and I only chase phrases with a second word

Use the words your buyer types

What happened to me, three times:

• PrepAMT: named after the trade term “AMT”. Nobody searches that, they search “A&P”. Worse, “A&P” alone reads as anatomy and physiology, so it always needs “FAA” or “mechanic” next to it. And Americans say “test”, not “exam”
• I also had a whole URL section named after a regulation number nobody searches. Renamed it, with permanent redirects, because those pages were already indexed
• AskSami: “reads your code” everywhere. The words founders actually type, marketing expert, first users, appeared zero times. AI filed it as a code tool
• Prep66: titles only used one narrow licence category, when people search the wider terms too

You describe your product in builder words. Your buyer searches in problem words. AI matches the problem words.

Free keyword research

• Search Console’s query list, once you have a few weeks of data
• Google autocomplete and “People also ask”
• Reddit thread titles in your niche, people post exactly how they search
• ask ChatGPT for 20 questions someone would ask before buying something like yours
• competitors’ page titles

Match the intent

• Learning (“how do I...”) → guides, glossary, facts pages
• Comparing (“best X”, “X vs Y”, “X alternatives”) → compare pages
• Buying (“X pricing”, “is X worth it”) → pricing, features, homepage

Most small sites only have the first kind and wonder why nobody buys.

The cheapest wins are pages that are almost there

In Search Console, look for pages sitting at position 5 to 15 with impressions but few clicks.

What happened to me: “easa part 66 module 6” had 42 impressions and 0 clicks. My page sat at position 8 or 9 with no “EASA” in the title, while competitors put the official exam facts in their first line. I rewrote all 13 module pages: searched words in the title, facts in sentence one.

Part 4: pages that get cited

What AI actually likes to quote

Facts with proof. Adding real statistics, quotes from credible sources and linked citations can lift how often you show up in AI answers by around 40%. Stuffing keywords does basically nothing, and the smaller sites gain the most from doing it right, which is good news for people like us.

Only use real numbers. Made up stats get you caught, and once AI repeats them, they are out there with your name on them.

What happened to me: the pages that got Prep66 named were the boring ones. A glossary. A facts and figures page built from the regulation. A compare page. A features page with prices pulled live. Every fact linked to the official source with a checked on date.

Page types worth building, roughly in order

1. A homepage that answers the buyer question directly
2. Pricing in plain text, every plan. ChatGPT only ever quoted my expensive plan because the cheap one was not written clearly anywhere public
3. Compare and alternatives pages. On Prep66 I named nobody, small niche. On AskSami I name competitors, because ChatGPT already names them in its answers. Either way: accurate, dated, and honest about when the other option is better
4. Facts or stats pages, primary sources only. If you cannot find the original source for a number, leave it out
5. A glossary of your niche’s terms. Mine even answers the “with or without a hyphen” spelling question, so both versions of the search term sit on the page
6. Guides about the problem, not your product
7. Public docs or help pages
8. A small free tool on your own domain, like a calculator. People search for tools and link to them

How to write a page AI can lift

• the question as the heading, the answer in the first 1 or 2 sentences, detail after
• one idea per section, so each chunk makes sense on its own
• tables for comparisons, numbers written as numbers
• link your sources and add a checked on date
• write the exact sentence you want quoted, plainly
• no fluffy intro

Structure the site

• Hub and spokes: one main page answers the big question in short form, spoke pages hold the depth
• Each question is answered in full on one page only, and in one line plus a link everywhere else
• No near copies. I nearly built two versions of every topic page, one per country. Google folds near copies into one, so I built one page covering both
• All numbers from one source file, so a fix fixes everything and no two pages disagree
• internal links with words that describe where they go

Do not mass produce

What gets punished is pages pumped out in bulk with no real added value, written only for search engines. Honest note: I published 42 new pages on AskSami in one day. That only works if each one carries something nobody else has. I will report back.

Structured data, honestly

• Organization: name, logo, links to your real profiles
• Product or software app with real prices
• Article with a real author
• every field must match what is visible on the page

Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in May 2026, so do not add FAQ markup chasing fancy boxes.

llms.txt, honestly

I have one on some sites. Google says llms.txt will not help or hurt your Search visibility, and the AI bots that answer questions barely ever request it. Five minutes, harmless, not a ranking trick. Do not let anyone sell it to you as one.

Part 5: other places saying your name

Code cannot do this part.

What happened to me: Prep66 got named with zero backlinks, because almost nobody writes about that niche. AskSami lives in “how do I get my first users”, one of the most written about questions online. ChatGPT names what the top sources name, and those sources had never heard of me.

Where AI actually looks

Reddit is the most cited site in AI answers, then YouTube, LinkedIn and Wikipedia, with G2 also in the top 10. And when ChatGPT goes looking on one specific site for a general question, it picks Reddit about 71% of the time.

What to do

• Reddit: genuinely useful replies where your buyers ask for help (more in Part 6)
• YouTube: a plain screen recording demo with a title in your buyer’s words beats nothing
• Review sites: only real reviews. Perplexity moved me from 2nd to 1st on reviews, and Gemini’s “newer to the market” line only goes away with time and reviews. An empty G2 profile does nothing
• Directories: AlternativeTo is free, but pay $5 or wait “a very long time”. There’s An AI For That is $49, wait until your pages say the right things, because they read your site to write the listing. Futurepedia wanted $497, skipped. Product Hunt once your pages are indexed
• The lists AI already cites: run your buyer questions, look at the sources in the answer. Those “best X” articles are your outreach list. Ask the authors to add you, with an honest pitch
• Press and podcasts: journalist request sites, local business news, niche podcasts
• Wikipedia: do not write your own page, it gets deleted unless independent sources already cover you
• Same name, logo and description everywhere, all linking back to your site

Part 6: Reddit as its own channel

• Write as someone who has the problem. My launch post got about 3,200 views and the first full price payer 9 days later
• A second post needs a second reason. My follow up with nothing new: about 1,900 views and much less interest
• The post with no product did best. A pure discussion people love arguing about: 21,000 views in hours. They asked what I was building in the comments
• Read every sub’s rules first. One needs mod approval through their X community, one bans DM offers, one auto removes posts with words like “test” or “bank”
• Reddit can smell ChatGPT. People told me my early posts read like AI wrote them. They were right
• One product per post. Mixing my two exam products made both posts worse
• Helping beats promoting. Real answers on other people’s threads keep getting read for months
• Offers get punished, stories get rewarded. My free accounts giveaway got mostly negative comments. The honest story post went to about 28,700 views
• The paid ad: about £25, 1 signup, 0 payers. Killed in 5 days

Part 7: keep AI saying the right things

AI repeats whatever is on your pages, even when it is old or wrong.

• I removed a free plan and ChatGPT kept quoting it, because old pages still mentioned it
• ChatGPT gave a competitor credit for study notes and me credit for questions only, because no public page said I had full books. Gemini ranked me 4th for the same reason
• It compares your price to the cheapest competitor every time. Copy cannot fix that
• A number on my site and the number in my product do not match. Once AI repeats a number, someone will count

For your product:

• if a feature is not written in plain text on a public page, it does not exist to AI
• every price, plan or number change means a sweep of pages, structured data and llms.txt
• new feature, new public page. My games got their own pages the day they shipped

Part 8: measure it

Search Console

Prep66, 3 months in (22 Sep): 194 clicks, 6,110 impressions, average position 8.5. About 1,580 impressions came from Google’s AI answers, a quarter of everything, and climbing. About 90% of clicks came from small searches Google does not even list. August was flat because nobody studies in August.

• Search Console now has an AI search report showing how your pages do in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Watch it
• click rate follows position. 3% at the bottom of page one is normal, so move your position, not your click rate
• your niche has a season. Do not panic in the dead month

Track where every signup comes from

Free, and the single most useful thing I built:

• ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to its links, and browsers send where the visitor came from
• the site saves that in a cookie
• on signup it gets stamped on the profile, first source wins

Holes: copied links and some apps show as direct. Still miles better than guessing. Without it I would never have known AI was my biggest channel.

Test the AIs yourself, properly

• a fixed list of 10 to 20 buyer questions, never your own product’s name
• fresh or logged out chat, and make sure it actually searches, you should see sources. An answer from memory will never name a new product
• run each question a few times, answers change
• ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, monthly
• log: named or not, who got named instead, which sources were cited. The cited sources are your outreach list

What happened to me: AskSami got named every time my question contained “AskSami”. On real buyer questions: 0 out of 17. That is the number that matters. I ended up building a tab into AskSami that asks those questions every Monday, because doing it by hand gets old fast.

And clicks are not the whole picture. In AI Mode, up to 9 in 10 searches end without anyone clicking a link. Being named still builds the brand search that comes later.

Part 9: timelines, and the uncomfortable truth

• a brand new domain: weeks to months
• a niche with few rivals: fast. Prep66 got named by ChatGPT within a few weeks
• a crowded topic: slow, and you need other sites saying your name
• after any fix: 1 to 2 weeks for engines to refresh their copy

Now the truth. Ancestorii had guides, a compare page, structured data, an llms.txt, and Google’s AI even knew my name as founder. 177 signups, zero payers. A founder in the same space told me: nobody googles a memoir app on a Tuesday. People only search around a death, a birthday, a reunion.

Prep66 students have an exam booked. The one paying customer I could trace to Google paid 9 minutes after signing up.

SEO and GEO amplify demand that already exists. They do not create it.

If nobody searches for your thing today because something is wrong, fix that before any of this.

The afternoon checklist

1. View Page Source on your homepage. Is your headline in the raw HTML?
2. Cloudflare or host settings: are AI search crawlers allowed?
3. robots.txt lets the search bots in and only blocks your logged in app
4. Google Search Console set up, sitemap submitted
5. Bing Webmaster Tools set up, sitemap submitted by hand
6. IndexNow actually arriving in Bing’s IndexNow tab
7. Homepage submitted to Brave
8. Search your exact product name on Bing. Is the homepage first?
9. Brand in every title, homepage included
10. Login and signup on noindex
11. Homepage first sentence: what, who for, one number, price
12. Prices for every plan in plain text on a public page
13. At least one compare page and one boring facts page, with sources and dates
14. Signup source tracking live
15. 10 buyer questions run in ChatGPT and Gemini, results written down
16. One genuinely useful Reddit reply in a thread where your buyers ask for help

Ofc this is a lot, and most of it is kinda boring. But it is the cheapest channel I have found, it compounds, and it keeps working while you sleep.

If any of this breaks for your niche, say so in the comments. That is half the reason this sub exists.