IMVASA

How AI search works

How ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other answer engines choose which sites to mention and cite, and what that means for your pages. Often called GEO.

From ten links to one answer

For twenty years, search meant a list of links. Now a growing share of questions get a written answer instead: Google shows an AI Overview above the results, and people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Copilot directly.

These answers are still built from web pages, and most of them name or link their sources. Being one of those sources is the new version of ranking on page one. Optimising for it is often called GEO, generative engine optimisation, or AEO, answer engine optimisation. They mean the same thing.

How an answer engine builds an answer

The details differ by product, but the steps are similar:

  1. It interprets the question, often splitting it into several smaller searches.
  2. It searches. Some engines use their own index, others use a web search engine behind the scenes.
  3. It fetches pages its crawlers are allowed to read.
  4. It pulls out passages that answer the question clearly.
  5. It writes an answer and cites the pages it relied on, sometimes naming brands along the way.

Two things follow. If an engine cannot fetch your page, you cannot be cited. And if your page buries the answer in the middle of long paragraphs, another page with a clearer answer usually wins.

What makes a page easy to cite

  • AI crawlers can reach it. Each engine has its own crawler, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, PerplexityBot for Perplexity and ClaudeBot for Claude. If your robots.txt blocks them, you are out of their answers. The AI visibility tool checks this for you.
  • The answer comes first. Start a section with a direct answer in one or two sentences, then add detail. Engines lift short, self-contained passages.
  • Sections stand on their own. A passage should make sense when quoted without the paragraphs around it. Clear headings help engines find the right passage.
  • Entities are clear. Say plainly who you are, what the product is, where you operate and what it costs. Vague copy is hard to quote.
  • Claims have evidence. Numbers, sources, dates and named authors make a passage more trustworthy and more quotable.
  • Structured data describes the page. Schema markup tells machines what the page is: an article, a product, a FAQ, a local business.
  • The content is current. Many answers favour recent pages, so update important pages and show the date.
  • An llms.txt file explains your site. It is a short Markdown summary at /llms.txt that points AI tools to your key pages. It is a young, voluntary convention, so treat it as a helpful extra, not a guarantee.

SEO and GEO work together

Most answer engines lean on search results to decide what to read, so pages that rank well are more likely to be cited. The technical basics are the same too: crawlable, fast, well structured pages. Think of GEO as SEO with extra attention to how your writing reads when quoted.

The IMVASA site audit checks both in one pass. Its AI / GEO category covers answer-first writing, passage structure, entities, statistics and citations, llms.txt and AI crawler access.

How to measure AI visibility

Three numbers matter:

  • Mentions: how often an AI answer names your brand or domain.
  • Citations: how often it links to one of your pages as a source.
  • Share of voice: your mentions compared with your competitors' for the same topics.

The AI visibility tools measure all three for ChatGPT and Google AI, and show which questions and which of your pages are involved.

Common myths

  • "An llms.txt file gets me cited." It helps AI tools understand your site, but it does not force any engine to cite you. Content and crawl access matter far more.
  • "Blocking AI crawlers protects my content at no cost." It also removes you from their answers. Decide per crawler: some collect training data, others fetch pages to answer a user's question right now.
  • "Blocking Google-Extended removes me from AI Overviews." It does not. Google-Extended controls whether Google may use your content for its Gemini models. AI Overviews are part of Google Search, which uses Googlebot.
  • "I should write for AI, not for people." Answer engines cite pages that genuinely help people. Clear, specific, honest writing works for both.

Next steps