How to get recommended by ChatGPT and AI in 2026?
More and more internet users are no longer starting their search on Google. They are directly consulting ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity to compare solutions, find a service provider or get a recommendation.
For twenty years, the journey of a prospect looked like this:
Search → Google → list of results → website
A second course has been installed next to it:
Question → AI → answer or recommendation → website
The difference isn't cosmetic. In the first case, the company appears in a list and the user chooses. In the second, the machine has already made an initial selection before the user even sees the results. Three names are listed. The others don't exist.
This is the purpose of GEO, for Generative Engine Optimization : to improve the chances that a company is identified, cited or recommended in the responses produced by these systems.
And the first thing to understand is that these answers are not constructed at all like a Google results page.
How do AI search engines construct their answers?
Query fan-out: how one question becomes multiple searches
Imagine a patient asking, "Which cosmetic clinic do you recommend in Switzerland?" For them, it's a question. For an AI capable of searching the web, it's the beginning of a series of more precise searches. Depending on the system and the query, it can rephrase the question and launch several complementary searches to explore different angles, criteria, wordings, and sources, then gather this information to construct an answer.
This mechanism has a name: the query fan-out.
In other words, instead of searching only once, the AI can perform multiple searches to answer a single question.
1 question → multiple searches → source analysis → 1 answer
The user only sees the last step. They don't know which searches were launched, which sources were consulted, and which ones actually had an impact.
This is precisely where visibility comes into play: the question asked by your prospect is almost never the only search used by the AI to build its answer.
Google Search Console: Can AI visibility leave traces?
This mechanism is not an abstraction. It can leave observable traces in a tool that almost all companies already possess: Google Search Console. They simply never open it with this question in mind.
By auditing our own Google Search Console data, we isolated a family of queries that are unlike anything we would expect to find there:
No one types "tell me what are the 5 best marketing agencies in French-speaking Switzerland?" into a search bar. That's a prompt phrase. It could be a follow-up search initiated during the fan-out, and that search can appear in the Search Console performance report just like any other query.
Google explicitly confirms this: sites appearing in AI features are counted in Search Console's overall search traffic. And in AI Mode, each follow-up question is treated as a new query, with its own impressions and ranking.
These lines are probably in your account too. If you've never seen them, it's because they're buried: a few impressions each, no clicks, and a performance report reads from the top. They appear several hundred lines below.
And when we stumble upon them by chance, the reflex is to take them for noise: a strange thing, a robot, a typo.
An important point, which few articles mention: Search Console only sees what goes through Google. These queries therefore document Google's AI features (AI Overviews and AI Mode) and nothing else. ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity leave no equivalent trace in your tools.
This is precisely what makes measuring AI visibility difficult: the only place where we can currently observe some of this visibility covers only a portion of AI systems.
GEO and SEO: 3 consequences that are not intuitive
1. Being cited by an AI does not mean being recommended
A brand can appear as a source of information in a response without being presented as a solution. An article from your blog can be used by AI to construct its response on a technical topic without your company ever being suggested to the prospect searching for a service provider.
Conversely, a company may be directly cited among the recommended solutions, without any of its content having been consulted.
These are two different situations, requiring two different approaches. AI visibility must therefore always be understood within a context: for which questions do you appear, how frequently, in what way, and against which competitors?
2. Why click-through rate is no longer sufficient to measure AI visibility
In a generated response, there's no click. You're either quoted or you don't exist. The user reads the response and, if they want to continue, directly types the name of the selected company.
A company that manages its visibility solely by click-through rate will therefore see these queries as worthless noise, and will cease to be interested in them, at the precise moment when they start to matter.
GEO metrics are not the same as SEO metrics. They are the frequency of citation, the ranking in the search results, and the regularity with which the company appears from one search engine to another.
An impression in an AI feature answers the question "does this system know us?", not the question "will this system send someone to us?".
3. GEO and SEO: why organic search engine optimization remains essential
Traditional search engines remain an essential component of the ecosystem and influence how many AI systems retrieve information. Good visibility on Google and Bing remains fundamental.
GEO is not a replacement. It is a second path, parallel to the first, on which one must now also exist.
How to measure your visibility on ChatGPT and AI search engines?
An initial diagnosis can be made independently, in about fifteen minutes. Here's exactly how to proceed.
1. List five questions a prospect would ask. Those they would naturally ask, not those you would like them to ask:
"Which company do you recommend for [your typical need]?"
"Which are the best companies in [your sector] in Switzerland?"
"Which service provider should I choose for [specific problem]?"
"Compare the [type of company] in French-speaking Switzerland"
"I'm looking for [your service] in [your city], what do you recommend?"
2. Ask them to four different search engines (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity) and note for each: is your company mentioned? at what rank? what sources are mentioned?
3. Rephrase each question twice. Change a word, add your canton, switch to English. The answers often change significantly.
4. Identify the recurring competitors. Those appearing on all four search engines and across multiple search engine formulations are the most consistently visible in your sample.
5. Open your Search Console. Go to the Performance report, Queries tab, and look for natural language phrases that begin with "tell me," "what are," "compare," "find," or that contain a complete sentence. If you find any, it may indicate that some of these queries are related to fan-out.
6. Open the Generative AI report. Since August 31, 2026, Search Console has offered a dedicated report for impressions in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and Discover's generative features, deployed across all sites. This report allows you to see which pages on your site received impressions in these AI features.
One limitation that aptly summarizes the state of the discipline is that this report provides page dimensions, country, date, and device, but doesn't reveal the exact query that triggered the printout. It might indicate that a page received AI impressions without specifying whether they stemmed from a business search or a technical query.
What this test will tell you: if you have a visibility deficit, and who is occupying the space.
What he won't tell you: why.
A single test at a given moment doesn't measure a trend, doesn't distinguish a one-off mention from an established presence, and doesn't explain what it is about a competitor's digital presence that makes them more memorable than you. This is where the real analytical work begins: it involves first understanding the research, sources, and competitors surrounding your strategic questions before deciding what to optimize.
How to improve your GEO and get recommended by ChatGPT?
Geospatial optimization (GEO) is a real optimization task. If AI searches multiple sources to answer a question, your site must first contain information relevant to those questions.
This means, in particular, not building your content solely around keywords, but also around the questions your prospects are actually asking: which provider to choose, how to compare two solutions, what budget to plan, what are the differences between several options, what criteria to take into account, etc.
Content that clearly answers one of these questions gives AI information it can understand, retain, and potentially use to build its response.
But answering questions alone isn't enough. Visibility also depends on the clarity of your expertise, the consistency of your online presence, and the external sources that mention your company.
The goal is not to write "for ChatGPT". It's to make your expertise clear, useful, and accessible enough that it can be identified when the right questions are asked.
This is precisely what GEO analysis then helps to identify: which questions matter to your market, which sources AI uses to answer them, and where your digital presence still has gaps.
SEO, GEO and AEO: what are the differences?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) : optimizing a website and its content for traditional search engines, Google and Bing.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) : optimizing content so that it directly answers a question in the answer interfaces.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) : optimizing a brand's presence to increase its chances of being visible in AI-generated responses.
SEO AI : using artificial intelligence to automate SEO tasks. This is not GEO, despite the similarity of the terms.
In practice, these disciplines largely overlap and their boundaries remain fluid.
FAQ
How do you get your company listed on ChatGPT? There's no registration process. Visibility depends on the systems' ability to identify the company, understand its expertise, and deem it relevant to the question asked. This is built through overall digital presence, not through technical manipulation.
Why do my competitors appear and not me? Most often because they benefit from a more visible presence in the searches and sources that matter to your market: industry directories, third-party articles, content republished elsewhere. Only a competitive comparison can pinpoint the precise difference.
Does SEO help you get recommended by ChatGPT? It contributes, but it doesn't guarantee it. Good visibility on Google makes your content more accessible to search engine-driven systems. But being first on Google doesn't mean you'll be cited by AI: we regularly see highly ranked companies that are absent from the generated results.
Can you be guaranteed a recommendation from ChatGPT? No, and be wary of anyone who claims otherwise. Responses vary depending on the question, the context, the timing, and the system being queried. A GEO strategy can increase the chances of being cited or recommended; it cannot guarantee it.
How can I tell if ChatGPT recommends my company? The five-step test described above provides an initial indication. To delve deeper, you need to expand the test to a representative set of questions, track the results over time, and compare several search engines.
In summary
Geospatial e-commerce (GEO) is a recent discipline, and both its uses and technologies will continue to evolve. One thing is already clear: when a prospect asks an AI which company to choose, not appearing in search results means giving the opportunity to a competitor.
The first step is not optimization. It's knowing where you stand: do AIs know your company, mention it, recommend it, and who appears in your place?
Fifteen minutes is enough to get the answer. Understanding why, and changing it permanently, is another task.
Discover how your company appears today in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, and identify the levers to work on to strengthen your visibility.
