LLM SEO: How to Get Cited by ChatGPT and Other AI Assistants
LLM SEO is getting your brand mentioned and cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and other AI assistants. What's documented, what studies show, and tools.
LLM SEO is the work of getting a large language model, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Copilot, to mention your brand or cite your pages when people ask it questions. "Ranking in ChatGPT" really means two things: being named in the answer, and being one of the linked sources underneath it.
Those two happen through different routes. Some of what a model says comes from what it learned in training, and some comes from searching the web live and citing what it finds. Links play a part in the second route, but the published evidence suggests they're a smaller part than many people assume.
Mentions, citations and links: what's the difference?
| Term | What it is | What influences it |
|---|---|---|
| Brand mention | Your name appears in the answer text | How often and how positively you're discussed across the web |
| Citation | Your page is shown as a source, usually linked | Being retrieved by the assistant's live search, and being useful for the question |
| Backlink | A link to your site on another website | Helps your pages rank in the search results assistants draw on |
How ChatGPT, Perplexity and others find sources
Only part of this is documented. Here's what the companies themselves say.
| Assistant | What's documented | What you can do |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT search | Launched 31 October 2024. OpenAI says it "leverages third-party search providers, as well as content provided directly by our partners" | Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt. OpenAI says sites that opt out "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers" |
| Perplexity | PerplexityBot is "designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity" and isn't used to train foundation models | Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt |
| Google AI Mode and AI Overviews | Use query fan-out across related searches, and need only normal indexing and snippet eligibility | Standard SEO, see our AI Overviews guide |
OpenAI also runs GPTBot, which collects content for training models, and ChatGPT-User, which fetches pages when a user asks. Blocking GPTBot keeps your content out of training, but it doesn't stop you appearing in ChatGPT search. That's handled by OAI-SearchBot.
Do AI assistants cite the pages that rank on Google?
Less than you'd think. In an August 2025 study of 15,000 long-tail queries, Ahrefs found only 12% of URLs cited by AI assistants ranked in Google's top 10 for the original prompt. Perplexity had the highest overlap at 28.6%, while ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot were around 8%.
Ahrefs' explanation is that assistants search for many variations of a question and merge the results, so they cite pages that rank for related queries rather than the exact one asked. Ranking still matters, just across a wider set of searches than you'd track for classic SEO.
Do backlinks help you rank in ChatGPT?
The best available evidence says they help less than mentions do. Ahrefs' December 2025 study of 75,000 brands looked at which factors correlated with brand visibility in ChatGPT, AI Mode and AI Overviews.
| Factor | Correlation with ChatGPT brand visibility (Ahrefs) |
|---|---|
| YouTube mentions | About 0.737 (strongest across all three platforms) |
| Branded web mentions | 0.664 |
| Branded anchors | 0.511 |
| Branded search volume | 0.352 |
| Domain Rating | 0.266 |
| Backlinks | Weak |
Ahrefs is careful to say that correlation isn't causation. Big, well-known brands have lots of mentions, links and searches, and they also get named by AI more. But the pattern is consistent: being talked about across the web tracks AI visibility more closely than the number of links pointing at you.
That doesn't make link building pointless for AI. Links still help pages rank in the searches assistants run, and many of the best links (from reviews, roundups and news coverage) come with a brand mention attached.
How to improve your visibility in LLM answers
- Let the search crawlers in. Check robots.txt allows OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Googlebot
- Get named in the pages AI cites. Comparison articles, "best of" roundups, reviews and industry coverage are where assistants look for recommendations. Digital PR and brand mentions work here
- Be present on the platforms AI cites heavily. Semrush's study of over 100 million AI citations (July to October 2025) found Reddit, Wikipedia, Medium, Forbes and LinkedIn among ChatGPT's most-cited domains, and LinkedIn and YouTube high for AI Mode
- Answer the follow-up questions. Assistants fan out into sub-questions, so cover comparisons, pricing, alternatives and use cases on your own site
- State facts clearly. Specific, sourced numbers and plain definitions are easier for a model to lift, which matches the GEO research
- Keep earning links that help your key pages rank across those related searches
Expect volatility. The same Semrush study recorded ChatGPT citing Reddit in roughly 60% of responses before mid-September 2025 and around 10% after, a reminder that citation patterns can change overnight.
LLM SEO tools
Measuring AI visibility is still young. AI answers vary between runs and users, so any tool is sampling, not reporting a fixed ranking.
| Tool type | What it does | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| AI visibility trackers | Run sets of prompts and record brand mentions and citations | Ahrefs Brand Radar, Semrush's AI visibility tools |
| Server log analysis | Shows which AI crawlers visit which pages | Your hosting logs, log analysers |
| Analytics referrals | Shows visits arriving from AI assistants | GA4 referral reports |
| Mention monitoring | Tracks where your brand is discussed online | Brand monitoring tools |
For the wider toolkit, see our guide to link building tools.
The short version
- LLM SEO means getting mentioned and cited by AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity
- Allow the search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) if you want to appear in their answers
- Only about 12% of AI assistant citations rank in Google's top 10 for the exact prompt, per Ahrefs
- Brand mentions, especially on YouTube and the wider web, correlate with AI visibility far more than backlinks do
- Links still help indirectly, by getting your pages found in the searches AI runs