AI visibility, answer engines, and the future of brand discovery.

Googlebot is Google Search’s documented crawler, while Google-Extended is a robots.txt control for specified AI training and grounding uses of crawled content, including documented Gemini-related applications.

GPTBot may support training-related use, OAI-SearchBot supports ChatGPT search, and ChatGPT-User retrieves pages after user requests. Robots.txt controls are documented for the first two, while ChatGPT-User policy remains unresolved.

AI crawlers are automated clients whose roles vary across training, search indexing, user-triggered retrieval, and product control; user-agent strings, robots.txt, logs, and IP checks provide useful but limited evidence.

An AI discoverability self-audit tests technical retrievability, answer appearance, citation, and accurate representation separately using fixed prompts, documented evidence, entity checks, and cautious retesting.

AI discoverability is the layered process by which systems acquire information, interpret entities, retrieve relevant material, select sources, and present claims in generated answers; technical accessibility supports eligibility but never guarantees citation, recommendation, traffic, or influence.

Most robots.txt guides for AI crawlers are written for publishers who want to block the bots. This is the opposite: how to check if your site is accidentally invisible to ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity — and the exact lines to paste to fix it.

Publishing Markdown mirrors of your web pages for AI search visibility is a waste of time. Here's why AI crawlers stick to HTML, and what you should focus on instead.

AI search visibility is not just rankings. Learn why some brands get cited in AI answers and how to improve your visibility.

The case for local AEO used to rest on extrapolation. After 858,457 sites and 68.9M crawler visits, the data has caught up. Here is the synthesis.

Answer engine optimization explained simply, with practical steps to improve AI search visibility and earn more citations in answers.

Learn how to get cited by ChatGPT with practical fixes for crawlability, page structure, schema, and off-site authority.

llms.txt explained for real businesses: what it does, where it may help, and why most sites should fix bigger issues first.

Four acronyms describe the same shift in AI search. Here's what each one means, who uses it, and the one we recommend standardising on.

ChatGPT shopping optimization starts with feeds, PDPs, reviews, and Google Shopping visibility. Use this playbook to improve product discovery.

AI visibility for insurance brokers explained, with practical fixes for reviews, listings, trust signals, and broker service pages.

AI search visibility for a new brand: what a 14-day GEO case study really shows, and what smaller businesses can actually copy.