By Huxley Peckham, updated 1 October 2026
When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity who to hire, the answer names a handful of businesses. LLM SEO is the work of making yours one of them. This guide is built on 48,385 AI answers we saved to real buyer questions about 510 businesses in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.
What is LLM SEO? LLM SEO (large language model SEO) is the work of getting your business named, cited and recommended in the answers AI assistants give. It covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek and Google's AI Overviews. You'll also see it called GEO (generative engine optimisation) or AEO (answer engine optimisation).
What 48,385 AI answers show
Your category sets the starting point. Australian charities were named in 64% of answers on average. UK electricians were named in 6.5%, and Australian accountants in 8%. If AI rarely names anyone in your category, the few businesses it does name stand out.
Inside one category, the gap between businesses is huge. Businesses with the same services in the same market get very different results. What AI can find about each of them is the part you can work on, and it's what the rest of this guide covers.
How AI decides who to name
- It searches before it answers. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI can search the web before they answer. They may run several related searches, called fan-out searches. If you don't show up in those results, you're unlikely to show up in the answer.
- It reads what other sites say about you. Directories, review sites, industry associations, Reddit threads and YouTube videos all feed the answer. In Australia, Google's AI cited YouTube in 28 of the categories we track and Reddit in 17. Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that mentions of a brand across the web track its visibility in Google AI Overviews about three times more closely than backlinks do (Ahrefs).
- It has to recognise you as a real business. AI matches your name, services, location and people across your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Wikidata and directories. When those details agree, it can tell you apart from similar businesses and describe you correctly.
- It has to be able to read your site. The crawlers behind ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity mostly read your raw HTML and don't run JavaScript. Text or structured data that only appears after a script runs can be invisible to them (our research on this).
LLM SEO vs traditional SEO
| Traditional SEO | LLM SEO | |
|---|---|---|
| The goal | A high position in a list of results | Being named inside the answer |
| What the buyer sees | Ten links to choose from | A few names, often with reasons |
| What moves it most | Your pages and backlinks | What other sites say about you, and pages AI can read |
| How you measure it | Rankings and clicks | How often AI names you, and who it names instead |
Good SEO still helps when AI engines search the web before they answer. Pages that rank are more likely to be read and cited.
The LLM SEO checklist
- Start with your buyers' questions. Write down 10 to 25 questions a buyer would ask AI, in their words. For example: "Who's the best accountant for a small business in Brisbane?" These questions are what you'll optimise and measure.
- Read what AI says today. Ask each question in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google, in a fresh chat. Note who gets named, what's said about them and which sources are linked. Those sources are your map.
- Make your business facts match everywhere. Use the same business name, services, service areas and contact details on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and every directory. Add Organization or LocalBusiness structured data to your site's HTML. If you qualify, add your business to Wikidata.
- Get listed where AI looks in your category. Start with the directories, associations and review sites AI cited in step 2. Our citation sources map shows the sites AI cites most for each category.
- Earn mentions on other sites. Guest articles, podcast interviews, local news, partner pages, industry lists and helpful answers in community threads all count. Each one gives AI another source that names you.
- Publish pages that answer buyer questions directly. Give each important question its own page, with the answer in the first few lines and real detail after it: prices, process, examples and who it suits. When buyers compare options, most of the pages they find were written by someone other than the brand, so write your own comparison pages.
- Let AI crawlers read your site. Check that your robots.txt lets in the AI search crawlers, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT and PerplexityBot, and that your key content is in the HTML your server sends. Our free AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt rules for any page.
How to measure LLM SEO
Measure the answers themselves. Ask the same buyer questions on the same AI engines every week, and count how often your business is named. We call this your named share: if AI names you in 7 of 28 answers, your named share is 25%.
Track two more things alongside it. Record which competitors AI names instead of you, because they're the businesses taking the enquiry. Record which sources AI cites, because those are the places your next mentions should come from.
Our free scan asks two of your buyers' questions and shows who gets named. Monitoring measures up to 25 questions across the AI engines every week, so you can see what each change does.
LLM SEO questions
Is LLM SEO the same as GEO and AEO?
Yes, for practical purposes. All three describe getting your business named in AI answers. GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) are the more common names in marketing, and LLM SEO is common among SEO specialists.
Does traditional SEO still matter for AI answers?
Yes. When ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI search the web, pages that rank well are more likely to be read. AI also weighs what other sites say about you, so SEO on your own site is only part of the work.
How long does LLM SEO take to work?
Answers that use live web search can change within weeks of a new mention or page. What a model knows from its training data changes only when the model is updated, which can take months. That's why it's worth measuring every week.
How do I check if ChatGPT recommends my business?
Ask ChatGPT the questions your buyers ask, in a fresh chat, a few times each, and note who it names. Our free scan does this for you and saves the answers. For ChatGPT specifically, read our ChatGPT SEO guide.
Does llms.txt help with LLM SEO?
It's quick to add, and we include it in our fix plans. Treat it as a small extra. Mentions on other sites, consistent business facts and clear pages do far more of the work.
Go deeper
- ChatGPT SEO: how to show up in ChatGPT
- The sources AI cites in your category
- AI visibility benchmarks by country and category
- Glossary of AI visibility terms
About this data: figures come from our public benchmark, compiled on 29 September 2026 from businesses measured between July and September 2026. Named share is the number of saved answers that name a business, divided by all countable answers. Category figures cover categories with at least six businesses. How we measure.