More founders now hear “ask ChatGPT” before “search Google”. So it’s fair to ask how an assistant decides which apps to mention, and whether a two-week-old app has any chance. It does, but not through tricks. Assistants mostly reward the same things that get you found on Google, plus being talked about.
How AI assistants find the sites they mention
When someone asks a question, an assistant either answers from what it already knows or searches the web first. For anything recent or specific, like “a tool that reminds me to water my plants”, it usually searches. That search runs on an index built by crawlers, and each company runs its own:
- ChatGPT search uses
OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI’s crawler docs say sites that block it won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers. - Claude uses
Claude-SearchBotto index pages for its search, according to Anthropic’s help center. - Perplexity uses
PerplexityBotto find and link websites in its answers, says its documentation. - Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode use the regular Google Search index. Google’s guide to AI features says there are no extra requirements: a page that can appear in Search with a snippet can appear there.
A model’s training data matters less for a new app. It was collected before your app existed, and a single mention there rarely makes an assistant recommend you.
1. Let the search crawlers in
Your robots.txt file tells each crawler what it may read. Some apps block AI crawlers without meaning to, often with a template copied from somewhere else.
Search crawlers and training crawlers are separate. You can block GPTBot and ClaudeBot, which collect training data, and still allow OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, which put you in answers. Google works the same way: Google-Extended controls Gemini training, and Google says it doesn’t affect Search.
The free AI visibility checker shows which crawlers your robots.txt lets in.
2. Give them real text
Many AI-built apps send a nearly empty page and fill it in with JavaScript. You see your app. A crawler that doesn’t run JavaScript sees <div id="root"></div> and nothing to quote. Google runs JavaScript later and not always fully, and the major AI companies don’t say that theirs do.
Check by opening your page’s source in the browser (View Page Source) and searching for a sentence from your headline. If it isn’t there, your public pages need to be rendered on the server or at build time. Our prompt to make pages readable for search engines does it for most builders.
3. Answer the questions people actually ask
Assistants pick the page that answers the question most directly. Write pages the way you’d answer a friend:
- Put the answer first. The first two sentences under a heading should answer it completely. The detail comes after.
- Use the question as the heading. “Does Bloomly work for outdoor plants?” is easier to match than “Features”.
- Be specific. Numbers, names, steps and limits. “Reminds you based on each plant’s light and pot size” says more than “smart reminders”.
- Say who it’s for and who it isn’t for. Assistants are asked for recommendations “for beginners” or “for small teams”, and they repeat what you state.
Your homepage alone is rarely enough. Add a few pages that answer what your users search for before they’ve heard of you: the problem, how your app solves it, pricing and a few honest comparisons.
4. Get mentioned where people talk
Assistants recommend what they find discussed, not only what you say about yourself. Across 30 common founder searches we looked at in October 2026, Ahrefs estimated that Reddit threads get about a fifth of the clicks from Google in the US, more than any single website. Those conversations are where your future users already are.
- Answer questions in your niche’s communities from your own account, and mention your app only where it truly helps. Each community has its own rules on self-promotion, so read them first.
- Get listed where your category is compared: launch sites, directories and “best tools for…” articles. See where to launch your app.
- Describe yourself the same way everywhere. Use the same name and one-sentence description on your site, your social profiles and every listing, so assistants connect them to you.
- Add structured data to your homepage, an
Organizationwith your name, logo, website and social profiles. It tells search engines which accounts are yours.
Do you need llms.txt?
llms.txt is a short Markdown file that lists your most useful pages for AI tools. It’s a proposal from 2024, not a standard. Google says you don’t need new machine-readable files to appear in its AI features. It takes ten minutes to add and can help coding assistants, so add one if you like, but it won’t get you mentioned on its own.
What doesn’t work
- Pages written only for assistants, stuffed with phrases or hidden text. Google’s spam policies cover hidden text and pages made in bulk to catch searches, and AI Overviews draw from the same index.
- Dozens of near-identical pages, one for every phrasing. One useful page that answers a question fully beats twenty thin ones.
- Instructions hidden in your page that try to tell an assistant what to say. Hidden text breaks the same spam policies, and it’s easy to spot.
How to tell if it’s working
- Ask the assistants yourself. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini the same five questions your users would ask, and note whether your app comes up and which pages they cite.
- Watch your referrers. ChatGPT adds
utm_source=chatgpt.comto the links it sends, according to OpenAI’s publisher FAQ, so those visits show up in your analytics. Perplexity and others show up as referring sites. - Watch Search Console. Google reports visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode in Search Console’s Performance report, under the “Web” search type, together with regular results.
Expect weeks, not days. Assistants refresh their indexes on their own schedule, and mentions in communities build up slowly.