What’s Your Process for Showing Up in AI Search?

I’ve been seeing a lot of questions about how to show up in AI search results, things like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and similar systems. There’s also quite a bit of misinformation floating around, both from a technical and business perspective.

For context, we run a brand group and have been actively testing how our products appear in AI generated results. For a number of prompts, we consistently show up first or second. I also come from a computer science background, so we have been approaching this from both a technical and marketing angle.

I’ll keep this relatively high level, but here are the main things we have observed so far.

First, traditional SEO still matters a lot. In our case, the brand I am referencing has an average position of about 6.2 over the past week, so it consistently sits on page one. That seems to be a strong baseline. For many prompts, LLMs run live searches behind the scenes. If you inspect network requests in your browser developer tools while using systems like ChatGPT, you can sometimes see the search queries being generated. Optimizing for those queries, or closely related keywords, can increase the chance that your site appears in the results the model pulls from. At minimum, you may get cited as a source.

Second, clarity in your content matters more than people think. Avoid trying to sound overly clever or vague. Clearly state what the product is, who it is for, and what it does. AI systems seem to favor straightforward descriptions they can easily extract and summarize.

Third, off site signals are extremely important. LLMs appear to rely heavily on multiple data sources to determine whether a brand is trustworthy enough to mention. Community driven platforms like Reddit still matter, but YouTube has become particularly strong in some systems. Beyond that, presence across marketplaces and platforms such as Amazon, Walmart Online, social channels like Instagram and TikTok, publications, and PR helps create multiple validation points. Reviews also play a significant role.

Fourth, merchant feeds are becoming increasingly important. Titles, attributes, and product categorization need to be properly structured and optimized. Treat these feeds as a serious distribution channel rather than an afterthought.

Fifth, technical SEO needs to be solid. Product schema, FAQ schema, well written meta descriptions, and clean structured data all help models understand and retrieve your information. In a sense, you are now writing for two audiences: customers and the systems that aggregate information for them.

Tracking is still somewhat immature in this space. One useful tool is Bing Webmaster Tools. The Website Visibility section can provide some insight into how your site performs across AI driven surfaces. Platforms like SEMrush and Ahrefs are also beginning to release AI visibility tracking features, although the data is still evolving.

Ultimately, the goal seems to be getting your brand into the model’s broader knowledge ecosystem so it can be referenced confidently. In some cases that means the system can recommend you without even needing to run a live search.

Interested in how others here are approaching this. What has actually been working for you when it comes to appearing in AI search?