Meera runs a small shop and needs simple inventory software. A few years ago, she would have searched on Google and opened several results in separate tabs. Now she asks ChatGPT or Gemini one question: "What is the best inventory software for a small shop?" Within seconds she gets three tool names, their prices, and a short note on what each does well.
Getting into that answer works differently from ranking on a search page. The AI looks things up in the background, picks facts out of web pages, checks whether other websites agree, and then writes its recommendation.
When an AI tool recommends software, it doesn't answer from memory, because what it learned in training is already out of date. It searches the web as the question comes in. In simple terms, it does four things:
It splits the question into smaller searches, such as one for prices, one for reviews, and one for features. It runs those searches on engines like Bing and Google and collects pages. Ahrefs found that only 12% of the pages AI tools cited ranked in Google's top 10 for the original question, so a page that does well on one narrow topic can still be picked up. It reads those pages and pulls out plain facts, such as price, features, and limits. It checks whether independent sources, like review sites, forums, and videos, say the same thing. If they do, the tool recommends the product.
So your job has three parts: make your facts easy to find, easy to read, and confirmed by other people elsewhere on the web.
Google's bot has become good at running the scripts many websites use to show content after a page opens. The bots behind AI tools are different. A study by Vercel and MERJ, covering billions of bot visits, found that none of the major AI search bots run these scripts.
That is a problem if your price table or feature list only appears through a script. Take a made-up product called StockEase. A person visiting its site sees the price, $49 a month, and the full feature list. An AI bot visiting the same page may get an almost empty page with no price and no features. When the AI builds its shortlist, it leaves StockEase out because it can't confirm the basics.
The fix is to place key facts, such as prices, features, and integrations, directly in the page itself, so they are there the moment it loads.
Access is the other thing to check. Many sites blocked AI bots to keep their writing out of AI training, and some accidentally blocked the bots that power search answers as well. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity use separate bots for training and for search, so you can allow the search ones and still opt out of training. Ask your developer to review the robots.txt file, which tells bots which pages they may visit.
AI tools cut a page into short passages and judge each one separately. They often lift a single sentence straight into the answer, so every key sentence should carry its own facts. Three findings help here:
Put important facts early. In Kevin Indig's review of 18,012 ChatGPT citations, 44% came from the first 30% of the page. Use real numbers instead of repeated keywords. In a Princeton and Georgia Tech study, adding statistics raised AI visibility by about 31% and adding quotes by about 41%, while repeating keywords lowered it by about 8%. Avoid vague words like "it" and "this plan." A sentence that depends on the one before it loses its meaning when lifted out.
Compare two opening lines for StockEase. The first reads: "Looking for the best inventory software? Our top-rated tool makes tracking stock easy and helps your business grow." The second reads: "StockEase tracks inventory in real time, supports barcode scanning, and costs $49 a month with a 14-day free trial." The first gives an AI nothing to use. The second names the product, the features, the price, and the trial.
Fresh content helps too. Ahrefs found that pages cited by AI tools were about 25.7% newer than pages in regular search results. Show the date you last updated a page, and refresh prices whenever they change.
Links from other sites used to be the main sign that a website could be trusted. AI tools also look at what independent sources say about a brand, much like a careful buyer would. They read your site to see what you claim, then check reviews, forums, and articles to see whether others agree.
Ahrefs studied 75,000 brands and found that mentions of a brand across the web matched AI visibility about three times as closely as links did. Mentions on YouTube matched it most closely of all.
"Best of" lists and comparison articles made up 43.8% of the sites ChatGPT cited in one study of 750 shopping questions. Muck Rack found that 84% of 25 million AI citations came from earned news and editorial coverage, and only 0.3% from paid placements.
This explains a common surprise. A product can rank well on Google and still be missing from AI answers, because the roundups AI tools read leave it out or show old prices. To change that:
Find the lists and review pages that AI tools cite for your category. Send those editors your current prices and feature details. Join relevant Reddit and forum threads with helpful answers rather than sales pitches. Encourage happy customers to post short videos showing how the product works. Track how often you are named, not where you rank