Guide
How to get your business cited in AI answers: a GEO guide for Singapore businesses
When a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude for a supplier, the answer names a handful of businesses and cites a handful of pages. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of becoming one of them. There is no single switch. It is measurement, crawler access, consistent facts and pages written so an AI engine can quote them. This guide sets out nine steps any Singapore business can start this week.
The method is the one Kyn Technology uses on its own site, where citations in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude are tracked every night and about 37 English articles have been published through a fact-checked content engine.
On this page
How AI engines choose sources
AI engines answer in two ways. Some answers come from what the model learned in training. Others come from a live web search run at the moment of the question, with the results summarised and cited. Citations, the links shown beside an answer, mostly come from the second route.
That makes the basics of search still matter: a page must be crawlable and indexed to be found. What changes is the selection. An engine summarising five pages favours the one that answers the exact question clearly, states verifiable facts, and agrees with other sources. Rank alone is not enough.
Nine steps
1. Write down the questions buyers ask
List 20 to 30 questions a buyer would type into ChatGPT before calling you. Mix three kinds: category (“best commercial cleaning company in Singapore”), problem (“how to stop mould in a condo bathroom”) and comparison (“X vs Y for a small office”). Use your sales team’s real enquiries as the source, not keyword tools alone.
2. Measure where you stand today
Run every question in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude. Record three things per answer: is the business named, which page is cited, which competitors appear. Answers vary between runs, so repeat each question several times and count the share, not a single result.
3. Make sure AI crawlers can read the site
Check robots.txt and any firewall or bot-protection rules. OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot fetches pages for ChatGPT search. PerplexityBot does the same for Perplexity. Googlebot covers Google Search and its AI features; the separate Google-Extended token governs use in Gemini models and does not affect Search. Anthropic publishes its own crawler names for Claude. Blocking these by accident is common. Also check that key pages render their text without relying on scripts.
4. Get indexed by Bing as well as Google
AI search products draw on web search indexes, and Bing is one of them. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools, submit the sitemap, and use IndexNow to notify Bing and other participating engines when a page is published or changed.
5. Make the business facts consistent everywhere
Company name, UEN, address, phone, services and areas served should match on the website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and ACRA records. Add Organization structured data to the site with the same facts. When sources disagree, an engine is less likely to state anything about you with confidence.
6. Publish one page per question, answer first
For each question from step 1, publish a page whose first two or three sentences answer it directly. Then support the answer: numbers, steps, prices or ranges where they are stable, and sources. Use the buyer’s question as a heading. An answer buried below an introduction is harder for an engine to quote.
7. Fact-check before publishing
AI engines repeat what pages say. A wrong price or an outdated regulation, once cited, is hard to correct. Check every claim against a source, remove claims nobody can verify, and date pages that contain figures that change.
8. Earn mentions on other sites
Engines weigh what others say about you. Trade association listings, supplier and partner pages, local press, and genuine reviews all count. One accurate mention on a site the engine already trusts can do more than ten new pages on your own.
9. Track every week and adjust
Re-run the question set on a schedule. Look at which competitor pages are cited where you are not, and what those pages do differently: a clearer answer, a table, a price range, a more recent date. Update your page, not only add new ones.
Anatomy of a citable page
- A title and heading that match the buyer’s question.
- The answer in the first two or three sentences, before any background.
- Numbers instead of adjectives: “4 to 6 weeks”, not “fast”.
- Steps as a numbered list and comparisons as a table.
- The business name, location and service stated plainly in the text.
- Sources linked for regulations, prices and statistics.
- A visible date, updated when the facts change.
- Structured data that matches the visible text: Organization, and FAQPage where there is a real FAQ.
Limits and myths
No one can guarantee a citation
Answers vary between runs, users, locations and model versions. Measure a share across repeated runs. Treat any promise of a fixed placement as a warning sign.
llms.txt is not a ranking factor
llms.txt is a proposed file that summarises a site for language models. It costs little to add, but no major AI engine has confirmed it changes what gets cited. Do it after the steps above, not instead of them.
Volume does not win
Hundreds of thin AI-written pages add little and can harm how search engines rate the site. Fewer pages, each answering one question well, perform better.
It takes weeks
Pages need to be crawled and indexed before they can be cited. Expect movement over weeks, and track it so you know.
KYN’s set-up
KYN’s engine tracks brand citations in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude every night. Content runs through 12 stages: strategy, research, writing, fact-check, SEO and GEO edit, a quality gate and publishing. The gate scores each draft on 7 points and rewrites a failing draft up to 3 times; drafts that still fail go to a person. Published pages are submitted through IndexNow. Personas, competitors and guardrails are set per business.
KYN offers this as a service: GEO and AI search optimisation. Each article can also feed social media content; the method is in turn one article into a week of posts. Fees are on /pricing.
Crawler names and search-engine behaviour change. Check each provider’s current documentation before editing robots.txt.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get my business mentioned by ChatGPT?
Make sure ChatGPT’s search crawler can read your site, get indexed by Bing as well as Google, keep your business facts consistent across the web, and publish pages that answer buyers’ questions in the first lines. Then measure citations on a fixed question set and adjust.
What is the difference between GEO and SEO?
SEO aims for a position in a list of links. GEO aims for a mention inside a written AI answer. GEO builds on SEO: pages still need to be crawled and indexed, but the content is shaped to be quoted.
Should I block AI crawlers?
Blocking search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot removes the site from those engines’ live answers. Blocking training crawlers is a separate choice. Decide per crawler, using each provider’s documentation.
Does structured data help AI citations?
It helps engines read business facts consistently, which supports accurate mentions. It does not replace a clear answer in the visible text. Structured data must match what the page shows.
How long does GEO take to show results?
Weeks rather than days. New and updated pages must be crawled and indexed first. Track a fixed question set over time to see the trend.
Can a small Singapore business compete with large brands in AI answers?
On specific questions, yes. AI engines cite the page that answers the exact question best. A local business answering a narrow Singapore question clearly can be cited ahead of a larger brand with a generic page.