How to Get Your Startup Mentioned in ChatGPT and Google AI Answers

Ask ChatGPT for "the best tool for tracking freelance invoices" and it names a handful of products. Ask Google the same question and an AI Overview may name a handful more. If your startup isn't one of them, the person asking may never hear of it.

There is no form to fill in and no fee to pay to become one of those names. What you can do is make your product easy for AI search to find, read and describe, and give the wider web reasons to talk about it. This guide covers how the main assistants find products, the five steps that are in your control, and the things you can skip. Every rule and number below comes from the companies' own documentation or a named study, checked on 19 October 2026, with a link to each source.

How do ChatGPT and Google AI decide which startups to mention?

They draw on two sources. The first is training: the text a model learned from before its training cut-off. The second is retrieval: a live search the assistant runs while it writes the answer, which it can then cite with links.

A startup that launched this year can't be in an older model's training data. So for most makers, retrieval is where the work pays off first. If an assistant can't fetch and read your pages, it can only repeat what others have written about you, if anyone has.

Each assistant retrieves pages in its own way:

OpenAI says "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features" (OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers (opens in a new tab)). Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may build a response by "issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources," which it calls query fan-out (Google Search Central, AI features and your website (opens in a new tab)). Perplexity says "PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in search results on Perplexity" (Perplexity, Perplexity crawlers (opens in a new tab)). Microsoft's AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts citations across "Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations" (Bing Webmaster Blog, 10 February 2026 (opens in a new tab)).

Training still matters over time. When a model is retrained, it learns from what the web says about your product by then: your site, your listings, reviews and the threads where people compare tools. Steps 3 and 5 below help with both routes.

Why a mention matters even when nobody clicks

An AI answer often ends the search. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 U.S. adults in March 2025. Across 68,879 Google searches, 12,593 showed an AI summary, and people behaved differently on those pages (Pew Research Center, 22 July 2025 (opens in a new tab)):

For a startup, the lesson is uncomfortable but useful. Many people read the answer and stop. If your product's name and an accurate one-line description are in that answer, you've reached them. If you're only a link at the bottom, most of them won't click it.

That's why this guide talks about mentions rather than traffic. Traffic from AI answers is worth tracking, and we cover how below. But the name in the answer is the part that reaches the most people.

Step 1: Let the search crawlers in

Crawlers are allowed by default. A robots.txt file only blocks the bots it names, so most sites already let these crawlers in. The risk is a rule written for another purpose: a blanket Disallow: / left over from a staging site, a wildcard rule from a template, or a CDN setting someone turned on and forgot.

Open yoursite.com/robots.txt and check that nothing blocks the search crawlers. If you want to be explicit, this is a safe starting point:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

User-agent: Bingbot
Allow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Here is what each company says about its crawlers.

OpenAI. "Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers," and OpenAI recommends allowing it in robots.txt. It also asks sites to permit requests from the IP ranges it publishes at openai.com/searchbot.json (opens in a new tab), and says "it can take ~24 hours from a site's robots.txt update for our systems to adjust" (OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI crawlers (opens in a new tab)).

OpenAI runs two other agents. GPTBot gathers training data, and ChatGPT-User fetches a page when a user asks ChatGPT to. OpenAI says "Each setting is independent of the others," so you can block GPTBot from training on your content and still appear in ChatGPT search. That's a fair choice. Just know the trade-off: content kept out of training can't shape what future models know about you.

Google. AI Overviews and AI Mode are features of Google Search, so they follow your rules for Googlebot. Google also has a separate token, Google-Extended, which controls whether your content can be used to train future Gemini models and to ground some Gemini answers. Google says "Google-Extended does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search" (Google, Common crawlers (opens in a new tab)).

Perplexity. PerplexityBot finds and links sites for Perplexity's results, and Perplexity says it isn't used to collect training data for AI models. A second agent, Perplexity-User, visits pages when a person asks about them, and "generally ignores robots.txt rules" because a user requested the fetch (Perplexity, Perplexity crawlers (opens in a new tab)).

Check your CDN and firewall too

robots.txt is a request. A firewall or CDN can block a crawler before it ever reads the file, so check both.

If you use Cloudflare, look under Security Settings > Configure AI bot policies. Cloudflare sorts AI crawlers into categories, including Search, Training and Agent (which covers "chat fetch bots and browser-use agents"), and lets you block each one on all pages, block it on pages with ads, or allow it. Its documentation says the older "Block AI bots" toggle is being retired from 15 September 2026, and that for new domains from that date "Search will remain allowed" while Training and Agent bots are blocked on pages that display ads (Cloudflare, Block AI bots (opens in a new tab)).

One line in that page deserves attention: "Mixed-purpose crawlers that combine Search and Training will also be blocked by all configurations to block AI training." If you block training, check which bots that sweeps up.

Then confirm in your server or CDN logs that the crawlers are actually visiting. Look for the user agent names above. For OpenAI, compare the request IPs with the published ranges so you can tell the real crawler from a bot using its name.

Keep the important parts in text

Among its best practices for AI features, Google lists "Making sure that important content is available in textual form" (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)). Startups often break this without noticing. If your pricing lives in a screenshot, or your one-line pitch exists only inside a hero video, a crawler has nothing to quote.

Google also notes that its snippet controls (nosnippet, data-nosnippet and max-snippet) and noindex limit what appears in its AI features. Check that a template or plugin hasn't added one to pages you want seen.

Step 2: Say plainly what your product is and who it's for

An assistant can only repeat a description that exists somewhere. Many startup homepages lead with a slogan and never say what the product is. Write one plain sentence instead:

[Product] is a [category] for [audience] that [main job].

Ours reads: "Zutto Launch is a product-launch and discovery platform for founders and indie makers." It isn't clever, and it doesn't need to be. It tells a person or a model what we are, who it's for and which category we belong to.

Put that sentence, or a close version of it, in these places:

• The first screen of your homepage, as text.
• Your homepage title and meta description.
• Your About page.
• Every directory, launch platform and marketplace listing.
• Your social profiles and press kit.

Then give each common question its own page. Google's query fan-out means one question can turn into several searches about subtopics. Someone asking about invoice tools may trigger searches about pricing, integrations, alternatives and who each tool suits. A page that answers each of those in plain text gives the search something to find:

• Pricing, in text, with what each plan includes.
• Who it's for, with real use cases.
• Integrations, listed by name.
• Comparisons with the tools people weigh you against.
• Docs and a changelog, so the details are on record.

Step 3: Get mentioned where your category is discussed

Your own site describes your product. Other sites decide whether the web treats it as part of the category.

In May 2025, Ahrefs compared signals for 75,000 brands with how often each brand appeared in Google's AI Overviews (Ahrefs, Louise Linehan, 26 May 2025 (opens in a new tab)). Mentions of the brand across the web came out on top:

Brands in the top quarter for web mentions averaged 169 AI Overview mentions, against 14 for the quarter below them.

Read it with care. Ahrefs itself warns that "correlation ≠ causation" and calls the field "not a perfect science right now." The study only covered established sites with a Domain Rating above 40, so a brand-new startup sits outside its sample. Still, the direction is clear. Being talked about seems to matter more than collecting links.

Pew's study points the same way. Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the sites linked most often in both AI summaries and standard results, and together they made up 15% of the sources listed in the AI summaries Pew examined (Pew Research Center (opens in a new tab)).

Here is where a young startup can earn mentions honestly:

• Launch platforms and directories. Each listing is a page that names your product and its category. Our list of 20 startup directories worth submitting to ranks them by effort and audience.
• Communities where buyers ask questions. Answer questions in subreddits, forums and Slack or Discord groups in your field. Say you're the maker. Help even when your product isn't the answer.
• YouTube. A short demo with a clear title and description gives search a page that names and shows your product.
• Review sites. Ask real users to review you on the sites your buyers read. Never pay for reviews or write them yourself.
• Other people's comparison posts. If someone has written "best tools for X" and left you out, send the author accurate facts and a free account. Don't offer payment for inclusion.
• Partners. If you integrate with a larger product, get listed in its marketplace or integrations directory.

Wikipedia is out of reach for most young startups, and its conflict-of-interest guideline (opens in a new tab) strongly discourages writing about your own company. Let it come later, if it comes at all.

Step 4: Publish things worth citing

Assistants cite pages that answer a question well. Marketing pages rarely do. These kinds of pages often can:

• Docs and help articles that explain how to do a specific task.
• Honest comparison pages, including the cases where a competitor is the better choice. A page that only praises you reads as an advert.
• Original data you have the right to share. Aggregated, anonymised findings from your product, a small survey you ran, or a teardown of public information in your niche.
• Clear policies: pricing, refunds, security and data handling, in plain text.

Date each page, name the person who wrote it, and update it when the facts change. If you add structured data, Google's guidance is to make sure it "matches the visible text on the page" (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)).

Step 5: Keep your facts consistent everywhere

AI answers are assembled from many pages. If your directory listing says one price, your homepage another and an old launch post a third, an answer may repeat any of them.

Keep one facts page, or a press kit, with your:

• product name and one-sentence description;
• category and the audience you serve;
• pricing and plan names;
• founders and company location;
• launch date and key milestones;
• logo and screenshots.

When something changes, update the listings you control. Edit old launch pages where the platform allows it.

If your name is a common word, pair it with your category in your own copy, such as "Acme, the invoicing tool for freelancers." That helps both people and models tell you apart from everything else with the same name.

What you don't need

A lot of money is being spent on AI visibility. Some of it is wasted. Here is what the companies themselves say you can skip.

• Special schema for Google's AI features. Google says "There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add," and "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary" (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)).
• An llms.txt file or other AI files. The same Google page says you don't need new machine-readable files or AI text files to appear. The OpenAI and Perplexity crawler pages we checked don't mention llms.txt either.
• Paid placement in answers. OpenAI says ads in ChatGPT are clearly labelled, kept separate from the answer and don't influence what ChatGPT says (OpenAI, Our approach to advertising (opens in a new tab)). An ad is not a mention.
• Text written for bots. Hidden text, keyword-stuffed pages and mass-produced "best X" pages that name only you fall foul of search engines' spam policies.
• Anyone promising placement. No one outside OpenAI, Google, Microsoft or Perplexity controls their answers, and the next section shows how much those answers vary.

How to check whether it's working

You won't get one clean number, so combine four sources.

1. Google Search Console. Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Performance report under the "Web" search type (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)). It isn't split out, so watch the trend for the pages you've improved.

2. Bing Webmaster Tools. Its AI Performance report, in public preview since 10 February 2026, shows "Total Citations", "Average Cited Pages", "Grounding queries", page-level citation activity and visibility trends over time across Copilot and Bing's AI summaries (Bing Webmaster Blog (opens in a new tab)). It reports citations, not clicks, which makes it one of the few direct views of AI mentions.

3. Your analytics. Look for referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, copilot.microsoft.com and gemini.google.com. Links from ChatGPT may carry a utm_source=chatgpt.com tag. Some AI visits arrive with no referrer and land in Direct or Unassigned, so treat these numbers as a floor. In Google Analytics 4, a custom channel group for AI referrers keeps them together.

4. A fixed set of prompts. Write 10 to 20 questions a buyer might ask, such as "What's a good tool for X?" or "Alternatives to [competitor]". Run them once a month in each assistant and record whether you're named and how you're described.

Expect noise. In a study run by Rand Fishkin of SparkToro and Patrick O'Donnell of Gumshoe.ai, volunteers ran 2,961 prompts across ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI features. They found less than a 1-in-100 chance of getting the same list of brands twice, and the same order "less than 0.1% of the time." Their conclusion: "Visibility percentage across many queries shows more consistency than ranking position" (Search Engine Journal, 30 January 2026 (opens in a new tab)). Gumshoe sells AI tracking tools, and the report isn't peer-reviewed, but the advice to count appearances rather than rank holds up.

We cover both sides of measurement in detail: how to track your startup's AI visibility over time, and how to run a manual AI visibility check in an afternoon.

How long does it take?

Nobody can give you an honest date. Here is what is known:

• Crawler access changes fast. OpenAI says robots.txt updates take about 24 hours to reach its systems.
• New pages have to be crawled and indexed before they can be cited, which takes longer.
• Mentions elsewhere build over months, one listing, thread and review at a time.
• Training data changes only when a model is retrained, on the AI company's schedule.

Treat it like any other reputation. Fix access this week, publish the plain description this month, and earn mentions every month after that. Anyone who quotes you a date for a mention in ChatGPT is guessing.

Where Zutto Launch fits

Zutto Launch is our product, so weigh this section with that in mind. A launch on Zutto adds pages to the web that describe your product accurately, in the places this guide recommends:

• A free launch with a product page in a category, with your website link and a plain-text description. The page stays up after launch day.
• A monthly leaderboard decided by community votes, where people discuss and compare new products.
• The Weekly Top 3 get a promo kit: a short AI launch video, reels on our YouTube Shorts, Instagram and X accounts, and a section in our newsletter. Votes decide the Top 3; paid placement never buys a spot.
• Spotlight ($19, one time) adds a 2,500-word story on our blog, a featured listing in your category and a permanent do-follow link with no badge required.
• Premium Launch ($50, one time) adds an AI-generated 30-second launch video, 3 more do-follow backlinks and two posts on our blog comparing you with your alternatives.

None of this makes an assistant mention you, and we won't pretend otherwise. It gives search more accurate pages to find. Optional paid placement (Spotlight and Premium Launch) is clearly labelled and never changes leaderboard ranking or prize eligibility. See pricing for what each option includes. Zutto opens to waitlist members first.

Your next step

Spend an hour on Step 1 today:

1. Open your robots.txt and confirm that Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot aren't blocked.
2. Check your CDN or firewall bot settings.
3. Write your one-sentence description and put it on your homepage as text.
4. Write down five questions your buyers ask an assistant, and run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google.

Save the answers from step 4. They're your baseline, and next month you'll know whether anything moved.