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How to Get Your Pages Indexed by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Other AI Search Engines

12/15/2025·by Aki from LovableHTML

A technical guide to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Learn how AI search differs from traditional SEO, which crawlers to allow, and how to make your content visible to LLMs.

AI-powered search is changing how people discover information. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews are replacing the traditional "ten blue links" with direct answers synthesized from multiple sources.

If your pages are not visible to these AI crawlers, you are missing a new channel of traffic. This guide covers how to get OpenAI ChatGPT to index your page, how AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) differs from traditional SEO, and the technical steps to make your content visible to AI platforms.

Part 1: How AEO Differs from Traditional SEO

Before diving into technical implementation, you need to understand why optimizing for AI search requires a different approach than traditional SEO.

Ranking vs. Consensus

The most important difference between SEO and AEO is how you "win."

SEO is a ranking game. In Google, if your URL is the #1 blue link for "best website builder," you win the click. Position matters. Being #2 means significantly less traffic than #1.

AEO is a consensus game. In an LLM response, being cited first does not guarantee you are the answer. The model synthesizes information from multiple sources. If the LLM reads ten sources and your brand is mentioned in five of them, you become the answer. It is a game of share of voice, not just ranking.

The Long Tail Has Expanded

In traditional SEO, a long-tail keyword is typically around six words. In AI chat interfaces, the average prompt is 25 words. Users have full conversations, asking follow-up questions about specific features, integrations, and use cases that have never been searched in Google.

This means the "tail" of search demand is significantly larger and more specific than before. If you can answer questions that have never been answered, you win by default because there is no competition for that query.

Why New Sites still Can Win at AEO

New brands/businesses are usually told to avoid SEO until they have funding or some sort of word of mouth traction because they lack the Domain Authority to compete with established sites. AEO changes this dynamic.

LLMs look for consensus and recent information. A new company can get mentioned in a Reddit thread, a YouTube video, or a blog post today and appear in an LLM answer tomorrow. You do not need years of backlink building. You need to be cited in places where AI crawlers look.

Traffic Quality: The 6x Factor

While search volume from LLMs is currently lower than Google, the intent is higher. Users "prime" the AI by having a back-and-forth conversation. By the time they click a citation, they have already qualified themselves. Data from Webflow showed a 6x conversion rate difference between LLM traffic and traditional Google search traffic.

This makes AEO valuable even at lower volumes.

Part 2: How AI Crawlers Index Content

To get OpenAI's ChatGPT to index your page, you need to understand how AI crawlers work. AI platforms use web crawlers similar to traditional search engines, but with important differences in what they can and cannot see.

Major AI Crawlers

Important: OpenAI uses three different crawlers. OAI-SearchBot indexes pages for ChatGPT Search results. GPTBot collects data for training. ChatGPT-User fetches pages in real-time when users browse. For your pages to appear in ChatGPT Search, you need to allow OAI-SearchBot.

The critical column is "Executes JS." Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, which means they cannot see content rendered client-side.

What AI Crawlers Can See

AI crawlers discover your content through:

1. Backlinks from indexed pages - If a page the crawler has already indexed links to you, it will follow that link
2. Public URLs - Direct URLs shared in public spaces
3. Sitemap.xml - Your sitemap tells crawlers which pages exist
4. Structured data - JSON-LD helps crawlers understand content relationships
5. User-shared links - URLs pasted into chat interfaces may trigger indexing

What AI Crawlers Cannot See

Most AI crawlers will not see:

• JavaScript-rendered content - SPAs that render content client-side appear empty
• Content behind authentication - Login-protected pages are not crawled
• Blocked paths in robots.txt - If you disallow the crawler, it will not index you
• Dynamically loaded data - Content fetched via API after page load

This is where the technical implementation matters.

Part 3: Technical Requirements for AI Indexing

1. Allow AI Crawlers in robots.txt

First, make sure you are not blocking AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt file.

Allow OpenAI crawlers (for ChatGPT Search):

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Allow: /

Allow other AI crawlers:

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /

Block specific paths (if needed):

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /private/
Disallow: /admin/

You can selectively block paths you do not want indexed while allowing the rest of your site. Some sites allow OAI-SearchBot (for appearing in ChatGPT Search results) while blocking GPTBot (to prevent training data collection).

2. Submit Your Site to Bing Webmaster Tools

ChatGPT Search uses Bing's index as one of its data sources. Getting indexed by Bing improves your chances of appearing in ChatGPT responses.

Steps to submit to Bing:

1. Go to Bing Webmaster Tools
2. Add and verify your site (via DNS, meta tag, or file upload)
3. Submit your sitemap
4. Monitor crawl status and fix any errors

This is often overlooked. Many sites focus only on Google Search Console but ignore Bing. For ChatGPT visibility, Bing indexing matters.

3. Ensure Content is Crawlable

This is where most sites fail. If your site is a Single Page Application (SPA) built with React, Vue, or Angular, your content is rendered by JavaScript. When an AI crawler visits your page, it sees this:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <title>My Site</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="root"></div>
    <script src="/assets/main.js"></script>
  </body>
</html>

The crawler cannot execute the JavaScript that would populate the content. It indexes an empty page.

How to verify what crawlers see:

Use curl to simulate a crawler request:

curl -A "GPTBot" -H "Accept: text/html" https://your-site.com

If the response body contains only a <div id="root"></div> with no content, crawlers are not seeing your pages.

4. Serve Pre-rendered HTML to Crawlers

There are two ways to fix this:

Option A: Server-Side Rendering (SSR)

Migrate your application to a framework that supports SSR, like Next.js or Remix. This requires development work and may not be compatible with AI website builders like Lovable.

Option B: Prerendering

Use a prerendering service that detects crawler requests and serves pre-rendered HTML. Your site remains an SPA for human visitors, but crawlers receive fully rendered HTML with all your content visible.

LovableHTML handles this automatically for sites built with Lovable and other AI website builders. When GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot visits your site, they receive complete HTML instead of an empty shell.

5. Implement Structured Data

Structured data helps AI crawlers understand the context of your content. Add JSON-LD schemas to your pages.

Organization schema (homepage):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "Your Company",
  "url": "https://your-site.com",
  "description": "What your company does"
}

Article schema (blog posts):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "Article",
  "headline": "Article Title",
  "author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Author Name"
  },
  "datePublished": "2025-12-15",
  "description": "Article description"
}

FAQ schema (for question-answer content):

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "What is prerendering?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "Prerendering is the process of generating static HTML from JavaScript-rendered pages so crawlers can see the content."
      }
    }
  ]
}

FAQ schema is particularly valuable for AEO because LLMs are designed to answer questions. If your content is structured as questions and answers, it maps directly to how users query AI chatbots.

6. Submit and Maintain Your Sitemap

Your sitemap.xml tells crawlers which pages exist. Make sure it is:

• Accessible at https://your-site.com/sitemap.xml
• Referenced in your robots.txt
• Updated when you add or remove pages
• Contains only canonical URLs (your custom domain, not staging URLs)

# In robots.txt
Sitemap: https://your-site.com/sitemap.xml

7. Optimize Site Structure and Performance

AI crawlers, like traditional search crawlers, have limited time to spend on your site. A well-structured, fast-loading site gets crawled more thoroughly.

Site structure:

• Use clear navigation with logical hierarchy
• Link related pages together with descriptive anchor text
• Keep important content within 3 clicks from the homepage
• Use descriptive URLs that indicate content topic

Performance:

• Compress images and use modern formats (WebP)
• Minimize JavaScript bundle size
• Ensure mobile responsiveness
• Aim for fast time-to-first-byte (TTFB)

Crawlers that encounter slow pages or confusing navigation may leave before indexing all your content.

Part 4: Content Strategy for AEO

Technical setup gets you indexed. Content strategy determines whether you get cited.

Write for Questions, Not Keywords

Traditional SEO targets keywords like "best website builder." AEO targets questions like "What is the best website builder for a small business that needs e-commerce and does not know how to code?"

Structure your content to answer specific questions directly. Use headings that match how people phrase queries in chat.

Build Consensus Through Distribution

Since AEO is a consensus game, getting mentioned in multiple places matters more than ranking in one place.

Being mentioned in five Reddit threads about your topic is more valuable for AEO than ranking #1 for a single keyword.

Answer Questions Nobody Else Has Answered

The expanded long tail means there are queries with zero competition. If someone asks ChatGPT a specific question about your niche and no indexed content answers it, ChatGPT either says "I don't know" or hallucinates.

If you create content that answers that question, you win by default. Look for:

• Questions in your support inbox that are not covered in your docs
• Reddit questions in your niche with no good answers
• Specific feature comparisons nobody has written
• Integration guides that do not exist

Keep Content Fresh

LLMs weight recent information. A blog post from 2023 may be outranked by a Reddit comment from last month. Update your content regularly and add dates to show recency.

Part 5: Monitoring AI Indexing

Check Your Server Logs

Look for requests from AI crawler user agents:

• OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT Search)
• GPTBot (OpenAI training)
• ChatGPT-User (real-time browsing)
• PerplexityBot
• ClaudeBot
• Google-Extended

If you see these in your logs, crawlers are visiting. If you do not see them, check your robots.txt and make sure you are not blocking them.

Test with Crawler Simulators

Use tools that simulate how AI crawlers see your pages. LovableHTML's free crawler simulator shows you exactly what GPTBot sees when it visits your site.

Query AI Platforms Directly

The most direct test: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Claude about your product or topic. See if your content appears in the citations. If it does not, your content is either not indexed or not relevant enough to be cited.

Summary

Getting OpenAI ChatGPT to index your page (and other AI search engines) requires:

1. Allowing AI crawlers in your robots.txt, especially OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT Search
2. Submitting to Bing since ChatGPT uses Bing's index
3. Serving crawlable HTML instead of JavaScript-rendered empty shells
4. Adding structured data so crawlers understand your content
5. Maintaining your sitemap so crawlers know which pages exist
6. Optimizing site structure for efficient crawling
7. Creating content that answers questions users ask in chat interfaces
8. Building consensus by getting mentioned across multiple sources

If your site is built with a JavaScript framework or AI website builder, the biggest technical blocker is crawlability. Most AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. Prerendering solves this by serving complete HTML to crawlers while keeping your site functional for human visitors.

The opportunity in AEO is that it is early. Unlike SEO where incumbents have years of authority, AI search rewards consensus and recency. If you get your technical setup right and create content that answers questions, you can appear in AI responses regardless of your domain authority.

Related Resources

• Is Lovable SEO Friendly? - Why SPAs struggle with crawlers
• Lovable SEO Features - Complete guide to Lovable SEO settings
• Prerender.io Alternatives - Compare prerendering services
• Free ChatGPT Crawler Simulator - Test what GPTBot sees