AI search optimization stopped being a future trend for us the day a new client told us how they found us.

Kronis, a digital technology company based in Spain, needed to rebuild the website for their product. When we asked how they came to work with Santos Digital, their CEO answered in their Clutch review:

“We found them through ChatGPT.”

They didn’t find us through a Google ad, a referral or a directory. They asked an AI assistant, got a recommendation, and contacted us.

That one sentence says a lot about how people look for services today, and about what your website needs to do to be found.

People don’t just search anymore. They ask.

For years, getting found online meant ranking on Google. That’s still important, but it’s no longer the whole picture.

ChatGPT alone is used by close to a billion people every week. Google now shows AI-generated answers above traditional results for many searches. And when those answers appear, people click less: a Pew Research Center study found that users clicked a traditional result in only 8% of searches with an AI summary, compared to 15% without one.

In practice, this means a growing share of buyers form an opinion about who to work with before they ever visit a website. Sometimes they never visit one at all. If AI tools don’t understand what your business does, you’re simply not part of the conversation.

What AI search engines actually look at

There’s a lot of noise around “optimizing for AI,” so it’s worth looking at what the platforms themselves say.

Google is clear: there are no special requirements or tricks to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. A page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in search. Google recommends the same fundamentals: crawlable pages, clear text content, good internal linking, a strong page experience, and structured data that matches what’s actually on the page.

OpenAI says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search, as long as it doesn’t block OpenAI’s search crawler (OAI-SearchBot). Anthropic works the same way for Claude: blocking its search crawlers reduces your visibility in Claude’s answers.

So AI search optimization isn’t a hack. It’s a website that is technically open to these tools and clear enough for them to understand and recommend.

Where most websites fall short

In our experience at Santos Digital, websites don’t miss out on AI search because of one big mistake. It’s usually a combination of small ones:

  • AI crawlers are blocked, often by an old robots.txt rule, a security plugin or a CDN setting nobody remembers adding.
  • Key information is hidden in images, sliders or PDFs instead of plain text.
  • Services are described vaguely. “Innovative solutions for modern businesses” tells an AI tool nothing about what you actually do, or for whom.
  • There’s no structured data, or it doesn’t match the visible content.
  • Nobody is tracking it, so no one knows whether AI search sends any traffic at all.

What AI search optimization looks like in practice

For Kronis, the brief was a full website revamp: a new design, product pages, pricing tables, structured data, a new WordPress build and a blog migration. Preparing the site for both SEO and GEO (generative engine optimization) was part of the scope from day one.

That’s how we approach every website we build and maintain today. AI search optimization isn’t an add-on. It’s part of our standard process:

  • Open access. We make sure search and AI crawlers (Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot) can actually reach the site.
  • Clear, structured content. Services, audiences and answers are written in plain text, so both people and AI tools can understand them.
  • Structured data that matches the visible page content.
  • A company overview page that’s easy for AI tools to read. We use one on our own site: Ai overview page.
  • Tracking AI traffic, so you can see which visits come from ChatGPT and similar tools.

How to check if AI search can find you

A few things you can do today:

  • Ask the AI tools. Ask ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode or Claude for a company like yours in your market, and see who comes up.
  • Check your robots.txt. Make sure it doesn’t block OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot or Googlebot.
  • Look at your analytics. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to links it sends, so these visits show up in Google Analytics.
  • Read your homepage as a stranger would. Is it immediately clear what you do, for whom and where? If not, AI tools won’t know either.

Is your website visible to AI search?

AI search optimization is part of every website we build and maintain at Santos Digital. Let’s check how your site shows up in ChatGPT, Google AI and Claude, and what it needs to get found.

Book a call about your AI visibility ›

FAQ

What is AI search optimization?

It’s the practice of making your website easy for AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Claude to access, understand and recommend. It’s sometimes called GEO (generative engine optimization) or AEO (answer engine optimization).

Is AI search optimization different from SEO?

It builds on the same foundations. Google says no special optimization is needed for its AI features. What changes is how much clarity and structure matter, because AI tools summarize your content instead of just listing it.

How do I know if ChatGPT sends traffic to my website?

Check Google Analytics for visits with utm_source=chatgpt.com. ChatGPT adds this parameter to the links it shares.

Can my website be blocked from AI search without me knowing?

Yes. Robots.txt rules, security plugins or CDN settings can block AI crawlers. It’s worth checking, especially on older websites.

Does Santos Digital include AI search optimization in its projects?

Yes. It’s part of our standard process for every website we build and maintain.