How to Appear in ChatGPT Results: A Practical GEO Checklist
ChatGPT citations depend on retrieval, trust, and structure. Here is the practical checklist for making your pages easier to cite.
You cannot force ChatGPT to cite your site. You can make your pages much easier for retrieval systems to find, understand, trust, and quote.
The citation stack
AI answers usually depend on a retrieval step. The system searches or retrieves relevant pages, compresses them into context, and then writes an answer. Your page has to survive each step.
The pages that survive are specific, crawlable, structured, and explicit. They answer one question clearly before adding nuance.
- Answer the query in the first 100 words.
- Use descriptive H2s that match real questions.
- Add FAQ schema when the page includes visible questions and answers.
- Include author, date, and source context.
- Avoid thin AI text with no examples or proof.
What to track
Classic SEO metrics still matter: impressions, clicks, CTR, and position. For GEO, add brand mentions, citation frequency, query coverage, and the pages AI tools cite instead of yours.
They Will Know Me starts with the SEO foundation and turns it into a GEO checklist so you know which pages are closest to citation readiness.
Turn this advice into an action plan
Connect Search Console and GA4 to get the SEO and GEO priorities for your site.
Get my planFrequently asked questions
Can I guarantee a ChatGPT citation?
No. You can improve citation probability by making pages crawlable, structured, specific, and trustworthy, but AI citations are not deterministic.