● The short answer
An AI-friendly website lets AI crawlers fetch it, puts important text in plain server-rendered HTML, states clear facts about who you are and what you offer, answers real customer questions directly, uses structured data, and matches what reviews, listings and other sites say about you. It is mostly good SEO and clear writing, applied consistently.
Key takeaways
- AI assistants retrieve and quote pages that are easy to fetch, parse and trust.
- Many AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so key content should be in server-sent HTML.
- Clear facts, direct answers and structured data make your pages easier to cite.
How AI assistants use your site
Assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot answer questions using a mix of training data and live retrieval from the web. When they retrieve, they fetch pages, pull out passages that answer the question and combine them with other sources. Your site helps when it is easy to fetch, easy to parse and clearly trustworthy. It does not have to be the only source, but it should be the clearest one about you.
The how is where we come in.
What we walk through with you, for your business:
- The checklist
- What about llms.txt?
- Common problems we find
- Our take
Every business is different, so the plan is too. Tell us where you want to show up and we will show you what it takes.
Talk to usMore questions
Do I need a separate version of my site for AI?
No. Build one site for people that is also easy for machines to read. Serving AI crawlers different content from what visitors see is risky and can look like cloaking. Clear headings, direct answers, server-rendered text and structured data serve both audiences at once.
Will blocking AI crawlers protect my content?
It can keep some companies from using your pages, but it can also remove you from the answers those assistants give. Blocking a training crawler and blocking a search or retrieval crawler can have different effects. Decide crawler by crawler based on whether you want visibility in that assistant, and review the choice periodically.
Sources
Want us to check this for your business?
Send us your URL. We will show you where you are found, trusted and missing across AI answers, search, maps and reviews, in plain English.
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