Guide · AI visibility
How to get your business recommended by AI assistants
By Val Fierro, Founder & Principal Consultant · Updated
AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews can only recommend businesses they can find, read, and trust. In practice that means letting their search crawlers in, stating your facts (what you do, where, for whom, how to reach you) in plain text on your own site, backing those facts with structured data that matches the page, and being consistent with what reviews and other sites say about you. Nobody can guarantee what an assistant will say. What you can control is whether you're easy to understand and easy to cite.
Most of this is good website practice that happens to matter more now. Here's what actually moves the needle, what the platforms themselves say, and what applies specifically to apartment communities.
What moves the needle
Seven things that make a business easy for AI assistants to recommend
- 01
Let the AI search crawlers in
OpenAI says sites that opt out of its search crawler, OAI-SearchBot, won't be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot so a site can appear in its results. Check your robots.txt to make sure neither is blocked.
- 02
Be indexable in Google
Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that no special optimization is required beyond that. Ordinary search health is the price of entry.
- 03
State your facts in plain text
Services, areas served, who you serve, hours, contact details, and how you price, written as text on the page, not inside images or PDFs. One page per service or property, with a direct answer near the top.
- 04
Add structured data that matches the page
Organization, Service, FAQPage, and for properties, ApartmentComplex. Google's guidelines are blunt that structured data must be a true representation of the page content, so mark up what's visible and nothing else.
- 05
Answer the questions people actually ask
People ask assistants full questions. FAQ sections written as those questions, answered directly, give an assistant a clean passage to quote.
- 06
Keep reviews and listings consistent
Assistants draw on more than your website. Your business profiles, review sites, and directories should state the same name, address, phone, and services your site does.
- 07
Publish a machine-readable summary
An llms.txt file is a proposed convention, not a standard, for giving AI tools a concise summary of a site. Google says you don't need AI text files for its features. It's cheap to publish and some tools read it, so every site we deliver ships with one.
For apartment communities
What this means for an apartment community
Renters can now ask an assistant the questions they used to type into listing sites: a two-bedroom near a particular employer, a building that allows large dogs, something available next month. An assistant can only match your property to that question if the answer is stated clearly somewhere it can read.
That makes your own website the most important source of facts about the property. Pet policies, parking, pricing, availability, amenities, and location belong in plain text on your pages, marked up with the ApartmentComplex type, and identical to what your listings say. A pet policy that only exists inside a PDF brochure doesn't exist to an assistant. The apartment website checklist covers the full set of facts worth publishing.
The honest part
What anyone can and can't promise
Nobody controls what an assistant says. The models, their sources, and their ranking change without notice, and there's no published timetable for when a change to your site shows up in an answer. Anyone guaranteeing a placement in ChatGPT is guessing, or selling something.
What we can promise is the part that's in your control: a site that's crawlable, fast, clear, structured, and consistent with everything else said about you. That's the standard every VSF site is built to, and it's also what good search visibility has always required.
Try it yourself
A ten-minute self-check
- 01
Ask the assistants
Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google about your business by name, and about your category in your city. Note what they get wrong.
- 02
Open your robots.txt
Visit yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for rules blocking OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, or everything.
- 03
Look for your facts in text
Can you select and copy your services, service area, hours, and policies on the page? If they're in an image, they're invisible.
- 04
Check for structured data
View the page source and search for application/ld+json. No results means no structured data.
- 05
Compare your listings
Do your business profile and listings match the website? Fix whichever is wrong.
Common questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you guarantee our business will be recommended by ChatGPT?
No, and nobody honestly can. Assistants decide what to say based on sources and systems no business controls. What we guarantee is the part you can control: a site that's crawlable, clear, structured, and consistent, which is what gives an assistant the facts to recommend you accurately.
What is llms.txt and does our website need one?
llms.txt is a proposed convention for a plain-text file that summarizes a site for AI tools. It isn't a standard, and Google says its AI features don't need AI text files. It's inexpensive to publish and some tools read it, so every site we deliver includes one, alongside the things that matter more.
Does Google require special markup to appear in AI Overviews?
No. Google says there are no additional requirements or special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in search with a snippet. Structured data still helps search engines understand a page, as long as it matches what's visible.
Do AI assistants read apartment listing sites or property websites?
They can draw on both, which is why the facts need to match. Your own website is the one source you fully control, so it should be the most complete and accurate statement of your property's pricing, policies, amenities, and availability.
Sources
- OpenAI, “Overview of OpenAI crawlers”. developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots
- Perplexity, “Perplexity crawlers”. docs.perplexity.ai/guides/bots
- Google Search Central, “AI features and your website” (updated December 10, 2025). developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features
- Google Search Central, “General structured data guidelines”. developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/sd-policies
- llmstxt.org, “The /llms.txt file (proposal)”. llmstxt.org/
- Schema.org, “ApartmentComplex”. schema.org/ApartmentComplex
Sources checked September 2026. Market figures are third-party ranges, not VSF prices.
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