AI search has made website owners understandably curious about a new question: if someone asks an AI assistant about a business like mine, will it understand what my website actually says?
The short answer is that there is no single “AI optimisation” switch you can turn on. Different search systems use different crawlers, indexes and ranking systems. What you can do is make your website clear, accessible, crawlable and useful.
Start with the boring stuff. It matters.
A website still needs to be discoverable. Pages need to be accessible to crawlers, important content needs to be present in the page itself, and the site needs sensible navigation and internal links.
That sounds unglamorous because it is. But the fundamentals are useful precisely because they are not tied to one particular AI product.
ChatGPT has a crawler too
OpenAI says public websites can appear in ChatGPT search. For content to be included in summaries and snippets, OpenAI specifically advises publishers not to block OAI SearchBot if they want their content to be discoverable there.
That does not mean allowing every OpenAI crawler to do everything. OpenAI distinguishes between OAI SearchBot, which is used for search, and GPTBot, which publishers can disallow if they do not want their pages considered for model training.
In other words, the first useful check is not “have I done GEO?” It is much simpler: can the systems you want to reach actually access the content?
Make the page easy to understand
Clear page titles, useful headings, descriptive links, sensible navigation and well written copy all help humans. They also give machines more useful context about what a page contains.
Be specific about what you do. If you are a Glasgow based accountant specialising in small businesses, say that clearly. Do not make a visitor, search engine or AI system reverse engineer your proposition from vague marketing copy.
Structured data can add context
Structured data is a standardised way of describing information on a page using formats such as JSON LD. Google uses structured data to understand certain types of content and can use eligible markup to enhance some search results.
It is not a secret ranking button and it does not guarantee a special search result. The important bit is that the markup should accurately describe the visible page content and follow the relevant guidance.
Accessibility is part of the picture
Accessibility is not an AI trick. It is about making websites usable by people with different needs. But there is useful overlap between accessible, well structured interfaces and machine interpretation.
OpenAI's current guidance for ChatGPT Atlas also points to this relationship, noting that its agent uses ARIA labels, roles and states to interpret page structure and interactive elements.
What you should actually check
- Crawl access: make sure the pages you want discovered are not accidentally blocked.
- Page structure: use meaningful titles, headings, links and navigation.
- Content clarity: explain what the business does, who it serves and where it operates in plain language.
- Internal linking: connect related pages so important information is not stranded.
- Structured data: use relevant schema markup where it genuinely describes the page.
- Accessibility: make controls and content understandable and usable, including with assistive technology.
- Technical health: keep the site secure, responsive and reasonably fast.
So, is your website “AI ready”?
That phrase is useful as shorthand, but it can make the problem sound more mysterious than it is.
There is no guaranteed checklist that gets a website into ChatGPT, Google AI features or every future assistant. Search systems decide what to surface based on their own systems and signals.
What you can control is whether your website gives those systems a fair chance to understand it: accessible content, clear structure, useful information, sensible technical foundations and accurate metadata.