ARTICLE
Building an AI-Visible Website
A step-by-step guide to making your website visible to AI search engines. From robots.txt to llms.txt to content structure.
Apr 16, 20264 min readAI & SEO
AI visibility is the new SEO
In 2026, an increasing share of search happens through AI — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI Overviews. These systems don't show ten blue links. They generate answers and cite sources. If your website isn't structured for AI consumption, you're invisible to a growing segment of searchers.
The good news: making a site AI-visible mostly means doing good SEO better. The additional AI-specific steps are straightforward and take a few hours.
Step 1: Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt
AI search engines use web crawlers to index your content. If your robots.txt blocks them, they can't include you.
Allow these crawlers (they cite your content in search answers):
- GPTBot, ChatGPT-User (OpenAI)
- ClaudeBot, Claude-SearchBot (Anthropic)
- PerplexityBot
- Applebot-Extended (Apple Intelligence)
Block these crawlers (they scrape for model training, not search):
- CCBot (Common Crawl — model training)
- Google-Extended (Gemini training)
Check your current AI crawler permissions with the AI Visibility Grader.
Step 2: Create an llms.txt file
The llms.txt specification is an emerging standard — a plain-text file at /llms.txt that provides a machine-readable summary of your site.
Think of it as a README for AI crawlers. It should include:
- What your business/product is (1–2 sentences)
- Key pages with URLs
- Pricing information
- Features and services
- FAQ answers
This file helps AI models quickly understand what you offer so they can cite you accurately when relevant questions arise.
Step 3: Add structured data everywhere
JSON-LD schema markup gives AI crawlers machine-readable facts. A page with Organization schema tells an AI model "this is a business called X, located at Y, offering Z." That structured understanding is far more reliable than parsing marketing copy.
Key schema types:
- Organization — homepage
- LocalBusiness — local business sites
- SoftwareApplication — SaaS/tool sites
- FAQPage — any page with Q&A content
- Article/BlogPosting — blog posts
- Product — product pages