How to get found in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews

For twenty years, search looked the same: you typed something in and got ten blue links. That’s no longer true. When you look something up today, you increasingly get an answer first. At the top of Google, in ChatGPT or in Perplexity.

In the Netherlands, it happened fast. On May 20, 2025, Google’s AI Overviews came to Dutch1Google Nederland, 2025Googelen is nu nog eenvoudiger met AI-overzichten in het NederlandsOpen the source, and on October 8, 2025, AI Mode followed, where you have a whole conversation with Google2Google Nederland, 2025De AI-modus komt naar Google Zoeken in NederlandOpen the source. Worldwide, more than 2.5 billion people now use AI Overviews every month3Google, 2026Google I/O 2026: Sundar Pichai's opening keynoteOpen the source, and ChatGPT has more than 900 million users a week4OpenAI, 2026Scaling AI for everyoneOpen the source.

In the Netherlands, this isn’t niche behavior anymore either. According to Statistics Netherlands (CBS), 39% of adults used AI such as ChatGPT, Copilot or DeepL in the three months before the survey, and nine in ten people aged 18 to 25 have used a chatbot at some point5CBS, 2026AI in de samenleving: ervaringen en opiniesOpen the source. So your customers are already asking an AI. The question is whether you’re in the answer.

The most cited study comes from Pew Research Center. In the spring of 2025, it tracked the real browsing behavior of American internet users. When an AI summary appeared above the results, only 8% clicked through to a regular search result. Without a summary, it was 15%. Just 1% clicked a link inside the summary itself6Pew Research Center, 2025Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the resultsOpen the source.

Ahrefs saw the same thing in data from 300,000 keywords: when an AI Overview appears, the number one result in Google gets far fewer clicks. In 2025 that was 34.5% fewer7Ahrefs, 2025AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 34.5%Open the source. In the update with data from late 2025, it was already 58% fewer8Ahrefs, 2026Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58%Open the source.

That’s the real news. Seer Interactive analyzed more than 3,000 searches and found that clicks don’t just disappear, they also move: to the businesses named in the answer itself9Seer Interactive, 2025AIO Impact on Google CTR: September 2025 UpdateOpen the source. Seer is upfront that this is correlation, not proven cause. But the direction is clear: ranking at the top of the regular results is worth less than it used to be. Being named in the answer is the new first place.

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: building your website so that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews use your information and name you as a source. The term comes from a study by Princeton University and Georgia Tech, presented in 2024 at KDD, one of the leading conferences on data and search systems10Princeton University & Georgia Tech (KDD 2024), 2023GEO: Generative Engine OptimizationOpen the source.

The researchers behind the GEO paper rewrote texts in nine different ways and measured how much of each text then ended up in the AI answers. They tested this with 10,000 queries10Princeton University & Georgia Tech (KDD 2024), 2023GEO: Generative Engine OptimizationOpen the source.

The outcome is refreshingly down to earth. What works is what a good journalist does anyway: add a quote from an expert, give concrete numbers and say where something comes from. What doesn’t work is the old SEO trick of repeating keywords. That actually made texts less visible.

The best detail: the gains were biggest for sites that weren’t at the top. A source in fifth place became more than twice as visible in the answer once it cited its sources10Princeton University & Georgia Tech (KDD 2024), 2023GEO: Generative Engine OptimizationOpen the source. Ahrefs sees something similar at Google: only 38% of the sources in AI Overviews now come from the top ten regular results11Ahrefs, 2026Update: 38% of AI Overview Citations Pull From The Top 10Open the source. So you don’t have to be number one before you get named.

A second lesson comes from outside your own site. Researchers at the University of Toronto found that AI search engines cite independent sources, such as trade media, comparison sites and reviews, far more often than brands’ own websites12University of Toronto (arXiv), 2025Generative Engine Optimization: How to Dominate AI SearchOpen the source. McKinsey comes to the same conclusion: a brand’s own site makes up only 5 to 10% of the sources AI search uses13McKinsey & Company, 2025New front door to the internet: Winning in the age of AI searchOpen the source. So what others write about you counts too.

To understand what works, it helps to see what happens between the question and the answer. Google describes it itself: the AI breaks a question into several searches, reads what it finds and builds an answer from that, with links to the sources14Google Search Central, 2025AI features and your websiteOpen the source.

That has a practical consequence. An AI doesn’t read your page from top to bottom like a person does. It looks for a passage that answers the question. A page that opens with contact us for a price gives it nothing. A page that opens with a clear answer, a price and a date does.

A lot is being sold around GEO. In May 2026, Google published its own guide, and the core message is clear: optimizing for AI search is optimizing for search, so it’s still SEO15Google Search Central, 2026Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google SearchOpen the source. To show up in AI Overviews, your page just needs to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet in the results. You don’t need special files or extra code14Google Search Central, 2025AI features and your websiteOpen the source.

According to Google, you can safely ignore these:

What Google does stress is trust. Its guidelines for helpful content say trustworthiness matters most: show who wrote something, why that person knows the subject and where the information comes from17Google Search Central, 2026Creating helpful, reliable, people-first contentOpen the source. That’s exactly what the GEO research rewards too.

Since August 31, 2026, Google Search Console has a separate report for impressions in Google’s AI features21Google Search Central Blog, 2026Introducing Search Generative AI performance reports in Search ConsoleOpen the source. Your analytics also show how many visitors come in from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai or copilot.microsoft.com. On top of that, ask the questions your customers ask in different AI tools every month, and write down whether you get named.

This page is an example in itself: the answer is at the top, every claim has a source, the author is named and the text is right there in the HTML. That’s how we build every website at Forwarddd. In our marketing packages, we add an SEO and AI audit every month, and we improve your pages based on keyword research and the search terms from your ads.

Curious where your site stands right now? The free Future-Proof Website Scan checks, among other things, how easy you are to find in Google and ChatGPT, and you get a report within 24 hours.