Generative engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity are being increasingly used as recommendation tools and shopping advisers, and brands absolutely must pay attention to how likely it is for AI engines to recommend their products. This has led to a new discipline, generative engine optimization, or GEO. It incorporates basic SEO principles (how well your site works, how fast it operates on mobile devices, and lots more) and adds its own set of parameters that indicate reliability and trust.
GEO is particularly important for brands that have relied on content marketing. When Google launched its AI summaries feature in 2024, many sites saw a serious drop in search traffic. A critical mass of searches ended with the user finding the information that they needed in the AI summary and had no need to scroll down and cick on search results.
Good GEO practices determine whether a site is cited in search results (like Google’s AI assistant) and AI applications used as product comparison or shopping assistants (like ChatGPT).
If you’re looking for information on how to make AI trust your website and how to get cited by AI search tools, we hope this starter guide to AI search optimization and AI ranking factors will help.
But before we get to the list, some basics:
What are Brand Trust Signals?
Brand trust signals, also known as AI trust signals, are the visible cues across the web that show your brand is credible, reliable, and safe for customers and search engines to engage with. These signals help people (and AI systems) determine whether they can trust your information, products, and overall brand presence.
What do you mean by “AI recommendation engines” and “AI shopping assistants”?
AI recommendation engines and AI shopping assistants are tools that use artificial intelligence to help people discover products.
Recommendation engines suggest items based on user data, preferences, or context, while shopping assistants like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity act as conversational guides that compare products, answer questions, and help users make purchasing decisions.
Are there functional differences between ChatGPT SEO, Gemini SEO, Perplexity optimization, and Claude optimization?
Yes. The good news is that the core principles overlap, so taking steps to address each of the items in the list below will put you in good standing with LLMs in general. But beyond that, each AI system uses different crawlers, data sources, and ranking signals. ChatGPT SEO focuses on how OpenAI’s models interpret and cite your content, Gemini SEO (as you’d expect) aligns more closely with Google’s search and AI Overviews ecosystem, Perplexity optimization emphasizes real-time web results and source credibility, and Claude optimization centers on clarity, safety, and authoritative content. The fundamentals are similar, but each platform rewards slightly different trust and relevance signals.
And now… we present… the list!
1: A Clean, Crawlable Site Architecture
This is the first of several signals on this list which overlap with good SEO, so if you’ve been paying attention to your site’s SEO practices, this one is already done for you. Keep up the good work!
AI engines ingest your content via crawlers, just like search engines do. ChatGPT, for instance, has two crawlers (that we know of): GPTBot, which collects web content to train OpenAI’s models, and OAI-SearchBot, their on-demand crawler that visits your page when a ChatGPT user asks it to fetch a live page.
Confusing navigation or blocked paths reduce how much they can index.
2: Fast Page Load Times
Performance still matters. Slow pages reduce quality scores and can make AI less confident in your reliability. If you’re new to the site performance game, take a look at Google PageSpeed Insights.
3: Mobile Optimization
This is another SEO discipline which is still ignored by many brands.
Google has been using mobile-first indexing since 2019. This means that desktop-only content is ignored and devalued if it doesn’t appear on mobile. And it’s not just about the copy: Google pays attention to the readability of your site on mobile, too, so if your text is too small or buttons are too close together, it will notice.
AI engines like Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, largely consume the same mobile-indexed content.
4: A Clear, Consistent Brand Identity, Product Naming Conventions, and Product Data
Unified naming, messaging, and labeling help AI systems understand, and what you offer. Presenting a consistent brand identity and product and service offerings across your DTC site, Amazon and other retailers, Google Merchant Center, and social media channels, and directories (including LinkedIn) helps AI understand what you offer and the size of your footprint. Big feet mean big trust.
If your product is referred to five different ways across the web, AI will struggle to rank or recommend it. Clean, current product data feeds (pricing, availability, ingredients, specs, etc.) limits hallucination risk and boosts trust. If you’re describing your product as “red” on your DTC site, “scarlet” in your Google Merchant Center feed, and “persimmon” on Amazon, AIs may not know that they’re the same thing.
5: Transparent “About” Information
AI models heavily weight company history, mission statements, leadership pages, and origin stories as trust anchors.
6: Verified Contact Information
Physical addresses, emails, and phone numbers lift credibility, especially when they’re consistent across the web (see #4).
7: Fresh, Updated Content
Out-of-date content can work against you by eroding trust. AI engines favor recently updated pages with clear revision dates. Your page metadata (dateModified, datePublished) helps, but AI engines prefer visible revision dates.
This is one of those trust signals that applies primarily to sites with content like blogs or case studies. It’s a double-edged sword: displaying visual revision dates also means that it’s incumbent upon you to regularly create fresh content. Ever been to a site, clicked through to the blog, and found that their last post was a few years back? That can erode trust in humans, and AIs feel the same way about stale content.
8: Authoritative Long-Form Content
Thorough guides, category explainers, and FAQs supply the high-quality context that LLMs rely on.
AI engines love FAQs in particular. FAQs, by their nature, provide content in easily digestible pieces. If you write a short, clear, FAQ items, the chances are better that you’ll be cited by Google’s AI assistant, for instance.
FAQs can be overused, though. You don’t want to give human users of your site the impression that they need to read a FAQ at the bottom of every page. Use your best judgement in balancing long-form copy and FAQs. If a FAQ will genuinely help make it easier for humans to understand the content on your page, then add one. If you feel like you’re doing it just to feed the AI crawlers, then you can skip it.
9: Demonstrated Subject Matter Expertise
Credentials, professional bios, press features and citations, awards, certificates and partnerships all increase perceived authority.
10: Structured Data and Schema Markup
AI engines depend on structured data (JSON-LD, product schema, FAQ schema, etc.) to interpret your site accurately.
It’s pretty easy to retrofit your site to be schema-heavy. There are plenty of SEO plugins for WordPress and Shopify apps that make the process almost automatic.
11: Genuine Customer Reviews
Autthentic reviews, on your site and across retail platforms, provide external validation.
12: High-Quality Product Photography
Clear, professional images increase the confident an AI system has when describing or recommending your products. Imagine the ChatGPT user who’s taken a phone pic of a broken part for their dishwasher and asked the AI to find a replacement. If your photos aren’t of high enough quality and the AI isn’t sure if it’s a match, you’ll be skipped over in recommendations.
13: Transparent Policies and pricing
Shipping, return information, guarantees, and privacy policies signal legitimacy and reduce risk flags. Clear pricing (and no bait-and-switch tactics) helps AI avoid recommending misleading sellers.
14: Clear Disclaimers and Accuracy Notes
AI models reward brands that define limitations, and cite sources instead of overstating claims.
15: Demonstrated Safety and Compliance
Certifications, third-party tests, and regulatory disclosures are crucial for CPG, supplements, and anything ingestible.
16: Secure, HTTPS-Protected Pages
If your site doesn’t have a SSL certificate by now, what are you waiting for? It’s been a web browser standard for a quarter century, and SSL certificates are virtually free.
17: Accessible Content
Alt tags, captions, transcripts and WCAG practices help AI interpret your content correctly.
18: Active Social Proof
Current social activity, follower engagement, and presence across major platforms strengthen external trust signals. If you’ve been neglecting your Instagram, Facebook or LinkedIn, now’s a good time to dust them off. And if you’re reading this because you followed our link from LinkedIn, then you’re seeing it in action: tactics like this help LLMs understand the size of our footprint.
19: A Strong, Documented Reputation Across Retail Platforms
Your performance and ratings across ecosystems like Amazon, Walmart, Faire, and Shopify influnce how AI perceives your reliability.
20: Clear Value Proposition Statements
AI systems prefer explicit messaging. If you don’t clarify who you serve and what problem you solve, AI engines won’t recommend your products or services.
And SPEAKING of value proposition statements…
Here’s ours: we’re obsessed with GEO so you don’t have to be.
We know that GEO will become more important than SEO. We’ve seen from our clients’ traffic logs that AI referrals are growing rapidly. And, customers referred by AI are ready to buy. One client with a Shopify DTC site has seen their average revenue per engaged ChatGPT session grow to 71% higher than organic shopping, 222% higher than paid search, 278% higher than organic search, and 434% higher than organic social media traffic.
This is a big, big deal.
And, yes, we also optimize for Amazon’s Rufus, the world’s first shopping assistant with opinions. If there’s an AI system that can recommend a product, we want it recommending yours.
A lot of agencies are charging quite a bit for GEO packages. The problem with services packages, we’ve found, is that they tend to benefit the agency more than the customer. Our approach is different, with custom solutions to meet your exact needs and your budget.
So if you’re ready to make your brand AI-friendly, recommendation-ready, and borderline irresistible to robots, you can learn more about our service, or schedule a quick Zoom call.
