AIBy Net Age teamCreated · 12 min read

How to Make Your Website Easier for AI to Find and Understand

A practical guide for business owners and developers: crawler access, search versus training bots, indexation, rendering, structured data and how to monitor AI visibility honestly.

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More of your customers now start with a question typed into ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot or Google's AI features rather than a list of blue links. The answers those tools give are built from pages they can reach, read and trust. If your website is hard to fetch, hides its key information behind clicks, or says one thing in its markup and another on screen, it becomes harder for any of these systems to use it.

This guide is written for business owners, with a technical checklist you can hand straight to your developer. It does not promise rankings or citations, because nobody can honestly promise those. What it does is remove the avoidable reasons an AI system, or a search engine, would skip your site.

Your Quick Checklist

1. Understand How AI Tools Find Pages

There is no single "AI index". Each provider runs its own systems, with its own crawlers, rules and ways of choosing sources. Broadly, three things happen.

  • Search retrieval. A crawler visits public pages so they can be shown or cited when someone asks a question. ChatGPT search uses OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google Search's own index, crawled by Googlebot.
  • User-triggered fetching. When a person asks an assistant to look at a specific page, the assistant may fetch it on their behalf, for example ChatGPT-User or Claude-User.
  • Model training. Separate crawlers, such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot, collect content that may be used to train future models.

Google's own guidance is direct about its part of this. In its guide to optimising for generative AI search, Google explains that the way Google Search finds and processes pages remains the core of how its AI features access content, and that a page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet to appear in those features. In other words, good technical SEO is the foundation. If you have not read our earlier article on how to get your business found on ChatGPT, it covers the business side of this. This article goes deeper into the technical work.

2. Decide Which Crawlers May Access Your Site

Your robots.txt file, at the root of your domain, tells well-behaved crawlers which parts of the site they may visit. Each provider documents its own user-agent tokens, so rules must be written per crawler. The main ones your developer should know:

  • Google: Googlebot crawls for Google Search, which also feeds AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google-Extended is a separate control token, not a separate crawler, that manages whether content Google crawls may be used for training future Gemini models and related uses. It is listed in Google's common crawlers documentation.
  • OpenAI: OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, GPTBot for training, and ChatGPT-User for actions a person triggers. OpenAI documents each one, with published IP ranges, on its crawler overview page.
  • Anthropic: Claude-SearchBot for search quality, ClaudeBot for training, and Claude-User for requests made by Claude users. These are described in Anthropic's crawler help article.
  • Microsoft: Bingbot crawls for Bing, which also supports Copilot experiences. See Bing Webmaster Guidelines.

An example of a robots.txt that allows search and assistant access while opting out of OpenAI and Anthropic training might look like this. It is an example, not a recommendation for every business:

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
Allow: /

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: *
Disallow: /admin/
Allow: /

Sitemap: https://www.example.co.za/sitemap.xml

A few practical points for your developer:

  • A crawler follows the most specific group that names it. If you add a group for one bot, it no longer reads your general User-agent: * rules, so repeat anything important.
  • Changes are not instant. OpenAI notes it can take around 24 hours for its search systems to adjust after a robots.txt update.
  • robots.txt controls crawling, not indexing. A blocked page can sometimes still appear as a bare link if other sites point to it. Use noindex on a crawlable page if you need it kept out of search results.
  • User-triggered fetchers may not follow robots.txt in the same way, because a person asked for the page. OpenAI states this about ChatGPT-User. Do not rely on robots.txt to protect private information. Put private pages behind a login.

3. Separate Search Retrieval From AI Training

This is the decision most business owners have not been asked to make, and it matters. Allowing a search crawler and allowing a training crawler are different choices, and the major providers let you make them separately.

OpenAI states that its settings are independent, so a site can allow OAI-SearchBot to appear in ChatGPT search while disallowing GPTBot to signal that content should not be used for training. It also states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Anthropic similarly separates Claude-SearchBot from ClaudeBot, and notes that disabling its search bot may reduce your visibility in Claude's search results.

For most service businesses that want to be recommended, blocking the search crawlers is counterproductive. Whether to allow training crawlers is a business and content-ownership decision. Publishers with valuable original content sometimes opt out of training. A plumber who wants more call-outs may not mind. Either way, decide on purpose, write it down and check that your robots.txt reflects it. We regularly find sites that block every AI crawler because a plugin or a hosting template did it by default.

4. Check Status Codes and Redirects

Every page answers a crawler with a status code before it shows any content. If that code is wrong, nothing else on the page matters.

  • 200 means the page loaded. Your important pages should return this directly.
  • 301 or 308 means the page has moved permanently. Use these when you change a URL, and point to the final address in one step.
  • 302 or 307 means a temporary move. These are often used by mistake for permanent changes.
  • 404 or 410 means the page is gone. That is fine for pages you removed, but not for pages you still want found.
  • 5xx errors mean the server failed. Repeated server errors cause crawlers to slow down or give up.

Common problems we see: redirect chains that hop three or four times, the http and www versions of a site redirecting inconsistently, "soft 404s" where a missing page shows an error message but returns 200, and pages that return 200 to a browser but 403 to a bot. Your developer can check these with curl -I, a crawler tool, or the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console.

5. Get Canonical URLs and Indexation Right

Many sites show the same content at several addresses: with and without tracking parameters, with and without a trailing slash, through filters, or on a print version. A rel="canonical" link tells search engines which version is the main one. Google's guide to consolidating duplicate URLs explains the options.

Checks for your developer:

  • Each indexable page should have a self-referencing canonical with the full, final URL.
  • Canonicals should never point to the homepage by default, to a redirect, or to a page that is noindex.
  • Look for noindex left over from a staging site. It is one of the most common reasons a new site disappears.
  • Check headers as well as HTML. An X-Robots-Tag: noindex header can hide a page even when the HTML looks fine.
  • Remember that nosnippet and very small max-snippet values can stop Google showing your content in AI features, because Google requires eligibility for a snippet.

Crawlers discover pages mainly by following links. A page with no internal links pointing to it is called an orphan, and it may never be found, even if it is your best service page.

  • Link from your main navigation, service pages and articles to the pages that matter, using plain <a href> links rather than clickable elements that only work with JavaScript.
  • Use descriptive link text such as "website maintenance in Johannesburg" instead of "click here".
  • Keep an XML sitemap that lists only canonical, indexable pages that return 200. Remove redirects, error pages and noindex pages from it.
  • Include accurate lastmod dates, and only change them when the content really changes.
  • Reference the sitemap in robots.txt and submit it in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.

A sitemap helps discovery. It does not force indexing, and it does not replace good internal linking.

7. Test Rendered Versus Initial HTML

Modern websites often send a nearly empty page and then build the content in the browser with JavaScript. Google can process JavaScript as long as it is not blocked, and its JavaScript SEO basics explain how. Not every crawler renders JavaScript as thoroughly, and providers do not all document their rendering in detail. The safest approach is to make sure the important content is present in the HTML the server sends.

Ask your developer to test one representative page from each template, not just the homepage. A typical set would be the homepage, a service page, a location page, an article, a product page and a contact page. For each one:

  1. View the initial HTML with curl or "view source" and confirm the main heading, body text, prices, contact details and internal links are there.
  2. Compare it with the rendered page in Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool or a headless browser.
  3. Note anything that only appears after interaction: tabs, accordions, "load more" buttons, pop-ups, chat widgets or content behind a cookie banner. Crawlers do not click. If your opening hours or prices only appear after a click that triggers a new request, assume many crawlers will not see them.
  4. Check that lazy-loaded images use real img elements with src and useful alt text.

Content in the initial HTML that is visually collapsed, such as an accordion, is generally fine. Content that does not exist until someone clicks is the risk.

8. Write Clear Titles, Headings and Helpful Content

AI systems are good at understanding language. Google says you do not need to rewrite content in a special way for AI, split it into tiny "chunks", or create separate pages for every variation of a question. What helps is the same thing that helps a customer: clear, specific and useful pages.

  • Titles: say what the page is and who it is for, for example "Website Maintenance for Small Businesses in Gauteng | Your Company".
  • Headings: use one main heading and logical subheadings that describe each section.
  • Answer real questions: what you do, where, for whom, how long it takes, what it costs or how pricing works, and what happens next.
  • Be specific: service areas, industries, real processes and real examples are more useful than general claims.
  • Add what only you know. Google's guide encourages "non-commodity" content based on first-hand experience rather than restating what is already everywhere.
  • Keep business details consistent: your name, address, phone number and hours should match your website, Google Business Profile and other listings.

9. Keep Structured Data Accurate

Structured data, usually JSON-LD using schema.org vocabulary, describes your page in a machine-readable way: your organisation, local business details, articles, products, breadcrumbs and so on. Google is clear that structured data is not required for its generative AI features and that there is no special AI markup. It remains useful for search features and for clarity.

The rule that matters most is consistency. Google's structured data policies require markup to represent the visible content of the page. Do not mark up reviews you do not show, prices that differ from the page, or opening hours that are out of date. Validate your markup with Google's Rich Results Test or the Schema Markup Validator, and recheck it whenever the page changes.

10. Make Sure Your Firewall Is Not Blocking the Bots You Want

Security tools are necessary, but they can quietly block legitimate crawlers. Bot protection, web application firewalls (WAFs), rate limits, country blocks and "are you human" challenges can all return errors or challenge pages to search crawlers. Your robots.txt may say "welcome" while your firewall says "go away".

  • Check your firewall or CDN settings for AI or bot blocking options that were switched on by default.
  • Look at server logs for requests from the crawlers you want, and check which status codes they received.
  • Verify genuine crawlers using the providers' published IP ranges or reverse DNS, rather than trusting the user-agent string, which anyone can fake. OpenAI publishes JSON files of its IP ranges for each bot.
  • Avoid serving crawlers a different page from what customers see. That can be treated as cloaking.

Anthropic notes that blocking its IP addresses can stop it reading your robots.txt at all, so robots rules are the more reliable way to express a preference.

11. Show Evidence and Keep Dates Honest

When an assistant chooses between sources, clear evidence helps. Show who wrote or reviewed a page where relevant, link to the sources behind factual claims, and back up statements with real examples, client work you have permission to share, or data you can stand behind.

Dates matter too. Show a published date on articles, and an updated date when you make a meaningful change. Keep the visible dates, the datePublished and dateModified values in your structured data and your sitemap lastmod in agreement. Do not change dates just to look fresh. If a price, policy or regulation changes, update the page and its date together.

12. Know the Difference Between an Audit and AI Visibility Monitoring

Everything above is a technical audit. It tells you whether your site can be reached, read and understood. It does not tell you whether ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude actually mention you.

AI visibility monitoring is a separate job. It means regularly asking a defined set of realistic questions across several assistants, recording whether and how your business appears, which sources are cited, and how that changes over time. Answers vary by provider, by wording, by location and even between two identical questions, so single screenshots prove very little. Look for trends across many questions, and connect them to real outcomes such as enquiries and referral traffic in your analytics.

Be wary of anyone who promises guaranteed AI citations or rankings. Each provider decides independently what to show, and those systems change often. A clean technical foundation gives you a fair chance. It is not a guarantee.

A Note on Llms.txt

You may have been told you need an llms.txt file. It is a proposed convention, not a standard that the major assistants require. Google states plainly that Google Search does not use llms.txt or other special AI files, and you do not need one to appear in its AI features. Adding one is unlikely to cause harm, but it should never come before the basics in this guide.

Where to Start This Week

  1. Open your robots.txt and confirm it matches the decision you have made about search and training crawlers.
  2. Check that your top ten pages return 200, have the correct canonical and are not noindex.
  3. View the source of one page from each template and confirm the key content is there without clicking anything.
  4. Ask whoever manages your hosting or firewall whether AI or bot blocking is switched on.
  5. Verify your site in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, and submit a clean sitemap.

If you would like help, our SEO team can run a technical review of your templates, crawler access and indexation, and set up ongoing monitoring of how your business appears in AI answers. You can also get in touch to talk it through.