SEO and AI search
Titles, headings, schema, internal links, indexing and llms.txt: what Google and AI answers read on a site, checked in Search Console before and after.
Latest in SEO and AI search
Why doesn’t ChatGPT mention my business? What you can check, and what you can’t
Often ChatGPT can't reach your pages, or no page says plainly what you do and for whom. Confirm OAI-SearchBot, the crawler OpenAI uses for ChatGPT search, is allowed in robots.txt and gets a 200 from your server. Then give the buyer's question one clear page. Nobody can promise the answer will name you.
Is your WordPress site in AI search? Three checks: Bing, IndexNow and OAI-SearchBot
Run three checks. Look up your pages in Bing, because Microsoft says Copilot sends web queries to the Bing search service. Add IndexNow so participating engines hear when a page changes. Then confirm OAI-SearchBot, the crawler for ChatGPT search, is allowed in robots.txt and not refused by your server.
“Indexing request rejected” on a WordPress page: find the noindex
Indexing request rejected means Google's live test found the page could not be indexed, so the request never joined the queue. On a WordPress site, look for a noindex first. In our 18 Oct 2026 lab, three switches each set one: the Reading box, Yoast's Advanced setting, and an X-Robots-Tag header the page source never shows.
Are AI crawlers blocked on your WordPress site? Check robots.txt and the server
Look in two places. robots.txt can ask a crawler such as GPTBot or OAI-SearchBot to stay away, but the page still loads for it. A server rule refuses the request with a 403. In our 18 Oct 2026 WordPress lab, only the server rule changed a status code, and it hid robots.txt from that crawler too.
What is llms.txt, and does a WordPress site need one?
llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at a site's root that points AI tools to its main pages. It is a proposal from llmstxt.org, not a standard. Google says no AI text files are needed to appear in its AI features, so a WordPress site does not need one. Yoast SEO can write one for you, off by default.
How to rank in AI Overviews: what we changed on our own site
To rank in AI Overviews, a page has to be indexed and allowed to show a snippet in Google Search. Google says there is no extra requirement beyond that. What helps is plain SEO done well: crawl access, a direct answer at the top of the page, internal links and schema that matches the visible text.
Generative engine optimization services: what an audit should include
A good audit from generative engine optimization services tests real buyer questions in the AI tools your buyers use, records who each answer names and cites, checks that those tools are allowed to read your site, and ends with a ranked list of fixes. Counts and dated answers, not a single score.