Optimize your site for AI-powered search engines

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Optimize your site for AI-powered search engines

Last updated October 01, 2026 17:39

Tips on getting AI-powered search engines to show your content.

AI-powered search engines, like Google’s AI Overview, Bing’s Copilot, and Perplexity, look at information from trustworthy sites, then show a summary. Google’s AI Overview and Bing’s Copilot often show these results at the top of search engine results pages. These results can also include links to their sources, and links to other related and credible sites.

When creating a response, AI-powered search engines look for sites that are organized and written clearly. This is also true for AI-powered chatbots, like ChatGPT and Gemini. Review our tips on improving your content’s reach and visibility in AI-powered search engines and chatbots. This process is also known as generative engine optimization, or answer engine optimization.

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Allow crawlers to access your content

All public pages on the internet are accessible by both humans and machines, also known as web crawlers. These crawlers may index your site for different reasons depending on the company doing the crawling (for example, Google including your site in their AI search results). Your content is unlikely to appear in search results if you limit crawlers’ access to it.

To ensure AI crawlers can scan your site:

  1. Open the Settings panel.
  2. Click Crawlers.
  3. If it’s not already, uncheck the box next to Block known artificial intelligence crawlers.

Track how your business performs in AI search results

Use our AI Visibility tool to check how often AI mentions your website in response to prompts, and its ranking in ChatGPT or Gemini search results. After using the tool, you can review your search visibility score.

Can I access the AI Visibility tool?

Our AI Visibility tool is only available in English, on version 7.1 sites. It's available on all website plans, though the amount of AI credits you get depends on your plan.

What is a prompt?

A prompt is the question, request, or set of instructions you give to an AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini to get a response. In the AI Visibility tool, prompts are the specific search terms we test to see if your site appears in AI-generated answers. Running these prompts shows you how often AI search engines mention your site when potential customers ask relevant questions.

  • Branded prompts - include your site or business name directly (for example, “What services does [Your Business Name] offer?”).
  • Non-branded prompts - focus on your industry, products, or local area without naming your business directly (for example, “Who are the top web designers in Chicago?”).

Use the AI Visibility tool

To run an first set of prompts:

  1. Open the SEO/AI Visibility panel.
  2. Under AI Visibility, click Check results to review “branded” and “non-branded” prompts.
  3. Check the box next to the AI search engines to test.
  4. Click X next to any prompt to delete.
  5. Click Add prompt to add more prompts.
  6. Review how many AI credits it costs to run the prompts and your remaining balance.
  7. Click Run prompts to review how often your business appears and its position in search results.

To run more prompts:

  1. Open the SEO/AI Visibility panel.
  2. Under AI Visibility, click Manage.
  3. Check the box next to any prompts you no longer need and click Delete.
  4. Check the box next to any prompts to re-use later, and click Archive.
  5. Click Add prompt to add more prompts.
  6. Review how many AI credits it costs to run the prompts and your remaining balance.
  7. Click Run Prompts.

To run a Clarkson AI analysis of your site's AI search performance:

  1. Open the SEO/AI Visibility panel.
  2. Under AI Visibility, click Manage.
  3. Click Analyze.

Understanding your search visibility score

Your search visibility score combines your SEO score and your AI visibility score.

To reach 100%, you need to meet this criteria:

  • All pages and images scanned by the SEO report have complete alt text and meta descriptions, and
  • Every branded and non-branded prompt in the AI Visibility tool need to have a status of Mentioned

Keep in mind, “mentioned” means the response includes the name of your site, while “not mentioned” means your site wasn't included in the response. To improve your results, create high-quality content, use clear language, and avoid keyword stuffing.

Create high-quality content

Developers train AI-powered search engines to prioritize content that shows these qualities:

  • Experience - Create original content with unique insights and fresh perspectives.
  • Expertise -Provide accurate and up-to-date information supported with statistics, sources, and expert opinions. Include publish and update dates if possible.
  • Authoritativeness - Add author profiles with credentials, expert commentary, case studies, awards and certifications. Link to trustworthy external sources and your own relevant content.
  • Trustworthiness - Create clear about, contact, and policy pages to show who you are, what you do, and how to contact you.

Use clear language

To give quick answers, AI-powered search engines usually rank clear, direct content first. When writing content:

  • Give your visitors the information they need concisely and quickly on the page. Short paragraphs and clear language are more likely to appear as a direct answer in search results.
  • Clear headings and subheadings can help AI-powered search engines understand the structure and formatting of your content.
  • Bullet points, numbered lists, tables, and frequently asked question sections are easy to process. AI-powered search engines often use them word for word in search results.
  • Avoid jargon and long, complex sentences. Instead, use direct, natural phrasing. AI tools often prioritize content that matches the way people speak.

Tip: For help writing site content, learn more about creating site content with the Squarespace AI tool.

Avoid keyword stuffing

Older search engines used to match search terms to the same words on sites, making keywords an important SEO strategy. This led people to add too many keywords in an effort to improve SEO rankings, also known as keyword stuffing.

AI-powered search engines read searches the way a person would, so they understand the meaning behind them. Keyword stuffing and similar SEO tactics may become less effective. For example, Google released the helpful content update in 2022, which ranks useful content above content written only for SEO.

Your content should answer what your visitors really want to know, rather than only targeting the right words.

Build trust in your brand

Search engines prioritize credible brands, and you can take several steps you can take to build trust in your brand:

  • Increase links from other trusted sites that direct visitors to your site (backlinks), through promotion and contacting potential resources
  • Include reviews and testimonials on your site and third-party platforms
  • Promote brand or product mentions in forums, Q&A sites, and communities like Reddit, Quora, YouTube, and LinkedIn
  • Claim your business on Google Business, Bing Places, and similar tools
  • Use consistent branding across platforms

SEO strategies still apply

Many of the strategies we suggest for search engines also apply to AI-powered search engines, like:

Test your content

To learn how AI tools summarize or reference your content, try these models by prompting them to summarize your site or a page of your site:

Next steps

As AI tools change, stay informed and adapt your content strategy to stay visible in search results:

  • Keep up with new features and industry best practices
  • Keep testing your visibility on different AI platforms and adapt your strategies
  • Track how much site traffic comes from AI-powered tools in the Traffic Sources section of your Analytics panel.
  • Use SEO tools to help, like Squarespace’s AI SEO tool
  • Register for our Scale your marketing with AI SEO and email automations webinar where we'll focus on making your site easier to find through AI search and building stronger connections with your audience using email marketing.

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Optimize your site for AI-powered search engines