More and more of your customers no longer type a phrase into Google - they ask AI a question and get a finished answer that either includes your site or does not. Someone asks ChatGPT “who should I hire to fix my online store”, someone else types the question into Google and sees an AI-generated answer above the ordinary results. The same thing happens in both cases: AI assembles the answer from specific pages. If yours is one of them, you are cited and linked. If not, you do not exist for that customer.
That is why I treat AI SEO as a new visibility channel, not a replacement for classic SEO. This is not separate magic - it is a few extra chapters added to what good sites do anyway. Below I show which chapters those are.
AI Overviews - what they are and why they change the rules
AI Overviews are AI-generated answers that Google shows above the traditional list of results. In Poland they have been live since March 2025. Instead of ten blue links, the user first gets a ready summary with references to the pages AI assembled it from. ChatGPT with web browsing, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude work similarly - each answers in its own words but points to sources.
Since autumn 2025 Google also has a separate AI Mode - a conversational tab in the search engine where you ask questions as you would an assistant. It works differently from ordinary search: it breaks one question into several sub-questions, looks for an answer to each separately and only then assembles the whole. For your site that means something simple - texts that answer narrow, specific questions are rewarded, not general “pages about everything”.
The change is easy to describe and serious in its consequences: your site can either be a source of the answer or be invisible to AI. There is no third option. And it is not that classic results are disappearing - it is that a new shelf appeared above them, and it is worth standing on that one too.
SEO for ChatGPT - where AI gets its knowledge about your site
AI systems have no secret entrance to the internet. They know what they managed to index and understand - exactly like a search engine. And here is the good news: the foundations overlap. A site that is fast, correctly indexed and has concrete content is a good candidate as a source for Google and for ChatGPT alike. Where to start tidying up I set out in the piece on what an SEO audit covers - the same checklist works on both channels.
There is bad news too: filler content that got away with it for years is useless to AI. Paragraphs along the lines of “we are a dynamic team with a passion” answer no question, so AI simply skips them. The model looks for pages it can extract something concrete from - and those are the ones it cites.
AI SEO in practice - what really improves your chances of being cited
From what I see on the pages AI actually pulls in, a few traits repeat:
- Concrete answers to concrete questions - FAQ sections are gold, because a question and a concise answer is exactly the format AI thinks in
- Data and specifics instead of generalities - “the repair usually takes one working day” is easier to cite than “we work fast and efficiently”
- Clear structure - headings phrased as questions, short sections, lists; AI has to understand what each fragment is about
- Currency - a text with a visible date and fresh content beats an article nobody has touched in years
- A named author and company - AI likes to know who is speaking; a signed expert with a described company is a stronger source than an anonymous blog
What helps: go through your most important subpages and ask yourself about each: “what customer question does this page answer?”. If you cannot answer in one sentence, neither can AI. It is the fastest AI-readiness audit I know, and it costs nothing but an hour of honesty.
Technical signals - schema, robots.txt and llms.txt
Beyond content there are three technical things worth sorting out:
- schema.org structured data - markup invisible to humans that tells machines “this is a company, this is a service, this is a price, this is an FAQ”. A subject for a separate piece.
- AI bot access in robots.txt - some sites block AI bots, sometimes without knowing it, because a plugin added the rule at some point. Watch the detail: the crawlers responsible for citations in ChatGPT are different from the ones used for model training, and AI Overviews use the ordinary Googlebot - unblocking one name does not settle the matter.
- The llms.txt file - a short guide to your site written specifically for AI: who you are, what you do, where to find what. That is a subject for a separate post and I will come back to it in the next piece.
Will AI kill SEO
The honest answer: no. AI changes SEO, it does not replace it. Some answers do end without a click on anything - there is no point hiding that. But the higher the stakes of the question, the more often people go down to the sources: when money, health or the choice of a contractor is involved, they want to check who stands behind the information. And AI systems most readily cite the pages Google values anyway: fast, substantive, with an author. That is why it is still worth knowing how to check your ranking in Google - classic visibility and AI visibility feed each other.
Who loses in this change? Sites that lived on filler content: lots of text, zero answers. AI skips them mercilessly, because there is nothing to quote. If your site speaks concretely about concrete problems, this change works in your favour.
Where to start
Not with a revolution. First check the facts: whether the site is indexed, whether AI bots can reach it, whether the content answers the questions customers actually ask. I do that AI-readiness review as part of the free diagnosis - you send a link, I come back with a list of things to fix and tell you outright what makes sense and what is a fashion not worth paying for.
Frequently asked questions
What is GEO (generative engine optimization)? It is the name for optimising a site for systems that generate answers - ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews. In practice GEO is good SEO plus a content format AI can cite: questions, answers, specifics, a signed author.
How do I check whether AI sees my site? Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity about your industry and city and see whether you appear in the sources. Also check robots.txt - if it blocks AI bots, there is nothing to look for in the answers.
Do AI Overviews work in Poland? Yes. They have been live since March 2025, and since autumn 2025 there is also a separate AI Mode, a conversational tab in the search engine. They do not appear for every query, but for how-to questions they increasingly do.
Is AI SEO something different from ordinary SEO? The foundation is shared: a fast, indexed site with concrete content. The difference is the layer on top - question-and-answer structure, structured data, llms.txt and access for AI bots.
Want your company to show up in Google and in ChatGPT answers? I work on technical SEO and AI visibility from the code side, not the reporting side. Tell me which questions matter to you and I will quote it.