How to get your business to show up in Perplexity and Gemini answers

The short answer

For Perplexity, let its crawler in. Perplexity documents PerplexityBot¹ as the bot that surfaces and links websites in its search results, so a site that blocks it, in robots.txt or at the firewall, is hard for Perplexity to cite. For Gemini and Google's other AI answers, the ground floor is Google itself: your pages indexed in Google Search and your Business Profile accurate and current.

After that, the work is the same for both: one consistent description of your business everywhere the engines read, structured data that matches what the page says, and pages with specific facts an engine can quote. None of it guarantees a mention. It makes you findable and citable, and then you measure.

How Perplexity finds websites

Perplexity answers questions with search results and links to the websites behind them. Its documentation for site owners names its crawler: PerplexityBot¹. Perplexity says that bot is designed to surface and link websites in its search results, and that it is not used to crawl content for training AI foundation models. So allowing it is a decision about appearing in Perplexity's answers, not about donating your content to model training.

The same documentation describes a second agent, Perplexity-User, which fetches a page when a user's question calls for it. That fetch is made on a user's behalf, and Perplexity says it generally does not follow robots.txt rules for that reason. For a business that wants to be cited, the practical point is simple: make sure PerplexityBot is not blocked.

Checking Perplexity access

• robots.txt. Look for a rule that disallows PerplexityBot by name, or a blanket disallow for all user agents that would catch it.
• Firewall and CDN. Bot-protection settings on some hosts and CDNs block unfamiliar crawlers by default. A site can have a clean robots.txt and still turn the crawler away.
• Server logs. If you can read them, look for PerplexityBot requests and the status codes they received.

Our guide to llms.txt and AI crawler access walks through each check.

How Gemini and Google's AI answers find websites

Gemini is Google's assistant, and Google's AI answers in Search, AI Overviews and AI Mode, sit on top of Google Search. Google's documentation for those features is short and clear. There are no additional requirements² to appear in them: a page has to be indexed and eligible to show in Google Search with a snippet. Google also documents that both features may use query fan-out³, running several related searches across subtopics and data sources to build one answer, which means a page can be pulled in for a sub-question even when it does not match the original question word for word.

Google also says there is no special schema.org structured data⁴ you need to add to appear in these features. Among its best practices, it recommends making sure structured data matches the visible text on the page and keeping Business Profile information up to date.

The reach is large. Alphabet reported that the Gemini app has 950 million⁵ monthly active users, and that AI Mode has passed 1 billion⁶ monthly active users.

Google's documentation we cite covers its AI features in Search. We do not have an equivalent published page on how the Gemini app chooses local businesses, so we treat Google's index and your Business Profile as the foundation and measure Gemini's answers directly.

What our measurements show for Gemini

We ask Gemini the questions Phoenix homeowners ask every week. In our citation study, the share of Gemini's home-services answers that cited at least one website was 71%⁷, and the website it cited most was energyshieldwindowsanddoors.com⁸. For Claude, the most-cited website was ecowatch.com⁹. Two engines asked the same questions leaned on different sources, so the sites that matter for Gemini are worth checking on their own.

We also compare the businesses Google shows with the ones the engines name. Of the window and door businesses Google showed in Phoenix that we could compare, the share Gemini never named was 0%¹⁰, and for Claude it was 33%¹¹. That is a small base in one trade, so check your own questions before assuming a Google ranking carries over to either engine. The method and dates are on our Google vs AI research page. Perplexity is not yet in our measurement; it will be added, and its figures will be reported when they are measured.

What works for both engines

One consistent entity

Both engines have to work out that your website, your Google Business Profile, your Yelp page, and your BBB listing describe one business. Give them one answer:

• One schema.org business node on your site, with a stable identifier, referenced from every page.
• Links from that node to each of your profiles, so the engine can connect them.
• The same name, address or service area, phone, and hours everywhere.

Directories carry real weight in AI answers. BrightLocal found Yelp used as a source in 33%¹² of its local test searches across ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity, and every platform it tested used directories. Before you "fix" a second listing or phone number, check whether it belongs to a separate line of business. If it does, the job is to keep the two clearly distinct, not to merge them.

Structured data that matches the page

Structured data is not a password for Google's AI features, and Google says so. It is still the clearest way to state facts a machine can read without guessing: your service area, hours, price ranges, and specs. Keep it consistent with the visible text, one graph per page. Our guide to structured data for AI visibility lists which details matter.

Facts worth citing

An engine choosing between two contractors leans on what it can quote: a price range for a job type, a warranty term, the cities a crew covers, how long an install takes. Publish those from your own jobs, in plain tables and structured data, under a named author from your team. A page that answers one homeowner question with specific numbers is a page an engine can cite. A generic post is not.

Keep the index current

Submit your sitemap in Google Search Console so Google indexes new pages. Google's documentation is the foundation for its AI answers, and a page Google has not indexed is not eligible for them.

What this means for an owner

For Perplexity: allow PerplexityBot and confirm your host does not block it. For Gemini: make sure your important pages are indexed and your Business Profile is accurate. For both: one consistent business entity, structured data that matches the page, and facts from your own work that an engine can quote. Then measure, because a single answer tells you little about where you stand; tracking whether the engines mention you explains how.

Our free AI visibility audit checks crawler access for PerplexityBot and the other search crawlers, your structured data, and whether your name, address, and phone agree across the web, and emails you the findings that matter most.