ChatGPT Uses Bing.
Most Website Owners Don't Know This.

Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools

Go to webmaster.bing.com and sign in with a Microsoft account. Add your domain and choose a verification method. The fastest method for sites already verified in Google Search Console is the GSC import — it completes in one click. Alternatively use DNS verification by adding a CNAME record in Cloudflare DNS.

Once verified, Bing Webmaster Tools provides crawl data, index coverage, query performance, and the AI Performance dashboard — a dedicated section tracking how often your pages are cited by Microsoft Copilots and Partners including ChatGPT.

Submit your sitemap to Bing

In Bing Webmaster Tools go to Sitemaps → Submit sitemap and paste your sitemap URL. For most sites this is yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml. Submit immediately after verification — Bing will crawl it and discover all pages.

Resubmit your sitemap whenever you publish new pages. Bing processes sitemap submissions faster than waiting for its crawler to discover new content independently.

Enable IndexNow via Cloudflare Crawler Hints

IndexNow is a protocol that notifies Bing instantly when content is published, updated, or removed — rather than waiting for Bing's crawler to discover changes on its own schedule. Once Bing receives an IndexNow notification, ChatGPT Search can retrieve updated content in its next crawl cycle.

For sites on Cloudflare, enabling IndexNow takes 30 seconds. Go to Cloudflare dashboard → your domain → Caching → Configuration → scroll to Crawler Hints → toggle on. No code required. Cloudflare automatically pings Bing whenever your cached content changes.

Submit priority URLs manually

Bing Webmaster Tools provides a URL Inspection tool that pushes specific pages into Bing's index immediately. Use it for your highest-priority pages: service pages, revenue pages, and blog posts most likely to be cited when users ask ChatGPT questions in your topic area.

Submit revenue pages and service pages first, then high-value blog posts that answer specific questions your audience asks. Skip admin pages, thank-you pages, and history pages — these do not benefit from ChatGPT citation.

Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt

ChatGPT uses two crawlers with different purposes. GPTBot collects content for model training. OAI-SearchBot retrieves content to answer user questions in real time — this is the crawler that determines ChatGPT Search visibility. Both should be explicitly allowed.

Many sites accidentally block AI crawlers while allowing Googlebot — either through robots.txt rules or through Cloudflare's "Block AI Bots" security setting. Check both. A site can rank in Bing and still be invisible to ChatGPT Search if OAI-SearchBot is blocked at the CDN level.

Check Cloudflare Block AI Bots is disabled

Cloudflare introduced a "Block AI Bots" security setting that blocks AI crawlers at the CDN level — before robots.txt is even read. If this setting is enabled, OAI-SearchBot cannot reach your pages regardless of what your robots.txt says.

Check: Cloudflare dashboard → Security → Bots → Block AI Scrapers and Crawlers. Ensure this is toggled off for any site you want indexed by ChatGPT Search. This is one of the most common invisible causes of ChatGPT invisibility — the site owner has never turned it on deliberately, but Cloudflare defaults and template configurations sometimes enable it.

See the related article: Cloudflare Blocks AI Crawlers by Default — Most Website Owners Have No Idea.

Structure content for ChatGPT citation

ChatGPT's retrieval layer selects passages that answer questions directly and can stand alone as a cited excerpt. Content structured for human reading — with long introductions, context-setting paragraphs, and answers buried in the middle — is less likely to be selected than content that answers the question in the first two sentences.

Key structural signals that increase ChatGPT citation rate:

• Answer-first paragraphs — state the direct answer before the explanation
• FAQPage schema — +28% citation lift within approximately 21 days
• Comparison tables — +34% citation lift within approximately 14 days
• Static HTML content — 94% AI parsing success rate vs 23% for JavaScript-rendered content
• Clear semantic headings — each H2 and H3 should function as a standalone question the section answers
• 40–60 word answer blocks — the optimal passage length for RAG retrieval cycles

Update your llms.txt file

llms.txt is an emerging standard that provides AI systems with a structured plain-text summary of a website's content, key pages, services, and entity descriptions. Place it at yourdomain.com/llms.txt and reference it from your robots.txt Discovery section.

A complete llms.txt should include: business description and category, primary service page URLs with descriptions, key blog post URLs with topic summaries, proprietary terminology definitions, and contact information. Updating your llms.txt after publishing new content signals to AI systems that fresh structured data is available for ingestion.

aeogeoai.net llms.txt is available at aeogeoai.net/llms.txt as a reference implementation.