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How to make your website discoverable by AI

A practical checklist for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity — not just Google.

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57.5% of web traffic in 2026 is automated, not people — bots, crawlers, and AI assistants (Cloudflare Radar). When we ran these exact checks against 28 real, well-reviewed local businesses, every single one failed at least one of them. Most sites were built for people and search-engine crawlers. Almost none were built for the AI assistants a growing share of customers now ask first.

"AI discoverability" is the practice of making sure a website can actually be found, read, and correctly understood by AI systems — not just ranked by Google. It's a different, newer problem than SEO, and most of the fixes are small.

checklistThe foundation

Four things AI actually checksBefore it can recommend you

This is the same methodology AI Ready Vancouver uses to audit real businesses, expanded here so you can check your own site by hand.

description

A machine-readable summary

A small file or structured data block telling AI tools what your business does, instead of making them guess from your homepage copy.

label

Machine-findable contact info

Your phone number, hours, and address exist as real, labeled data — not just visible text baked into an image or a JS-only widget.

push_pin

A layout that doesn't jump

Content stays where it's rendered, so nothing confuses a system trying to associate a label with the value next to it.

event_available

An action, not just a phone number

A structured way for an AI agent to get a quote or book directly, instead of the only next step being "call us."

One of the sources: Chrome for Developers, Lighthouse Agentic Browsing scoring.

codeThe technical checklist

Eight concrete fixesMost take under an hour

1. Publish an llms.txt file

llms.txt is an emerging convention: a plain-text file at your site's root that tells AI tools what your business does in plain language, without making them parse your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to guess. Keep it short and factual.

# Your Business Name

> One sentence describing what you do and who you serve.

## What this is
A short paragraph explaining your business, services, and location.

## Contact
you@yourbusiness.com

2. Add schema.org structured data

A JSON-LD block in your page's <head> gives AI tools an unambiguous, machine-readable description of who you are, instead of relying on them to correctly interpret your visual design.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "LocalBusiness",
  "name": "Your Business Name",
  "url": "https://yourbusiness.com/",
  "telephone": "+1-555-555-5555",
  "address": { "@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "123 Main St", "addressLocality": "Your City" }
}
</script>

3. Explicitly allow AI crawlers in robots.txt

A plain User-agent: * / Allow: / already covers AI crawlers by default, but naming them explicitly documents intent clearly and avoids them getting caught by a stricter rule added later.

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /

User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /

User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

4. Make contact info machine-readable

Use a real tel: link, an address element, and openingHours in structured data — not a phone number baked into an image, or hours that only appear after a JavaScript widget loads.

5. Don't hide core content behind JavaScript

Many AI fetchers read raw HTML and never execute client-side JavaScript. If your business description, pricing, or hours only render after JS runs, some AI tools never see them at all. Server-render or statically render anything that matters.

6. Add a canonical URL and Open Graph tags

A <link rel="canonical"> tag and basic Open Graph metadata (og:title, og:description, og:url) help AI tools and search engines resolve which URL is the authoritative version of a page, especially if your content ever gets mirrored or shared elsewhere.

7. Submit to Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools

None of the above matters if the page has never been crawled. Verify ownership in Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, and use "Request Indexing" to actively ask for a crawl instead of waiting for organic discovery.

8. Keep your page layout stable

A page that visibly shifts content around while it loads confuses both people and machines trying to associate a label with the value next to it. Reserve space for images and embeds, and avoid injecting content above the fold after the initial render.

verifiedWe did this to our own site

This page followsits own checklist

Every item above is live on aireadyvan.ca right now. Here's the proof, not just the claim:

description/llms.txt article/llms-full.txt smart_toy/robots.txt map/sitemap.xml
helpFAQ

Questionsyou might be asking

Does this replace SEO?
No. Traditional SEO is still what gets your page ranked and found by search engines and their crawlers. AI discoverability is a related but separate layer: whether an AI assistant that already found your page can actually understand it well enough to recommend you. A site can rank perfectly and still be unreadable to AI.
Do I need to hire a developer to do this?
Most of this checklist is a handful of small text files and HTML tags, not a rebuild. An llms.txt file, a robots.txt update, and a JSON-LD block can usually be added in under an hour by anyone comfortable editing their site's code, or by whoever manages your site.
Will this work on Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify?
Most of these platforms let you add custom meta tags, a robots.txt override, and structured data through their SEO or code-injection settings. A few, like llms.txt, may require a static file host or a developer's help if your platform doesn't support root-level file uploads.
How do I know if my site already passes these checks?
You can check manually — view your page source, or try fetching your own homepage the way an AI tool would. Or request a free AI readiness check from AI Ready Vancouver, which runs these checks for you and sends a plain-English report.
Is any of this guaranteed to get me mentioned by ChatGPT or Perplexity?
No, and be skeptical of anyone who promises that. This checklist makes your site legible once an AI system visits it. Whether it actually gets crawled, indexed, and cited also depends on real-world authority signals like backlinks, which no on-page checklist can substitute for.

Don't want to checkall this by hand?

AI Ready Vancouver runs the same 4 core checks on your site for free and sends you a plain-English report. No sales pitch, no obligation.

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