New launch · diagnostic

You launched. Google indexed you in a week. AI assistants may not mention you for months — unless the sources they read do. Baseline yourself today.

Google crawls everything. AI assistants don't — they read a much smaller set of trusted sources, and those sources take time to discover and write about you. A new brand can be fully indexed in Google, have perfect schema, and still be invisible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini for months. That's structurally normal, not a bug you can "fix" with a trick.

1. Why new brands lag in assistants

AI assistants don't scan the whole web — they retrieve from a curated index or live-fetch a short list of candidate sources per query. New domains often aren't in that index yet, and even if they are, they're competing against established review sites, directories, and publications that have already earned third-party mentions. A brand-new SaaS product might get indexed by Google within days, but if no one's written about it on a trusted source, ChatGPT's retrieval pass has nothing to find.

This is a signal accumulation problem, not a technical one. The fix isn't adjusting robots.txt or schema (though those help) — it's earning mentions in the places assistants already read. That takes time.

2. The baseline scan

Before you try to move the needle, you need to know where zero is. Run a free scan today with 3–5 of your core buyer intents — the questions you want to be the answer for, not what you currently rank for. The scan shows you, with dated evidence, whether you're cited in ChatGPT's web-search, Perplexity, and Gemini's grounded answers right now.

For most new launches, that baseline is zero citations across the board. That's expected, and it's useful — because when you place your first capsule or earn your first mention on a trusted source, you'll know exactly what moved.

3. The sources that matter in your category

Not all backlinks are citation signals. AI assistants heavily weight a specific tier of sources:

• Review aggregators and comparison sites — Capterra, G2, TrustRadius, AlternativeTo. These are frequently cited ahead of vendor pages because they're seen as independent.
• Category directories and curated lists — "Best [tool] for [use-case]" roundups on established blogs, industry-specific directories. A mention here often carries more weight than a dozen generic backlinks.
• Technical wikis and documentation hubs — For developer tools, StackOverflow mentions, GitHub stars, and third-party integration docs matter. For consumer products, product hunt, reddit, and community forums.
• Your own answer capsules — Short, direct answers to buyer questions on your own pages, in plain text, near the top. This doesn't get you cited alone, but once you have third-party signal, it gives assistants something clean to quote.

Identifying which specific sources your competitors are cited from is what the deep audit does — it shows you the top-5 cited competitors in your category and the actual pages assistants are quoting.

4. 90-day expectations (honest)

If you launch today, baseline at zero, and place your first interventions (answer capsules, review-site profiles, third-party mentions) within a week, expect:

• Week 1–2: No change. Crawlers haven't re-indexed, assistants haven't seen the new signal.
• Week 3–6: First citations may appear, but only if you've placed something on a source assistants already trust. Your own domain alone won't move the needle yet.
• Week 7–12: If the interventions held and the signal accumulated, you'll start seeing consistent citations on at least one assistant-search lane. Still not guaranteed — it depends on whether you've placed in the right sources for your category.

This is structurally a months-long process, not a week-long fix. Anyone promising citations within days is either fabricating the baseline or selling you a trick that won't hold.

What we won't claim

We don't guarantee citations, and we don't claim to know a "secret formula" to get recommended by ChatGPT. What we do is show you, with dated evidence, where you're cited today, which competitors are cited instead of you, and which specific sources assistants are quoting in your category. Then we help you place grounded interventions in those sources and re-scan to see what moved.

That's a diagnostic → execution process, not a guarantee. The honest timeline is 90 days, not 7.

Frequently asked

Why does Google index me in a week but ChatGPT doesn't recommend me?

Google crawls almost everything and ranks based on links, content, and technical signals. AI assistants retrieve from a much smaller set of trusted sources and weight third-party mentions heavily. Being in Google's index doesn't mean you're in an assistant's retrieval set.

Can I accelerate this with schema or llms.txt?

Schema and llms.txt remove ambiguity and make your pages machine-readable, but they don't create third-party signal. They're useful prerequisites, not shortcuts. Check your current setup with our Organization schema generator.

Should I wait 90 days before doing anything?

No — baseline today, place your interventions this week, and re-scan weekly to see when the first citations appear. The 90-day timeline is for consistent citations across multiple lanes, not for the first signal.

What if I'm still at zero after 90 days?

That means either the interventions weren't placed in the right sources for your category, or the signal hasn't accumulated enough weight yet. The deep audit shows you exactly which sources your cited competitors are quoted from, so you know where to place.

Related

Once you've baselined: How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT. For understanding why assistants don't just read your own pages: Why doesn't ChatGPT recommend my business? For the crawler-access piece: Do AI chatbots crawl your website?