{
  "posts": [
    {
      "slug": "how-to-get-cited-by-chatgpt-and-perplexity",
      "title": "How to get your business cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity",
      "summary": "Generative engines cite specific, well-structured, trustworthy pages. The seven things that get your site into AI answers — and how to tell if it's working.",
      "date": "2026-06-21",
      "faqs": [
        {
          "question": "How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity?",
          "answer": "Publish genuinely useful, specific content that answer engines can read and trust: direct answers to real questions, concrete facts and numbers, a visible FAQ with FAQPage schema, LocalBusiness structured data, and consistent name/address/phone — all on a site that allows AI crawlers to fetch it. Engines cite pages that clearly answer a question; they ignore thin marketing copy."
        },
        {
          "question": "What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?",
          "answer": "GEO is the practice of getting your own content cited as a source inside AI-generated answers, with a link back to your site — distinct from being merely mentioned. It rewards statistic-rich, quotable, well-structured content on a crawlable site."
        },
        {
          "question": "Why isn't my website being cited by AI?",
          "answer": "Common reasons: your content is thin or generic rather than specific and quotable; you have no FAQ or structured data for engines to extract; your name/address/phone is inconsistent across the web; your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers; or your pages are stale. Fixing those, one at a time, is what earns citations."
        },
        {
          "question": "Do I need to let AI crawlers access my site?",
          "answer": "Yes. If your robots.txt blocks crawlers like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended, those engines cannot read your content and therefore cannot cite it. Check your robots.txt and allow the AI crawlers you want to be cited by."
        },
        {
          "question": "How can I tell if AI is citing my site?",
          "answer": "Ask a sources-capable engine a relevant question and check whether your domain appears in the cited sources — ideally tracked over time and per engine. LocalButlr automates this, reporting whether engines like Gemini and Perplexity cite your domain and telling you why when they don't."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "google-ai-overviews-local-business",
      "title": "Google AI Overviews: what local businesses need to know",
      "summary": "The AI answer at the top of Google now sits above your map-pack listing. What AI Overviews are, how to show up in them, and how to measure it.",
      "date": "2026-06-21",
      "faqs": [
        {
          "question": "What is a Google AI Overview?",
          "answer": "A Google AI Overview is a short, AI-generated answer Google places at the top of many search results, above the regular links. It answers the query directly and cites the sources it drew from — and for local searches it often names specific businesses and links to their websites."
        },
        {
          "question": "How do I get my business into AI Overviews?",
          "answer": "There's no submit button — Google assembles AI Overviews from content it already trusts. You improve your odds with the same fundamentals that drive local search: a complete, verified Google Business Profile, genuine recent reviews, consistent name/address/phone, clear question-answering content with FAQ and structured data, and a crawlable site."
        },
        {
          "question": "Do AI Overviews replace the map pack and regular results?",
          "answer": "No. AI Overviews appear on top of search results, not instead of them — the map pack and organic links are still there. But the AI Overview is the first thing a searcher reads, so being named or cited in it is meaningful additional visibility."
        },
        {
          "question": "Will AI Overviews reduce clicks to my website?",
          "answer": "They can, because some searchers get their answer without clicking. That makes two things more important: being the business the overview names (so you capture the demand), and being cited as a source (so you still earn the click). Both come from strong AEO and GEO."
        },
        {
          "question": "How is optimizing for AI Overviews different from SEO?",
          "answer": "It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. The same complete profile, reviews, and consistent data that help you rank also help the AI name and cite you — plus AI rewards FAQ content and structured data it can extract. Strengthen the fundamentals and you improve in search and AI Overviews together."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "is-your-website-blocking-ai-crawlers",
      "title": "Is your website blocking AI crawlers? (And why it matters)",
      "summary": "If your robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot, AI can't cite you — no matter how good your content is. How to check, in plain English.",
      "date": "2026-06-21",
      "faqs": [
        {
          "question": "How do I know if my website is blocking AI crawlers?",
          "answer": "Open your robots.txt file (at yoursite.com/robots.txt) and look for Disallow: / rules under user-agents like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, or Google-Extended. Those rules block the named AI crawler from your whole site. LocalButlr can also check this for you and report allowed-vs-blocked per AI user-agent."
        },
        {
          "question": "Should I allow AI crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot?",
          "answer": "If you want AI assistants and AI search to mention and cite your business — as most local businesses do — then yes, allow them to crawl your public pages. You can still block private areas like login, checkout, and admin. Blocking the AI crawlers entirely opts you out of AI visibility."
        },
        {
          "question": "What is robots.txt?",
          "answer": "robots.txt is a small text file at the root of your website that tells crawlers which pages they may and may not fetch. It's the main place where AI crawlers get allowed or blocked, so it's the first thing to check if you want to appear in AI answers."
        },
        {
          "question": "Does allowing AI crawlers guarantee I'll be cited?",
          "answer": "No. Allowing crawlers is necessary but not sufficient — it lets engines read your site, but they still only cite content worth citing: specific, well-structured, trustworthy pages with clear answers and structured data. Access is the gate; quality content is what earns the citation."
        },
        {
          "question": "Which AI crawlers should I know about?",
          "answer": "The main ones are GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI/ChatGPT), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot (Perplexity), Google-Extended (Google's AI/Gemini), and Applebot-Extended (Apple). These are the bots whose access determines whether those engines can read and cite your site."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "seo-vs-aeo-vs-geo",
      "title": "SEO vs AEO vs GEO: the difference, and why local businesses need all three",
      "summary": "SEO ranks a link, AEO gets an AI assistant to recommend you, GEO gets your site cited as a source. What each one means, how they stack, and how to measure all three.",
      "date": "2026-06-21",
      "faqs": [
        {
          "question": "What is the difference between SEO, AEO, and GEO?",
          "answer": "SEO gets your business to rank as a link in a search results page or the local map pack. AEO gets an AI assistant to name and recommend your business when it answers a question. GEO gets your own website cited as a source inside that AI-generated answer, with a link back to you. SEO wins the click, AEO wins the recommendation, and GEO wins the citation — and all three build on the same fundamentals: a clear, consistent business entity, strong reviews, a crawlable site, and structured data."
        },
        {
          "question": "How can AI assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini recommend my business?",
          "answer": "AI assistants assemble recommendations from public signals they can read and trust: your business profile, your category, your reviews, and structured data that clearly identifies what you do and where. They favour businesses with a complete, consistent listing, genuine reviews, and FAQ or schema content that makes your details easy to extract. You influence whether AI recommends you by strengthening exactly those signals — the same ones that help you rank in search."
        },
        {
          "question": "What kind of content do generative AI engines cite?",
          "answer": "Generative engines tend to cite content that is statistic-rich, clearly written, well-sourced, and easy to extract — pages with concrete numbers, quotable statements, helpful FAQ sections, clean headings, and structured data, hosted on a site that allows AI crawlers to fetch it. Thin marketing copy rarely gets cited; genuinely useful, well-organized pages do."
        },
        {
          "question": "Do I need to optimize for voice search?",
          "answer": "Voice assistants draw on the same answer-engine signals as text-based AI, so optimizing for AEO covers voice too — you generally do not need a separate voice strategy. A complete business profile, consistent NAP, strong reviews, and clear FAQ content make you easier for any assistant to surface, whether the customer typed the question or spoke it."
        },
        {
          "question": "Is my business too small for AEO and GEO to matter?",
          "answer": "No — if anything, smaller local businesses have the most to gain. AI answers name only a handful of businesses, so being one of them is a real competitive edge, and the signals that earn it (a complete profile, genuine reviews, clear content) are within reach of any business without a big budget. The businesses that establish AEO and GEO early are the ones AI will keep recommending as this becomes the default way people search."
        },
        {
          "question": "How do you measure success across SEO, AEO, and GEO?",
          "answer": "With a distinct, honest metric for each lens: your rank in search and the map pack (SEO); whether named AI assistants actually mention your business when asked, tracked over time (AEO); and whether those engines cite your website as a source, including your share of voice versus competitors (GEO). LocalButlr measures all three from your real public profile and shows the score moving as you make improvements."
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "slug": "what-is-local-seo",
      "title": "What is local SEO? A plain-English guide for small business owners",
      "summary": "What local SEO actually is, how it differs from regular SEO, the three things Google weighs, and what to do first.",
      "date": "2026-06-01"
    },
    {
      "slug": "how-to-ask-for-a-review",
      "title": "How to ask for a review (with email and text templates)",
      "summary": "The three rules of an ask that gets a response, plus copy-paste email, text, and in-person scripts — and what to avoid.",
      "date": "2026-06-01"
    },
    {
      "slug": "yelp-vs-google-reviews",
      "title": "Yelp vs Google reviews: where should a local business focus?",
      "summary": "Why Google is the priority for most businesses, where Yelp still matters, and why you can't ask for reviews the same way on both.",
      "date": "2026-06-01"
    },
    {
      "slug": "replying-to-positive-reviews",
      "title": "Should you reply to positive reviews? (Yes — here's how)",
      "summary": "Why responding to 5-star reviews is worth it, a simple three-part formula, and ready-to-adapt examples.",
      "date": "2026-06-01"
    },
    {
      "slug": "business-not-showing-on-google-maps",
      "title": "Why your business isn't showing up on Google Maps (and how to fix it)",
      "summary": "The short list of fixable causes — verification, suspension, NAP mismatches, duplicates, address setup — worked through in order.",
      "date": "2026-06-01"
    },
    {
      "slug": "google-map-pack-ranking",
      "title": "How to rank in the Google Map Pack (the local 3-pack)",
      "summary": "Relevance, distance, prominence — what actually decides the three businesses Google pins above the results, and how to win one of the spots.",
      "date": "2026-05-31"
    },
    {
      "slug": "how-many-google-reviews-do-you-need",
      "title": "How many Google reviews do you need? (And how recent they should be)",
      "summary": "Why there's no magic number, the thresholds that actually move customers, and why recency matters as much as count.",
      "date": "2026-05-30"
    },
    {
      "slug": "google-review-qr-codes",
      "title": "Google review QR codes: how to set one up that customers actually use",
      "summary": "Get the right review link, turn it into a code that won't expire, and place it so people actually scan — without breaking Google's rules.",
      "date": "2026-05-29"
    },
    {
      "slug": "how-to-get-more-google-reviews",
      "title": "How to get more Google reviews (without being pushy)",
      "summary": "A practical, repeatable system for asking happy customers for reviews — the right person, the right moment, the right message.",
      "date": "2026-05-28"
    },
    {
      "slug": "local-seo-checklist-2026",
      "title": "The local SEO checklist for small businesses (2026)",
      "summary": "Fourteen things that actually move the needle in the Google map pack — ranked from highest impact to nice-to-have.",
      "date": "2026-05-20"
    },
    {
      "slug": "nap-consistency-explained",
      "title": "NAP consistency: the quiet ranking factor most local businesses get wrong",
      "summary": "What name/address/phone consistency is, why mismatched listings cost you map-pack rankings, and how to fix them.",
      "date": "2026-05-12"
    },
    {
      "slug": "responding-to-negative-reviews",
      "title": "How to respond to a negative review (with templates)",
      "summary": "A calm, repeatable way to answer 1- and 2-star reviews that protects your rating and often wins the customer back.",
      "date": "2026-05-05"
    }
  ]
}