What is ChatGPT optimisation?
Have you caught yourself asking an AI assistant for a local recommendation before opening a regular search engine?
ChatGPT is now part of ordinary monthly habit for a large share of Australians, which is why this surface earns its own engagement within our broader AI SEO practice in Perth. Your buyers are already asking it about your category.
We want to show you exactly how ChatGPT surfaces business information through a mix of browsing, retrieval, and trained knowledge. It always attributes the sources it can reach and parse.
This engagement works based on a few key factors, like whether your site is accessible to the crawler and if your facts are consistent across the web. Your content must answer the conversational questions people actually ask, and your brand must be unambiguous.
The distinction between training and retrieval matters more than most vendors admit. GPTBot governs training access to build future models, while OAI-SearchBot handles the live retrieval for search-style answers.
Blocking one is not the same as blocking the other, and plenty of sites work that out too late. Those that added a blanket disallow during the 2023 backlash frequently removed themselves from a surface they now want to appear on, without ever intending to.
What this process is absolutely not is LLM manipulation. No technique forces a model to name a business, and no consultant can guarantee a citation.
Our work separates the levers that are real and defensible from the claims that are simply made up.
What is included
Getting your business ready for AI search requires a few specific steps.
We have built a strategy that covers everything you need to become visible and recommended. For example, setting up GA4 referral attribution correctly is crucial.
Assume your reports under-count. Many AI-influenced visits arrive later as direct or branded search, so the referral number is a floor rather than a measurement.
Our setup makes sure you capture those hidden visits that get mistakenly categorised as direct traffic. Here is exactly what the service includes:
- OpenAI crawler access verification and remediation
- Conversational and comparison-question content strategy
- Prompt coverage research across the buying journey
- Brand clarity and third-party corroboration development
- Referral attribution setup for source=chatgpt.com traffic in GA4
- Baseline prompt testing and periodic re-testing where observable
Prompt coverage, and why keyword lists miss it
People do not ask an AI assistant the same short phrases they type into a search box. They ask comparative, situational, and constraint-laden questions instead.
Someone might ask who handles a particular kind of work in Perth, what they should expect to pay, or what separates two options they are weighing. Mapping those questions across the awareness, comparison and decision stages is where the gaps become obvious.
The gaps in a company’s content are usually obvious once mapped.
We focus on tackling those tough topics directly to build immediate trust, especially since these are the exact questions businesses try to avoid answering online. To make the difference clear, look at how search habits are shifting:
| Traditional Keyword Search | Conversational AI Prompt |
|---|---|
| “commercial electrician Perth” | “Who is the most reliable commercial electrician in Perth for a strata property?” |
| “roof repair cost” | “What should I expect to pay for a tile roof repair in Sydney, and what are the hidden costs?” |
Content that answers those specific questions directly has a massive second benefit. We call this information gain, which means your material adds something fresh that existing sources do not already contain.
That unique value is exactly what makes a page worth retrieving for an AI, rather than being ignored as redundant. The approach is fewer pages based on your genuine expertise rather than churning out high-volume output that just restates what is already indexed.
A large share of assistant use is work-related rather than casual, which is worth knowing if you sell to businesses. Professional buyers ask precise questions and expect precise answers.
Corroboration and attribution
Assistants reflect whichever version of your business facts is best corroborated across the open web. We always remind clients that if your own site says one thing and three local directories like TrueLocal or Yellow Pages Australia say another, the model will not choose your version just because you prefer it.
Entity co-occurrence between your brand and the topics you want to be known for is built through consistent facts and independent mentions. Our process ensures this foundational work overlaps closely with entity SEO rather than replacing it.
On the measurement side, setting up GA4 properly allows you to identify source=chatgpt.com along with perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com as one clear AI channel. To get a complete view of your AI performance, a few specific metrics matter most:
- Direct referral clicks from citation links (like OAI-SearchBot retrievals).
- Increases in branded search volume immediately following AI recommendations.
- Changes in direct traffic from mobile app users where referrer data is stripped.
We know those initial numbers will often look small relative to their actual influence. Many AI-influenced visits arrive later as direct or branded search, especially since free ChatGPT users do not pass on referral data.
Reporting is written to acknowledge that gap rather than treat the raw referral count as the whole picture. You can have all of this diagnosed before committing to a full campaign.
If you want to see exactly where your site stands, an AI SEO audit covers crawler access and prompt coverage as two of its five core areas. Book your audit today to take the first step in your ChatGPT optimisation strategy.
