Getting recommended by ChatGPT means making your site readable by answer engines. LLMs do not see images or JavaScript, they see schema markup and text, so the work is FAQs, schema, and indexable pages. Ian Kilpatrick took BrandSauce from about 26 indexed pages to 14,530, and from zero AI-sourced demos to five booked in one week.
Key takeaways
LLMs do not see images or JavaScript on your site. They see schema markup and text, which is why a visually impressive site can be invisible to ChatGPT.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is putting FAQs on your site so AI assistants can find the answers their users are asking for.
BrandSauce went from about 26 Google-indexed pages before May to 14,530, after adding AEO fixes plus programmatic SEO.
Five demos booked in one week all came from ChatGPT, and all five became clients. A few months earlier that number was zero.
Ian's own visibility score went from 8 to 27 and is still a failing grade, so this is compounding work, not a one-time fix.
How do you get your business recommended by ChatGPT?
Buyers now ask an AI assistant before they ask Google. That makes "do we show up in the answer" its own discipline, and it is not the same work as ranking a blue link.
Ian Kilpatrick ran this on his own company, BrandSauce, live on Session 006. The short version: make the site readable by machines, put the answers where the machines look, and publish enough indexable pages that Google stops treating you as a small company. The numbers below are what happened.
How do LLMs actually read your site?
This is the part that surprises people with beautiful websites. An LLM crawling your site does not experience the hero video, the animation, or the interactive pricing widget. It reads structured data and text.
If your value proposition only exists inside an image, a JavaScript-rendered component, or a video with no transcript, it does not exist to ChatGPT. Ian describes the readable view as a Matrix-style version of the site: the text and the schema, and nothing else.
“they don't see images, they don't see JavaScript, they see schema markup and text”
Ian Kilpatrick · 8:58
What is AEO, and what is GEO?
AEO is Answer Engine Optimization. In Ian's words: you put FAQs on your site, and AIs look for the questions their humans are asking and know what to answer them with. That is the whole idea.
GEO is Generative Engine Optimization, which targets the AI summary at the top of a Google results page. GEO is a part of SEO rather than a replacement for it, and it is why search traffic moves when you do this work.
Both come down to the same instinct: write the answer to a real question, in text, in a structure a machine can parse, on a page that is indexable.
What actually changed for BrandSauce?
Before May, Google knew about roughly 26 pages of BrandSauce. Ian implemented the fixes the tool suggested, plus programmatic SEO, and the count went to 14,530 pages that Google knows about and can deliver to searchers.
The revenue signal came separately. A few months ago BrandSauce was getting zero demos from ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity. About a month and a half ago it had five demos booked in a week, which was every demo that week. All five found the company through ChatGPT. All five became clients.
Worth being honest about the ceiling: Ian's own site scores 27 out of 100 on the tool he built, which is still an F. He started at 8. This is compounding work, not a switch you flip.
Where do you start if you have never done this?
Run your site through a visibility checker and read what it says about crawl access, FAQs, and schema. Those three are the cheapest wins and the ones most sites fail.
Then write FAQs that match the questions your buyers actually ask out loud, mark them up as structured data, and make sure the answer is in text on the page. Then give Google enough indexable pages to take you seriously.
The tool Ian built for himself, Echo Check, started as an internal project called Pulse Check on a Mac Studio, before it was ever public. The point is not the tool. The point is that the checklist is short and nobody is doing it yet.
The results
Metric
Before
After
Timeframe
Google-indexed pages
about 26
14,530
roughly three months (before May to July 2026)
Demos booked from AI assistants
zero
five in one week, all of whom became clients
a month to a month and a half
Echo Check visibility score
8
27 (still a failing grade)
not stated
Figures as reported live by the operator, as of 2026-07-12.
Frequently asked questions
How do you get your business recommended by ChatGPT?
Make the site readable by answer engines. LLMs see schema markup and text, not images or JavaScript, so the work is putting real answers in text, marking them up as structured data, adding FAQs that match what buyers actually ask, and publishing enough indexable pages. Ian Kilpatrick did exactly this at BrandSauce and went from zero AI-sourced demos to five booked in one week.
What is AEO?
AEO is Answer Engine Optimization. In Ian Kilpatrick's words on Session 006: you put FAQs on your site, and AIs will look for those questions that their humans are asking and know what to answer them. It is optimizing to be the answer, rather than to be a link.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) targets AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity answering a user directly. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) targets the AI summary at the top of a Google search results page. GEO is a part of SEO rather than a separate thing, which is why doing this work tends to move classic search traffic too.
How long does it take to show up in ChatGPT?
BrandSauce went from about 26 indexed pages before May to 14,530 by mid-July 2026, and the first AI-sourced demos arrived about a month to a month and a half before Session 006 (recorded July 12, 2026). That is roughly a three-month arc. It is also not finished: Ian's own visibility score is 27 out of 100, up from 8.
Does AEO actually drive revenue, or just traffic?
Both, in this case. The traffic signal was 26 to 14,530 indexed pages. The revenue signal was five demos booked in one week, all sourced from ChatGPT, all of whom became clients, against zero AI-sourced demos a few months earlier.
Tools used in this post
Every tool here has its own page with pricing, who used it live, and honest alternatives.
5:03 IanOn my Mac Studio, I have an OpenClaw named Atlas, and I call him the king, because he kind of controls all my other OpenClaws, and manages them.
5:56 Ianwe built this tool on the Mac Studio called Pulse Check
8:09 IanI'm still at F. I have a 27 echo score.
8:58 Ianthey don't see images, they don't see JavaScript, they see schema markup and text
9:50 Ianbefore March, or before May, we had like 26 indexed pages... now we're all the way over to 14,530 pages that Google knows about us
10:52 IanAEO is Answer Engine Optimization. That's it. You put FAQs on your site, and AIs will look for those questions that their humans are asking and know what to answer them.
11:55 Iana few months ago, we were getting zero demos on BrandSauce from ChatGPT or Claude or Perplexity. And just about a month, month and a half ago, we had five demos booked in a week. In fact, it was all the demos that week. And they all found us through ChatGPT, and they all became clients.
Who wrote this
Every AI4NTP post is written by an operator who was in the room when the work happened.
A designer, developer, and serial entrepreneur writing code since age 10. He has worked with Disney, the Golden Globes, and the AMAs, and now runs a fleet of AI agents doing real work every day.
Founder and host of AI4NTP. He sold his first company from his college dorm room, and as a fractional CMO has helped scale multiple businesses past $50M in ARR.
A former B2B salesman with no technical background who self-taught AI. He builds and deploys AI-driven marketing and websites, and has grown a following of over 15,000 teaching AI adoption.
