There is no guaranteed way to make your organisation appear in ChatGPT, Google AI results or other AI-powered search experiences. You can, however, make your expertise easier to discover, understand and reference online. For charities, CICs and other organisations with specialist knowledge, one of the biggest opportunities is to make more of that knowledge publicly available in a genuinely useful form.
The language around AI search is changing faster than the fundamentals of being discoverable.
Make your expertise visible
Purpose-led organisations often hold valuable knowledge that never reaches their website. It may sit in evaluation reports, training materials, service guidance, research or simply in the experience of staff who answer the same questions every week. Turning appropriate parts of that knowledge into clear public content gives search and AI systems more useful information to find and reference.
OpenAI says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search. Its current Publishers and Developers guidance also recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot to access content you want to be available for discovery, summaries and citations. Placement itself is not guaranteed.
The practical principle is simple: If your organisation has expertise worth finding, make more of it visible online.
Answer questions you genuinely know something about
Start with questions your organisation is well placed to answer. That might include:
This is where smaller organisations can have a genuine strength. You may publish less than a large commercial website while knowing far more about a particular service, community or social issue. That depth gives you something distinctive to contribute.
Sensitive, confidential or identifying information should of course remain protected. The opportunity is to turn appropriate expertise into useful public knowledge.
Build depth around what you know
One useful answer is a start. A connected body of useful answers makes the organisation’s expertise easier to explore. A youth mental health organisation, for example, may have relevant knowledge for young people, parents, schools and professionals. Those audiences need different answers, but the knowledge sits around the same core subject.
A Knowledge Hub can bring those answers together in a structured way. The goal is a useful body of connected content built around subjects where your organisation has genuine knowledge to contribute.
Google’s current guidance for generative AI search reinforces this direction. It recommends unique, expert-led content that adds something beyond information already widely available, while warning against producing large volumes of commodity content purely for search visibility.
Keep the technical side in perspective
Some technical foundations still matter. Useful public pages need to be crawlable and accessible to the systems you want to discover them. Your website should also have a clear structure, sensible internal links and current information.
For ChatGPT search specifically, check that your website is not blocking OAI-SearchBot. For Google’s AI search features, its current guidance says the same underlying SEO principles remain foundational. Pages need to be eligible for Google Search, and Google says there are no separate technical requirements or special AI markup needed simply to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.
You will also encounter terms such as AEO and GEO. They can be useful labels for changes in search behaviour, but Google’s current guidance specifically cautions against treating supposed “AEO/GEO hacks” as shortcuts to visibility. A better set of questions is: Can our expertise be found? Is it genuinely useful? Does it demonstrate real knowledge? Is it accurate and current?
Start with the knowledge you already have
If you want to improve your chances of being discovered through AI search, begin with three priorities:
Many organisations already have valuable knowledge. The opportunity is to move more of it from reports, internal documents and people’s heads into clear content that other people can actually find and use.
If your organisation has expertise that deserves to be more visible online, Grinning Graphics can help turn it into clear, connected content built for the way people discover information now and as search continues to change.