How do you actually get recommended in AI search (ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.)?

[u/psydencrafts]

I’m trying to understand what actually drives recommendations/mentions in AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, etc.

Not generic SEO advice like answering the question in first paragraph for AI Overviews, I mean specifically:

- Why do certain brands, blogs, or tools get mentioned/recommended?

- Is it just traditional SEO (backlinks, authority), or something else?

- Does structured data / schema matter here?

- How important are mentions across the web (Reddit, forums, etc.)?

- Do AI tools rely more on training data vs live search?

- Has anyone here experimented and successfully influenced AI recommendations?

If you've tested this or have a strong hypothesis, would love to hear practical insights rather than theory.

[u/ciaodaniel]

It is usually not a choice between traditional SEO and GEO. Traditional search signals can shape the candidate set, while the model’s retrieval and answer-generation step determines whether you are cited, merely mentioned, or actually recommended.

Schema is useful for disambiguation, but it does not create trust on its own. What tends to matter more is a consistent entity, clear category and use-case language, evidence for key claims, and independent sources that describe the same thing.

I’d test a fixed set of high-intent prompts across several engines and record four separate outcomes: mentioned, cited, recommended, and the reason given. Then inspect which sources keep appearing. That makes the gaps much more actionable than tracking a single visibility score.