# Make AI Visible

> How AI chatbots decide what to recommend, whether you can trust that answer, and how to show up in it correctly. Plain-language explainers.

## Start here

- [Home](https://makeaivisible.com/): What this site is about — how those recommendations get chosen, two doors (If you ask AI / If you have a website with Fetch check), starter questions, recently added, glossary and resources.
- [How AI chatbots build a shortlist](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/how-ai-chatbots-build-a-shortlist/): How ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini choose what to recommend, and whether you can trust them.
- [What I actually ask AI](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/what-i-actually-ask-ai/): The questions behind this site — what to buy, where to go, which offer is actually worth it.
- [Articles index](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/): Full reading list (how shortlists work, whether that list is for you, can AI read your site, a citation is not a recommendation, planted sources, why you were skipped, product data for shops, shopping inside chat, places and travel).
- [Fetch check](https://makeaivisible.com/tools/visibility-check/): Free check whether AI bots can open your site (robots.txt, llms.txt, sitemap, structured data, thin HTML). Not a recommendation score.

## How shortlists work

- [What I actually ask AI](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/what-i-actually-ask-ai/): I ask for recommendations on products, places, and services, and I write down when those answers are wrong.
- [How AI chatbots build a shortlist](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/how-ai-chatbots-build-a-shortlist/): A product, a service, and a place are narrowed to a few options, then described.
- [Why AI won't just say it doesn't know](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/why-ai-wont-just-say-it-doesnt-know/): Models get rewarded for a confident guess, so they fill a gap instead of stopping.
- [AI can give stupid or dangerous advice](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/ai-can-give-stupid-or-dangerous-advice/): The glue-on-pizza joke and a packing list for Mount Shasta both treated a bad source as a real one.

## Whether that list is for you

- ["Best things to do near me" is how you get the tourist list](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/best-things-to-do-near-me-is-how-you-get-the-tourist-list/): A vague “things to do” ask pulls the tourist list; constraints change the pool.
- [Without your context, the answer is for someone else](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/without-your-context-the-answer-is-for-someone-else/): Leave out who you are and what you need, and the chatbot still answers for a generic person.
- [Ask for a white t-shirt and you get Uniqlo](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/ask-for-a-white-t-shirt-and-you-get-uniqlo/): Seven models, no preferences in the prompt, mostly named Uniqlo. A specific constraint is what lets a niche product appear.
- [Say what you want the answer to do](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/say-what-you-want-the-answer-to-do/): What you want from the answer matters more than a label about you.
- [Ask the same thing in two tools](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/ask-the-same-thing-in-two-tools/): Compare the options across tools instead of trusting one answer. Free and Plus can also be different models.
- [The assistant said the table was booked](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/the-assistant-said-the-table-was-booked/): A reply can say booked or paid when nothing completed. Look for confirmation before you trust it.

## Can AI read your site

- [ChatGPT can answer without opening your page](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/chatgpt-can-answer-without-opening-your-page/): What the model already remembers is not the same as looking your page up
- [Your catalog can be perfect and still never show up](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/your-catalog-can-be-perfect-and-still-never-show-up/): Crawlers, robots.txt, and llms.txt do different jobs, and fetch can fail even when the catalog is clean
- [AI often reads only part of your page](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/ai-often-reads-only-part-of-your-page/): Your page can be linked while the price, the offer, or the useful part never reaches the answer.

## A citation is not a recommendation

- [Your page can be used as a source without you being recommended](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/your-page-can-be-used-as-a-source-without-you-being-recommended/): Perplexity may quote your page while ChatGPT names a competitor — two different wins, not one score.
- [The GEO paper counted citations inside sourced answers](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/the-geo-paper-counted-citations-inside-sourced-answers/): The Princeton test counted how often a page was used in an answer that already had sources. It did not test whether a chatbot recommends your product.
- [Those AI visibility tools just count mentions](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/those-ai-visibility-tools-just-count-mentions/): These tools send questions, grab answers, and pull out brand names. Write down named, linked only, or wrong.

## Planted sources

- [ChatGPT recommended a deodorant that didn’t exist](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/chatgpt-recommended-a-deodorant-that-didnt-exist/): Eleven dollars, no Reddit, and about a month later ChatGPT named a fake brand on the narrow questions
- [Companies use Reddit to change what AI recommends](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/companies-use-reddit-to-change-what-ai-recommends/): Brands seed Reddit posts written to be scraped. A Cornell paper shows one retrieved page can shift many related answers.

## Why you were skipped

- [Find out why you were skipped before you rewrite the page](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/find-out-why-you-were-skipped-before-you-rewrite-the-page/): Never looked up, looked up but not named (sometimes a gamed rival), or named with the wrong facts
- [You can be recommended and still not get chosen](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/you-can-be-recommended-and-still-not-get-chosen/): If the price, availability, or next step is missing, the chatbot still has to guess.
- [Reviews help only where that chatbot already looks](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/reviews-help-only-on-the-site-that-chatbot-already-reads/): A star count on an unfetched site does not change who gets named. Many newsrooms block the crawler, so a press mention may never enter the answer.

## Product data for shops

- [Wrong price, wrong shop, fake discount](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/wrong-price-wrong-shop-fake-discount/): A confident answer can still quote the wrong price or the wrong shop, and naming you does not fix that.
- [The assistant names a product, a shop, or a place](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/the-assistant-names-a-product-a-shop-or-a-place/): Publish the same facts everywhere so the assistant can tell you apart from a lookalike
- [Your product lives in three places](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/your-product-lives-in-three-places/): The page, the structured block, and the catalog file have to agree on price, stock, and identity.
- [Structured data publishes facts machines can read](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/structured-data-wont-get-you-named/): Clear product facts help machines describe you. They will not make ChatGPT name you.

## Shopping inside chat

- [ChatGPT can look up your stock only after you connect it](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/chatgpt-cant-look-up-your-stock-like-a-catalog/): A live catalog hook-up can answer stock in this chat; it still will not put you on a public shortlist.
- [Checkout in chat comes after the shortlist](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/checkout-in-chatgpt-wont-put-you-on-the-shortlist/): Checkout happens after you are already recommended. It is not what gets you there.
- [The assistant checks your stock by calling a tool you publish](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/the-assistant-checks-your-stock-by-calling-a-tool-you-publish/): MCP is a server with named tools the app connects to; strangers still need that connection before your price and stock show up in chat.

## Places and travel

- [Why you got the same five landmarks](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/why-you-got-the-same-five-landmarks/): Travel answers concentrate on famous landmarks unless the ask pushes back
- [AI place answers come from different directories](https://makeaivisible.com/articles/why-it-recommends-the-famous-places/): ChatGPT leans on Yelp and Foursquare, Perplexity on Yelp and Tripadvisor, and Gemini on Maps. Stale hours in those listings still get recommended.

## Other pages

- [Glossary](https://makeaivisible.com/glossary/): Terms this site uses, defined the way we use them, grouped like the articles.
- [Resources](https://makeaivisible.com/resources/): Papers, official docs, and specs cited in the articles.
- [About](https://makeaivisible.com/about/): What this site is and is not.

## Optional

- [Fetch check](https://makeaivisible.com/tools/visibility-check/): Free robots.txt / llms.txt / sitemap / structured-data / thin-HTML check. Not a recommendation score.
- [robots.txt](https://makeaivisible.com/robots.txt): Crawler permissions for this site.
- [llms.txt](https://makeaivisible.com/llms.txt): Our curated map for agents (same idea we explain in the access article).