---
title: "Where AI Models Get Their Information: A Complete Guide to Getting Your Content Indexed"
description: "How ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Perplexity discover content, and the steps you can take to make your pages available to them."
url: "https://www.withgauge.com/blog/how-to-get-context-indexed-by-all-major-ai-search-engines/"
author: "Ethan Finkel"
published: "2026-11-09"
---

# Where AI Models Get Their Information: A Complete Guide to Getting Your Content Indexed

AI search engines find information through web crawlers and search indexes. To make your content available, you need to allow the right crawlers and submit your pages where a submission tool exists.

This guide covers web search in ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, and Perplexity. Getting a page into search makes it eligible to be retrieved; each engine still decides whether to use it for a particular answer.

This guide draws on official documentation, Gauge's proprietary testing across hundreds of millions of AI answers, and non-public information. Public sources are linked in the references below.

## Where each AI search engine gets its information

| AI search engine | Search sources | Crawler access to allow | Where to submit your page |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ChatGPT | OpenAI's own search index | OAI-SearchBot | No general-purpose URL submission tool documented by OpenAI |
| Claude | Brave Search is a documented provider; Anthropic also indexes content with Claude-SearchBot | Claude-SearchBot; Googlebot access also matters for Brave | [Brave Submit URL](https://search.brave.com/submit-url), for Brave's index |
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google's search index | Googlebot | [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console): URL Inspection → Request Indexing |
| Perplexity | Its own search index and ranking pipeline | PerplexityBot | No general-purpose publisher submission tool documented in its crawler guidance |

The sections below explain the sources, actions, and limits for each route. Brave submission helps with one Claude search provider; it does not submit a page to every source Claude may use.

## ChatGPT: allow OAI-SearchBot and make the page discoverable

**ChatGPT uses OpenAI's own search index, fed by OAI-SearchBot crawling the web.** Making your pages accessible to OAI-SearchBot gives OpenAI a way to discover and index your content for ChatGPT search.

To make a page available to ChatGPT search:

1. Allow **OAI-SearchBot** in robots.txt and your firewall or CDN settings.
2. Publish the information at a public URL with readable text.
3. Link to the page from your homepage, a relevant product page, or a documentation hub so crawlers can discover it.

For example, when you publish a Salesforce integration guide, link it from your integrations directory and put supported features, setup steps, and limitations in the page text. That gives a crawler both a route to the URL and useful information to retrieve.

OpenAI's systems can take **about 24 hours to adjust to a robots.txt change**. That is a permissions-update window, not an indexing deadline. OAI-SearchBot controls search crawling separately from GPTBot's training access, so you can allow search discovery while declining training. [1](#source-1)

## Claude: submit to Brave and allow Claude-SearchBot

**Brave Search is one documented route to Claude's web results, and Anthropic also runs Claude-SearchBot to index content for search.**

To make a page discoverable for Claude:

1. Submit the full URL through [Brave's Submit URL page](https://search.brave.com/submit-url).
2. Ensure Googlebot can crawl the page. Brave says its crawler will not crawl pages that Googlebot cannot access.
3. Allow **Claude-SearchBot** through robots.txt and your site's security controls.

For example, after publishing a product comparison, submit that exact comparison URL to Brave and link it from a relevant product page. Submitting only your homepage does not specifically request attention for the new comparison.

Brave's crawler does not advertise a separate user agent, so adding an invented “BraveBot” rule is not the fix for blocked discovery. Check Googlebot access and remove unintended noindex directives instead. Brave submission does not guarantee indexing or a Claude citation. [2](#source-2)

## Google AI Overviews and AI Mode: request indexing in Search Console

**Google AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google's search index.** To qualify as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a search snippet. Google does not require a separate AI submission or special AI markup. [3](#source-3)

To request indexing for a new or updated page:

1. Allow **Googlebot** to crawl the page and remove unintended noindex directives.
2. Open your verified site in [Google Search Console](https://search.google.com/search-console).
3. Paste the full URL into **URL Inspection** and check the reported status.
4. Test the live URL if needed, fix any access problems, and click **Request Indexing**.

For example, if you publish a pricing page, inspect that pricing URL rather than the homepage. If it carries a noindex directive left over from staging, remove the directive before requesting indexing. A request cannot make an intentionally excluded page eligible.

Google says crawling can take **a few days to a few weeks**. Repeating a request for the same URL does not make it faster. For a larger batch, such as a new documentation section, submit an XML sitemap. Neither method guarantees inclusion. [4](#source-4)

## Perplexity: allow PerplexityBot and keep source pages current

**Perplexity operates its own search index, crawler, and ranking pipeline.** In its engineering write-up, Perplexity reported tracking **more than 200 billion unique URLs**. It uses machine learning to prioritize indexing and recrawling based on a URL's importance and likely update frequency. That means different pages can be refreshed on different schedules. [5](#source-5)

To make content available to Perplexity:

1. Allow **PerplexityBot** in robots.txt and your firewall. Its crawler documentation provides published IP ranges for configuring access. [6](#source-6)
2. Publish readable content at a stable URL and link to it from relevant pages.
3. Update that page when the underlying information changes so a future crawl can retrieve the current version.

For example, keep supported regions and plan limitations current on a product availability page. Link to it from your product overview. This gives Perplexity a discoverable source for questions such as whether your service is available in Canada.

Google indexing is not proof of Perplexity indexing. Perplexity's architecture description documents retrieval from its own index; it does not establish Google or SerpApi as a guaranteed submission route. Likewise, asking Perplexity to read a URL triggers user-directed retrieval, not confirmed inclusion in its search index.

## Check what happened after publishing

Use the evidence that matches the question you are trying to answer:

| Question | What to check | What it tells you |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Can a search crawler access the page? | Server or CDN logs for verified crawler requests and response status | Whether the crawler fetched the URL or encountered an access problem |
| Has Google indexed the page? | URL Inspection in Search Console | Google's reported indexing status for that URL |
| Is the page being used in AI answers? | Citations in answers to relevant questions | Whether that specific answer selected your page as a source |

For a new integration guide, test a question about the integration's actual capabilities. Giving an assistant the URL and asking for a summary only tests its ability to read a known page. Letting it search for the answer tests whether it discovers and selects your content.

## Sources

1. <span id="source-1"></span>[OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI Crawlers](https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots)
2. <span id="source-2"></span>[Brave Search: Crawler guidance](https://search.brave.com/help/brave-search-crawler)
3. <span id="source-3"></span>[Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)
4. <span id="source-4"></span>[Google Search Central: Ask Google to recrawl your URLs](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/ask-google-to-recrawl)
5. <span id="source-5"></span>[Perplexity: Architecting and Evaluating an AI-First Search API](https://www.perplexity.ai/en-GB/hub/blog/architecting-and-evaluating-an-ai-first-search-api)
6. <span id="source-6"></span>[Perplexity: Crawler documentation](https://docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers)

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