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, for Brave's index
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode	Google's search index	Googlebot	Google 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

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.
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

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

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.
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

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

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
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. OpenAI: Overview of OpenAI Crawlers
2. Brave Search: Crawler guidance
3. Google Search Central: AI features and your website
4. Google Search Central: Ask Google to recrawl your URLs
5. Perplexity: Architecting and Evaluating an AI-First Search API
6. Perplexity: Crawler documentation