How OpenAI ➕ Gemini ➕ Perplexity ➕ Claude Crawl and Index Your Website

We are diving into what many teams want to know: How do AI models like OpenAI, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude crawl and index your website? What does that mean for visibility in an AI-first internet?

💻 How OpenAI Crawls and Indexes Your Website

The architecture of online visibility is being rewritten.

For decades, search visibility meant optimizing for Google’s index: ensuring crawlability, earning backlinks, and ranking in blue links. As large language models (LLMs) become default interfaces for information retrieval, a new layer of discoverability is emerging—one that blends training data, indexed sources, and real-time retrieval.

OpenAI is at the forefront of this shift. With three separate bots operating across its platform, visibility today means understanding the distinct roles each one plays…

🤖 How Gemini Crawls and Indexes Your Website

Why Gemini Visibility Still Starts with Google Search

Gemini’s generative answers aren’t pulled from thin air. They’re built atop Google’s existing web index—meaning if a page isn’t indexed in traditional Google Search, it likely won’t surface in Gemini’s AI summaries, citations, or synthesized responses.

While Gemini may eventually use custom indexing strategies or model-specific crawling, the current system heavily leans on what Google Search can already access and understand. That makes traditional crawlability and indexation table stakes for AI visibility…

🔎 How Perplexity Crawls and Indexes Your Website

The rise of generative AI search has flipped traditional SEO on its head.

Users are no longer just skimming ten blue links on a search results page—they’re getting direct, cited answers from models like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

And unlike Google, which pulls from a near-infinite index of URLs, Perplexity operates with different rules. It uses a smaller, curated set of sources. Authority still matters, but freshness, structure, and clarity now decide the tie-breakers.

So if you want your content to show up as a citation in a Perplexity answer or be surfaced via its AI-powered shopping tools, you’ll need to optimize differently.

Here’s the playbook…

💬 How Claude Crawls and Indexes Your Website

In March 2025, Anthropic introduced live web search to Claude, its conversational AI.

This update gave Claude the ability to fetch fresh information from the web, cite sources in real-time, and respond with more timely, relevant answers.

For Claude to include your content in its generative responses or search index, it has to be able to access and understand it.

Like Google, Claude relies on crawlability, indexability, and proper site structure to surface your content. If you want your site to show up in Claude's citations or internal search, you need to make sure it’s technically accessible and aligned with modern SEO standards.

This guide walks through how Claude interacts with your site, what tools and configurations control that interaction, and the best practices you should adopt to ensure visibility in a world where AI and search are converging…

🚀 Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways we can help:

1. Book a Call to discuss how daydream can help you drive consistent organic growth — as we have with companies like Clay, Descript, and OpenArt.

2. Learn more about Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) to explore how AI-driven search is reshaping discovery and how your brand can lead the way.

3. Download The Complete Guide to Programmatic SEO to learn about the frameworks and tactics used by the best experts in programmatic content.

Thanks for reading! Reply any time. 👋🏻

Until next time,
Thenuka