Getting cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity in Australia: what works

Short answer: Nobody can buy a citation from ChatGPT or Perplexity, and nobody can promise you one. What you control is whether the crawlers can reach your site, whether your own pages state checkable facts plainly, whether Australian records and reviews agree with them, and whether you test the answers every month.

Australians are already asking these tools questions. Roy Morgan’s March quarter 2026 findings, published on 2 June 2026, say 13.6 million people, 58% of Australians aged 14 and over, used AI tools in an average four weeks. ChatGPT reached 10.5 million (45%), Gemini 5 million (21%) and Copilot an estimated 4 million (17%). Roy Morgan did not report Perplexity.

Some are asking who to call. This page sticks to what the vendors have published and labels our opinion as ours. It sits under our SEO, AEO and GEO guide.

Is this worth a small Australian business’s time?

For some businesses, yes. For others, not yet.

It fits a business whose customers ask for a recommendation before they call: electricians, plumbers, physios, accountants, builders, and other trades or professionals serving a defined area. If your customers type “who’s a good [your trade] in [your suburb]”, you should care.

It is not worth it yet if you have no website, or if the basics are wrong: an old phone number on the contact page, a Google Business Profile nobody has touched in two years, or pages that cannot be indexed. Every step below builds on those.

And it matters less if you win all your work by referral. An hour a month on AI answers will not change that business much.

What OpenAI and Perplexity actually say about sources

OpenAI’s help page, Searching the web with ChatGPT, says ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers. It typically rewrites the question into one or more targeted queries and sends those to them. The privacy statements it lists are Microsoft and Shopify.

So the question your business is answering may not be the one the person typed.

The same page says search results and citations “can be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect”. Expect answers about your business to be wrong sometimes, and check.

It also says ChatGPT uses approximate location from IP, that device location sharing is optional and off by default, and that saved memories, if memory is enabled, can shape the rewritten query. Two people can get different answers to the same question.

What the page does not contain is a ranking formula. OpenAI’s help page describes no paid placement in answers, and Perplexity’s crawler documentation is about access, not ranking. OpenAI’s January 2026 advertising principles go further: “Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you.” Its ads sit apart from the answer and are clearly labelled, and the first tests were announced for the US.

Our conclusion: anyone promising a citation is guessing, because the vendors do not publish the mechanism. What is left is the part you control.

First, let the right crawlers in

Do this first, because it is binary. OpenAI’s Overview of OpenAI Crawlers and Perplexity’s Perplexity Crawlers describe the crawlers like this:

Crawler	Owner	What blocking it does
OAI-SearchBot	OpenAI	Keeps your site out of ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link
GPTBot	OpenAI	Signals your content should not be used to train OpenAI’s foundation models
ChatGPT-User	OpenAI	Little for search: OpenAI says it is not used for search eligibility, and robots.txt may not apply to it
PerplexityBot	Perplexity	Keeps your site from being surfaced and linked in Perplexity search results
Perplexity-User	Perplexity	Little, because it generally ignores robots.txt when a user requested the fetch

OpenAI is explicit that “Each setting is independent of the others.” A business can disallow GPTBot, which says do not train on my content, and still allow OAI-SearchBot, which lets ChatGPT search surface it. Perplexity says PerplexityBot is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models, and recommends allowing it in robots.txt. Perplexity-User is not used for training.

To check, open yoursite.com.au/robots.txt in a browser and look for any Disallow rule naming those crawlers, or a blanket rule blocking everything. In our observation, some website builders and security plugins block AI crawlers by default, often without telling the owner. If you cannot read the file, ask your developer or host.

Allow roughly a day for a change to register. OpenAI says about 24 hours after a robots.txt update, and Perplexity says up to 24 hours.

Put checkable facts on your own pages

In our experience, most small business sites are heavy on adjectives and light on facts. “Trusted local professionals” cannot be lifted into an answer. “We service Geelong, Belmont and Torquay” can.

This is our recommendation, not a vendor claim. One fact per sentence, so each could stand alone in someone else’s answer and still be true.

• Suburbs and service area. Name them. Do not write “surrounding areas”.
• What you do and do not do. “We do residential rewiring. We do not do commercial fit-outs.”
• Licence numbers, where your trade is licensed by a state regulator.
• Your ABN in the footer.
• Price from figures, if you publish prices, in AUD, with the date you last checked.
• Opening hours and how to book, as text rather than an image.

Which Australian sources the models actually read

Neither OpenAI nor Perplexity publishes a list of the sources it trusts. So this section is our judgment, not a fact about how either product works.

Our reasoning: ChatGPT search sometimes partners with other search providers, so public Australian records that a search partner can find, and that agree or disagree with your site, are worth tidying. In this order:

1. ABN Lookup. ABN Lookup gives free access to public ABN information, including whether an ABN is active, GST status and historical trading names where available. Make the trading name match your website and Google profile.
2. State licence registers, where relevant. Check your entry is current.
3. Industry associations with verified membership, such as Master Builders, HIA, CPA Australia or your state Law Society.
4. Australian trade press. One real mention beats a syndicated press release.
5. Council and chamber directories.
6. Google Business Profile. Keep hours, services and address current.

Wikipedia matters only if your business is genuinely notable. Most small businesses are not.

We are not saying any model trusts these. They are public and checkable, and disagreement between them and your site is a problem you can fix.

Reviews, the way the ACCC allows them

Reviews are more public text that either agrees with your site or does not. They are also where the law is clearest.

The ACCC’s page, Online reviews for product and services, says it is against the law for a business to create fake or misleading reviews, or arrange for others to. Reviews can mislead if they are written by family, employees or paid people without disclosing the connection, by someone who has not used the service, or edited after creation. Suppressing or removing genuine negative reviews can also mislead.

On incentives, the ACCC says they must apply regardless of whether the review is positive or negative and be clearly disclosed. That rules out “10% off if you leave five stars”.

As a cautionary example, the Federal Court ordered Service Seeking Pty Ltd to pay $600,000 for letting businesses draft their own reviews, which auto-published if the customer did not respond within three days. No fake customer was needed. The drafting was the problem.

Our practice would be dull and safe. Ask every customer the same way, with no reward, and leave negative reviews up.

Ask the question the way an Australian would

Customers do not use your brochure’s words. Someone in Sydney asks for a “tradie”, not a “contractor”. They ask about “public liability”, not “general liability”, and look for a “BAS agent”, not a “tax preparer”. If your site never uses their words, you are harder to match.

There is a mechanical reason too. OpenAI’s page says ChatGPT may rewrite “good restaurants near me” into “top restaurants San Francisco”, using approximate location. So “near me” may become a city-based query, and your pages need the suburb and city words in plain text.

Test in the same voice. Do not ask for “leading electrical contractors in the Victorian market”. Ask “who’s a good sparky in Geelong”. Our local SEO guide covers the Google Business Profile side of the same job.

A hypothetical worked example: a Geelong electrician

This is a made-up business, not a client, and we have invented no results for it.

A sole-trader electrician serves Geelong and the Surf Coast. Nobody has looked at his robots.txt since the site was built.

Crawlers. He finds a security plugin has added a rule blocking OAI-SearchBot. He removes it and leaves GPTBot disallowed, because he would rather his text was not used for training. The settings are independent, so that works.

Facts. “Serving the greater Geelong region” becomes a list of suburbs and towns. The page says what he does and does not do. His licence number and ABN go in the footer.

Records. On ABN Lookup he finds his trading name is spelled differently from his website and van. He fixes the record.

Reviews. After every job he sends the same message asking for a Google review. No discount, no gift. He replies politely to the one unhappy review and leaves it up.

The log. Each month he runs eight prompts and writes down what comes back.

After a few months he would look for whether the same prompts name him more often, whether his own pages are cited, and whether enquiries mention an AI tool. If none moves, he has fixed a site that needed fixing anyway.

The monthly prompt log

A spreadsheet is enough. Write eight to twelve prompts in your customers’ words, with the service, suburb and city. Run them in ChatGPT and Perplexity, and in Copilot and Gemini if you like. Record the date, the prompt, whether you were named, which sources were cited and anything said wrongly. Repeat the same prompts next month.

Keep conditions the same, because location and saved memories can change answers. The wrong statements are the most useful column, since they usually point to a record that disagrees with your site.

Where the money is usually wasted

This is our opinion.

• Paid link networks and mass directory submissions. Neither vendor has said these help.
• Press release blasts. One genuine trade mention beats a hundred syndicated copies.
• Bought reviews. Illegal, per the ACCC.
• “Guaranteed AI ranking” packages. OpenAI says its ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers, so nobody has a citation to sell you.
• Treating llms.txt as a switch. Neither OpenAI’s nor Perplexity’s crawler pages mention llms.txt. A plain-English summary is harmless, not a citation lever.

For the Google side, see our AEO checklist and our piece on ranking in Google AI Overviews. For help with the lot, see our SEO, AEO and GEO service.

Frequently asked questions

Can I pay to be cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity?

No. OpenAI says its ads do not influence ChatGPT’s answers, and neither vendor publishes a ranking formula you could buy your way into. Anyone selling a guaranteed citation is guessing. What you can control is whether the crawlers can reach your site, whether your pages state checkable facts, whether public Australian records agree with them, and whether you test the answers every month.

Which crawlers should an Australian business allow?

For visibility in answers, allow OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and PerplexityBot for Perplexity. GPTBot is OpenAI’s training crawler, and OpenAI says each setting is independent, so you can disallow GPTBot and still allow search. ChatGPT-User and Perplexity-User fetch pages when a person asks, and robots.txt may not apply to them. Check yoursite.com.au/robots.txt, and ask your host about security plugins that block bots by default.

Does an llms.txt file get my business cited?

No. Neither OpenAI’s nor Perplexity’s crawler documentation mentions llms.txt, so we would not treat it as a citation lever. A short plain-English file describing your business does no harm and takes ten minutes, but it will not replace crawler access, checkable facts on your pages or consistent public records. Spend the time on those first and treat llms.txt as optional tidying.

How long after a change will ChatGPT or Perplexity notice it?

OpenAI says it can take about 24 hours after a robots.txt update for its systems to adjust, and Perplexity says changes may take up to 24 hours to reflect. That covers crawler access only. Neither vendor publishes a timeline for a content change to start showing up in answers, so we cannot give you one. Retest the same prompts monthly and judge the trend over a few months, not the next day.

Can I offer a discount in exchange for a Google review?

We would not. The ACCC says any incentive must apply regardless of whether the review is positive or negative and be clearly disclosed. A discount offered only to people who post something good fails that test. Safer practice is to ask every customer the same way, with no reward attached, and to leave genuine negative reviews in place. If you still want to run an incentive, get advice first.

What should I record when I test an AI answer?

Record the date, the exact prompt, the tool, whether you were signed in, your location, whether your business was named, which sources were cited and anything said that was wrong. Keep eight to twelve prompts in your customers’ words and repeat the same ones each month. ChatGPT uses approximate location and saved memories can shape the query, so changing the conditions changes the answer.

Is getting cited worth it for a sole trader?

It depends on how customers find you. If people ask for a recommendation before they call, an hour a month plus a one-off fix of your site and public records is cheap. If you win all your work by referral, or your website is missing basics, fix those first. We would not buy a package for it. The crawler check and the facts on your pages cost nothing but time.

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