What ChatGPT and AI Overviews cite from your website (and what they invent)

Montreal buyers now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews the same questions they used to type into Search: who builds websites here, who runs CRM, who answers in French. Those systems do not “rank” you the way a blue-link SERP does. They lift sentences. If your site has no sentence worth lifting, they invent one — often wrong.

AERVIO treats this as GEO on the same URLs as SEO, not a second product. Discovery stays a call in Montreal hours, weekdays 9–17 ET, then a written proposal. Contact stays hello@aervio.io and +1 438-498-3913.

What actually gets cited

Models prefer claim-complete paragraphs: who, where, what you do, what you will not do, how to start. A line like “we offer end-to-end digital solutions for businesses of all sizes” is useless. A line like “AERVIO is a Montreal studio for web, CRM, SEO/GEO, marketing, and 365/IT; stack stays yours; weekdays 9–17 ET” can travel.

Patterns we see lifted:

• Hours and service area when they appear in plain HTML
• Stack choices stated as decisions (“WordPress when editors live in pages”)
• Explicit refusals (“we do not drop a fake map pin”, “we do not blast rented lists”)
• Short process steps: discovery → written proposal → first slice

They rarely cite your hero slogan. They cite the boring paragraph under the first H2.

What they invent when you leave gaps

If the page never says your phone, the model may guess from a directory scrape. If you say “Canada-wide” in one place and “Greater Montreal only” in another, you get a blend. If French and English disagree on hours, the inventiveness doubles.

Common inventions we clean up for clients:

• A downtown street address you never had (service-area GBP is the fix, not a mail-drop pin)
• “24/7 support” when you mean weekday tickets
• Pricing floors pulled from a competitor’s blog
• A tech stack you retired two redesigns ago

GEO is not mystical. It is consistency of facts plus claim-complete writing.

Same system as SEO and CRM

Answer engines still fetch public HTML. If Googlebot cannot see the claim, neither can most AI crawlers. That means:

• One H1 that matches the offer
• Canonical URL that is not a staging leftover
• Language tags that match the page (`en-CA` / `fr-CA`)
• Internal links with words a human would tap (internal linking as product)

And the lead path must match the sentence. If ChatGPT says “book a discovery call” and your form only emails a personal Gmail, the site, CRM, and search are not one system. Fix the object, not the prompt.

A cite-ready page checklist

Use this on any money URL before you chase “AI SEO” plugins:

1. First screen answers the query in one or two sentences a stranger could quote
2. Phone, email, city, and hours appear in HTML (not only in an image)
3. French and English equivalents do not contradict each other (Bill 96 belongs in the CMS)
4. Schema matches the door: Organization or LocalBusiness, not both fighting
5. FAQ answers are real paragraphs, not keyword stuffing
6. You state what you will not do — models love clear negatives

We do not sell “guaranteed ChatGPT mentions.” We sell pages a reviewer — human or model — can trust.

What a two-week slice looks like

For a typical Montreal SME site we already host or can audit:

• Pick three money queries (service + city or service + problem)
• Rewrite the matching pages with claim-complete openings
• Align NAP and hours across site, GBP, and footer
• Wire the form to the CRM object sales opens
• Re-check Search Console coverage so the new HTML is actually indexed

Then measure calls and CRM sources, not a vanity “AI visibility” score. If you want that slice written down, start at /services/seo-geo or email hello@aervio.io.

Bottom line

ChatGPT and AI Overviews cite complete, boring, true sentences. They invent when your site is vague, contradictory, or empty of facts. Write for a skeptical Montreal buyer first; the models will have something worth stealing.

Questions

Do we need an llms.txt file to appear in ChatGPT?

No. Public HTML that answers a clear question still matters more. An llms.txt can help some crawlers find preferred URLs, but it does not replace crawlable pages, accurate NAP, or claim-complete writing.

Can AERVIO guarantee citations in AI Overviews?

No. We can make pages cite-ready: one clear claim, proof, hours, language, and a path to contact. Whether Google or OpenAI lifts that sentence this week depends on the query and competitors.

What should we fix first if models invent our phone number?

Put one canonical phone, email, and city on every money page and in schema. Remove conflicting footers and old PDFs. Then update Google Business Profile so the same facts appear off-site.