ChatGPT relies on the Bing index for its web search, a technical detail many overlook that directly changes the SEO strategy needed to have any hope of being cited.
Submitting your sitemap to Bing
The first action, often overlooked by French companies historically focused on Google, is submitting your sitemap to Bing Webmaster Tools. It's a simple technical prerequisite, but a decisive one: if a site isn't properly indexed by Bing, it has far fewer chances of showing up in a ChatGPT answer.
Strengthening E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) remains a central criterion: a named author with a clear bio, visible publication dates, inline references to reliable sources. These signals, already known in classic SEO, gain added importance in a context where AI has to assess a source's reliability before citing it.
An official French source, francenum.gouv.fr, the government site dedicated to business digitalization, confirms four priority actions: structure content as questions and answers, strengthen E-E-A-T, secure mentions on trusted third-party sources, and associate your company with recognized semantic entities like Wikidata or Schema.org.
Structuring for extraction
Three technical actions round out the approach: structure content into short, direct answers that are easily extractable out of context; implement schema.org structured data, particularly the FAQPage and Article types; and include verifiable statistics paired with source citations, a point that directly ties back to the results of the academic GEO study cited above.
These five actions form a directly applicable checklist, whether for a one-off audit or ongoing support, since AI visibility is never permanently secured: it has to be maintained over time.
To see where your own site stands on these criteria, IDSEED's free SEO/GEO audit reviews the essential points.
Frequently asked questions
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Why is Bing so important for getting cited by ChatGPT?
- Because ChatGPT technically relies on Bing's search index for its web search function, an architectural choice that makes Bing indexing essential, regardless of Google ranking.
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Is schema.org structured data enough on its own?
- No, it's one of five levers, but it needs to be combined with content structure, E-E-A-T and Bing indexing to have a real effect on citability by generative AIs.
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Does this checklist work for businesses of every size?
- Yes, it's particularly accessible to small businesses since it doesn't require a heavy technical overhaul, just targeted adjustments to existing content and markup.
