A few years ago, a hiring manager who needed help would open Google. Now a lot of them open ChatGPT first, and they don't ask "which recruitment agency is best." They ask questions about the problem they're stuck on: "how do I hire a compliance lead in fintech?", "what should I pay a senior data engineer in London?", "what interview questions should I ask a good financial controller?"
You want to be the source ChatGPT leans on when it answers those. Not named as "the best agency", because it's mainly candidates who ask that, but cited as the agency that clearly knows the niche, so your name is there at the moment someone's working out how to fill a role.
In short: you can influence whether AI cites your agency, but not by chasing "best recruitment agency"; hiring managers don't ask AI that. You earn it by being the source that answers the questions hiring managers do ask: how to fill a role, what to pay someone, how to assess people. Publish genuinely useful answers to those (the same client-question pages that get you ranked on Google), get mentioned across the web, and stay visible, and AI starts pulling your name into its answers.
How AI decides who to cite
Two inputs feed an AI answer, and understanding them tells you exactly what to work on.
The first is your own content. Google has confirmed there's no special AI markup and no separate AI index; the same helpful, people-first pages that rank in normal search are what get pulled into its AI answers, judged on experience, expertise and trust. So a clear page answering "how to hire a compliance lead in fintech" is already something an AI can quote when someone asks that exact question. If you've written nothing on the topic, there's nothing to pull.
The second is what the rest of the web says about you. Tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity lean on sources they treat as trustworthy and widely referenced. A Semrush study of AI answers found they draw most heavily on places like Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube and Google; in other words, they repeat what they see repeated across the web. An agency mentioned in a trade publication, active in a relevant subreddit, cited on other sites and visible on LinkedIn looks, to a model, like an agency people rate. An agency that exists only as a homepage looks like nothing.
The demand is real, by the way. "Generative engine optimization" is searched 4,400 times a month in the US and "ai seo" 8,100 times a month, which tells you every business, including your competitors, is trying to work this out. The ones who act early get the head start, because this work compounds. (New to the acronyms? Start with SEO, GEO and AEO for recruitment agencies.)
How to influence AI answers
Each of these also helps your Google ranking, so the effort pays twice.
- Give AI tools something worth quoting. Publish clear, useful answers to the questions your ideal clients ask: how to fill a given role, what it pays, how long it takes, what makes it hard. Structure each page so the answer sits near the top, because that's the chunk AI references. This is exactly the kind of content recSEO writes for agencies who'd rather not write it themselves.
- Get mentioned where AI models look. Being referenced on other reputable sites, quoted in trade press, active in the communities your clients and peers read, and consistent on LinkedIn all build the signal that you're a name worth repeating. If you'd like to start posting on LinkedIn but don't have the time or know which strategy to follow, take a look at MyCopyPal.
- Stay visible on Google. AI answers and Google feed off the same index and the same trust signals, so ranking well is the foundation of getting cited.
- Be active. Agencies that get named by AI are the ones that show up, publish often, and get talked about. A quiet agency is invisible to AI for the same reason it's invisible to a hiring manager.
What no GEO agency can promise
No one can promise AI will name you, on demand, for a given search. You don't control the model; its answers shift week to week, and it weighs the whole web, not just your site. So treat "we'll get you recommended by ChatGPT" as a red flag whenever an agency or tool guarantees it. What you can build is the groundwork that makes a mention far more likely over time, and that same groundwork lifts your Google rankings and your credibility whether or not the AI plays along on any given day.
What to do this quarter
- Pick the three questions your clients ask most and write a proper, answer-first blog post for each (recSEO can help with this).
- Get your agency mentioned or listed in two or three places your peers already are: a trade site, a directory, a relevant community.
- Keep your Google presence healthy by optimising your website (recSEO can help with this).
- Post on LinkedIn, in your own voice, about the work you do and the market you know (MyCopyPal can help with this).
None of this is flashy, but all of it compounds. If you start now, you can get ahead of your competitors and ride the AI search wave.