7 Common AEO Mistakes That Stop Your Brand From Being Cited by ChatGPT

Most brands aren't getting cited by ChatGPT for predictable reasons. After auditing dozens of sites in 2025–2026, the same seven mistakes show up over and over. Fix these and you'll outrun 80% of your category.

What are the most common AEO mistakes?

The most common AEO mistakes are: blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt, marketing-fluff content with no quotable sentences, missing or invalid schema, weak entity signals (no Wikidata, inconsistent NAP), client-side rendered content AI bots can't parse, treating AEO as a one-time project, and ignoring measurement. Each of these silently disqualifies a page from being cited.

1. Blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot

Still the single most common mistake. Some teams blocked AI crawlers in 2023–2024 "just in case" and never reopened access. If you want to be cited, you have to be crawled. Allow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, and Google-Extended in robots.txt today.

2. Marketing fluff with no quotable sentences

AI engines lift specific, structured sentences — definitions, statistics, step lists. Pages full of "we believe in delivering value" never get quoted. Rewrite top pages so each H2 is followed by a 40–60 word answer block a model could lift verbatim.

3. Missing or invalid schema

No FAQPage. Article without author or dateModified. Organization without sameAs. Schema text that doesn't match the visible HTML. All of these break ingestion. Validate every template in Schema.org Validator and Google's Rich Results Test.

4. Weak entity signals

No Wikidata entry. Inconsistent brand name across directories. Founder profile not linked from the site. The model can't tell if you're a real, distinct entity, so it defaults to the bigger competitor it already knows.

5. Client-side rendered content

AI crawlers don't reliably execute JavaScript. If your content only appears after a React render, the bot sees an empty shell. Server-render or pre-render every page you want cited.

6. Treating AEO as a one-time project

AEO is a program, not a sprint. Models retrain, prompt panels shift, competitors improve. Brands that ship once and walk away lose ground inside a quarter.

7. No measurement

If you don't run a weekly prompt panel and track share of voice, you're flying blind. See the companion guide on measuring AEO performance — and the pillar "What is AEO? How to Get Cited by ChatGPT in 2026" — for the full stack.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the fastest AEO mistake to fix?

Robots.txt. Open access to GPTBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot today. It's a one-line change with outsized impact.

How do I know if my schema is working?

Validate every template in Schema.org Validator and Google's Rich Results Test, then spot-check three live pages monthly. Silent breakage from CMS updates is the most common cause of lost citations.

Is AEO worth it for small brands?

Especially for small brands. AEO is the closest the SEO world has come to a level playing field in a decade — a sharp 20-page site with strong schema and clean entity signals can outrank a 5,000-page enterprise competitor on AI citations.