Interviews, Professional Services & Technology

Aarón Gómez answers: how to check if AI mentions your business

Daniela Bohórquez, redactora de Radar PanamáDaniela Bohórquez712 Mins Read
Aarón Gómez answers: how to check if AI mentions your business

In short: a Panamanian business owner can check in ten minutes, with no paid tools, whether ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot mention their business: ask each of them five questions a real customer would ask, note where the business appears and repeat the exercise every two weeks. That is the method described by Aarón Gómez, a specialist in web ranking and AI answers with 8 years of experience, in a written interview with Radar Panamá. His thesis: GEO is not a separate discipline with new tricks but well-done SEO with a focus on clarity and structure. Google, for its part, says in its documentation that there are no additional requirements or special optimizations for appearing in its AI features. There is no public Panama measurement of how people use AI answers, and this interview says so where it matters.
Contents of this interview
  1. Who is answering and why it matters
  2. How to check in ten minutes whether AI mentions a business
  3. What GEO is and how it differs from SEO
  4. What makes an AI cite a website
  5. A real case, without a brand
  6. The myth of the secret trick to show up in ChatGPT
  7. What to expect in 90 days and what not
  8. What the data says
  9. Practical summary
  10. Frequently asked questions
  11. Sources

Who is answering and why it matters

Aarón Gómez is a specialist in web ranking and AI answers (SEO, GEO and AEO) with 8 years of experience. He is a business administrator with a focus on accounting systems, works on projects in Latin America and North America, and collaborates with Radar Panamá. His profile on the site is at Aarón Gómez, Radar Panamá author.

Daniela Bohórquez, a Radar Panamá writer, sent him six questions in writing and he answered them on November 6. The quotes are his answers as he wrote them; the rest of the text is by Radar. Answers translated from Spanish by Radar. This is the second of five interviews with him. It complements Néstor Romero answers: why AI recommends one Panamanian business and not another: that one explains why AI makes its recommendations; this one covers how to measure and correct them.

Radar note: among the sources reviewed for this interview there is no public Panama measurement of how many people use AI answers to choose a business. The behavior studies cited below are from the United States and are presented as such.

How to check in ten minutes whether AI mentions a business

«Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot in incognito mode. Write five questions a real customer would ask: “where to buy X in Panama?”, “who repairs Y in Panama City?”, “best Z near me”. Note in which ones your business appears and in which it does not. Repeat the exercise every two weeks with the same questions and keep the dates. AI answers change, so what matters is the trend, not a single query. If you do not appear in any of them, it is not an AI problem: your content is not structured to be cited.»
Aarón Gómez

An analysis by Semrush, published on November 10, 2025, of more than 100 million citations in ChatGPT search, Google AI Mode and Perplexity supports the point that answers change: according to Semrush, the most cited sources are highly volatile; Reddit, for example, went from about 60% of citations in ChatGPT to about 10% between August and September. That is why the same list of questions and the noted dates matter: a single query can mislead in either direction.

Radar note: Google says in its documentation that traffic coming from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted inside the “Web” search type in Search Console and is not broken out, so the manual check Gómez describes is, today, a direct way to see what these features show. The source is Google Search Central’s page AI features and your website.

What GEO is and how it differs from SEO

«SEO aims for your page to appear in the list of results. GEO aims for your information to be what the AI uses to build the direct answer. The practical difference: in SEO you compete for a click; in GEO you compete to be the cited source, even if the user never visits your site. Google has said publicly that its AI features rely on the same ranking systems as traditional search, so good SEO is the foundation of GEO. It is not a separate discipline with new tricks; it is well-done SEO with a focus on clarity and structure.»
Aarón Gómez

Google’s documentation points the same way: in AI features and your website it states that there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations, and that SEO best practices remain relevant. In May 2025 the Google Search Central blog added, in Top ways to ensure your content performs well in Google’s AI experiences, that what Google has long recommended also applies to these experiences.

The click side also has support, though from another country. According to a study by Pew Research Center of 900 US adults and 68,879 searches in March 2025, when an AI summary appeared users clicked on a traditional result in 8% of visits, compared with 15% without a summary, and only 1% clicked a link inside the summary. This is US data and cannot be carried over to Panama without its own measurement.

What makes an AI cite a website

«Practical order: first, the page must be crawlable and indexed. Second, clear semantic structure: one H1 per page, headings that phrase real questions, direct answers in the first two lines. Third, honest structured data that matches what is visible. Fourth, external mentions: reviews, directories, local press. Google explicitly says no special files or rewrites are needed for AI; what it rewards is content that is useful for people, technical health and verifiable structured data. External mentions add up, but without a clear base they do not hold.»
Aarón Gómez

Two pieces of that order appear in the official documentation. On the technical base, Google asks that the page be indexed and eligible to be shown as a snippet, that crawling be allowed and that important content be in text (AI features and your website). On structured data, its structured data policies require that the markup faithfully represent the page and that content readers cannot see not be marked up.

External mentions have more nuanced support. According to an analysis by Ahrefs published on May 26, 2025, covering 75,000 brands, the correlation with visibility in AI Overviews was 0.664 for web mentions of the brand, 0.392 for brand search volume, 0.326 for DR and 0.218 for backlinks. That is correlation, not causation: the study does not show that mentions cause the appearance. And the Semrush analysis is a reminder that the sources assistants cite change quickly.

Radar note: the order of importance of the four factors is Gómez’s professional judgment. None of the sources consulted publishes a weighting scale among crawling, structure, structured data and mentions.

A real case, without a brand

«A case I can describe without a brand: a local services business in Panama City rewrote its home page so that the first line said exactly what it does, where and for whom, and added a section of real questions with two-line answers. Within eight weeks it started to appear cited in Google AI Mode answers for “service + area” queries. It did not change the design or buy links. The change was in structure and clarity. It is what I see working in a repeatable way: less decoration, more direct and verifiable answers.»
Aarón Gómez

Radar note: this is a case from the interviewee’s own experience, and it remains anonymous. Radar could not verify it independently and it should not be read as a promise of results: what happened to one business need not happen to another.

The myth of the secret trick to show up in ChatGPT

«The myth that there is a secret technical trick for ChatGPT to recommend you: a special file, a magic schema, a hidden tag. Google has published that there are no additional requirements to appear in its AI features beyond what already works in search. In ChatGPT and other assistants, what works is having clear, crawlable content with real signals of authority. Anyone who sells “AI optimization” as a separate service with technical gadgets is selling smoke. The base is the same: content that answers, readable structure, consistent presence.»
Aarón Gómez

The statement about Google matches its documentation (AI features and your website). For ChatGPT, OpenAI documents an access condition, not a trick: according to its developer documentation, OAI-SearchBot is the crawler that surfaces sites in ChatGPT search; sites that block it in robots.txt do not appear in ChatGPT search answers, although they can show up as links, and changes take about 24 hours to apply. OpenAI recommends allowing it.

Radar note: allowing crawling is a condition for being able to appear, not a guarantee of being cited.

What to expect in 90 days and what not

«In 90 days you should see: your site indexed with no critical errors, service pages rewritten with direct answers, and the start of appearances in some AI queries for your category and area. What you should not expect: to dominate every answer in your sector, or to displace competitors with years of content. GEO is not a switch. If after 90 days you do not appear in any query after rewriting and checking indexing, the problem is content or crawling, and it needs review before publishing more.»
Aarón Gómez

Radar note: the 90 days are Gómez’s expectation, not a timeline published by any platform. Google’s starter guide says that some changes can take hours and others several months and suggests waiting a few weeks before evaluating the effect, without committing to timelines.

What the data says

Data pointWhat it saysSource
Google’s requirements for its AI featuresNo additional requirements or special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode; SEO best practices still applyGoogle Search Central
Brand mentions and AI visibilityCorrelation of 0.664 with AI Overviews visibility across 75,000 brands; correlation, not causationAhrefs, May 26, 2025
Volatility of citationsReddit went from about 60% to about 10% of ChatGPT citations between August and SeptemberSemrush, November 10, 2025
Crawling in ChatGPTSites that block OAI-SearchBot do not appear in ChatGPT search answers; allowing it does not guarantee a citationOpenAI developer documentation
Clicks with an AI summary (US)8% of visits with a click on a traditional result with a summary, versus 15% without onePew Research Center, July 22, 2025

Caveat: Pew is a study of US users and Ahrefs measures associations, not causes. None of these sources measures Panama.

Practical summary

  1. Run the ten-minute test. Open ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot in incognito mode and ask five real-customer questions with product, city and area.
  2. Note and repeat. Record where the business appears and repeat every two weeks with the same questions and dates; the trend is what matters.
  3. Secure the base. A crawlable, indexed page, one H1 per page and direct answers in the first two lines.
  4. Keep structured data honest. Only what matches what is visible on the page.
  5. Add external mentions. Reviews, directories and local press, on top of a clear base.
  6. Review at 90 days. If the business appears in no query after rewriting and checking indexing, review content and crawling before publishing more.
Key fact: according to Aarón Gómez, GEO is well-done SEO with a focus on clarity and structure, and Google says its AI features have no additional requirements or special optimizations.

More Radar Panamá interviews: Aarón Gómez answers: why your website brings no clients and what to do first · Aarón Gómez answers: how to get Google and AI to use your text as the answer · Aarón Gómez answers: how a Panamanian small business can use AI for content without losing credibility · Aarón Gómez answers: where a Panamanian small business with a tight budget should start digital marketing · Néstor Romero answers: why AI recommends one Panamanian business and not another

Frequently asked questions

How can I tell if ChatGPT mentions my business?

By asking it. According to Aarón Gómez, open ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot in incognito mode, ask five questions a real customer would ask, note where the business appears and repeat every two weeks with the same questions, because answers change and the trend is what matters.

What is GEO and how is it different from SEO?

GEO aims for a company’s information to be what AI uses to build the direct answer, while SEO aims to appear in the list of results. Gómez sums it up this way: in SEO you compete for a click and in GEO for being the cited source, and good SEO is the foundation of both.

Does a website need anything special to appear in AI answers?

No, according to Google’s documentation: there are no additional requirements or special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and SEO best practices remain relevant. For ChatGPT, OpenAI says that a site blocking OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt does not appear in its search answers, although allowing it does not guarantee a citation.

How long does GEO take to show?

At 90 days Gómez expects to see the site indexed with no critical errors, rewritten service pages and some appearances in AI queries for the category and area. That is his expectation, not a promise: Google says some changes take hours and others several months, and the case he shares, anonymous and not independently verified, mentions eight weeks.

Do mentions on other websites help an AI recommend a business?

They probably add up, but the evidence is correlational. An Ahrefs analysis of 75,000 brands found a 0.664 correlation between web mentions of a brand and its AI Overviews visibility, which does not prove causation. Gómez warns that without a clear base on the business’s own website, mentions do not hold.

Sources

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By Daniela Bohórquez

Daniela Bohórquez is a writer at Radar Panamá. she writes about travel, tourism and business, with special attention to reviews of destinations, hotels and services. She lives between Panama, Italy and New York, which gives her a comparative view of how business is done in each market.