The short answer
AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity do not have a secret ranking list you can buy into. When a user asks "Which agency in Dubai should I use for event videography?" or "What is the best CRM for a UAE real estate broker?", the assistant combines what its model already knows with what it can retrieve from the live web at that moment. Your job is to make sure both sources point clearly to your brand. In practice that means three things: be findable by AI crawlers, be quotable on your own pages, and be verifiable through independent sources. This discipline is usually called generative engine optimisation (GEO) or AI search optimisation, and for most UAE businesses it builds directly on good SEO rather than replacing it.
How AI assistants decide which brands to mention
There are two routes into an AI answer. The first is the model's training data: the large body of public text it learned from, where well-documented brands appear more often and more consistently. You cannot edit that directly, but you can influence what future models learn by being described accurately across the web. The second route is live retrieval. When ChatGPT searches the web, it relies on OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI's own documentation states that sites which block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they may still appear as navigation links. Google is similarly clear about AI Overviews and AI Mode: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet, and Google says there are no additional technical requirements or special optimisations beyond normal SEO best practice.
The conclusion is reassuring. You do not need a mysterious "AI file" or a new type of markup. You need a technically healthy website, content that answers real questions well, and a reputation that other sites confirm.
Five steps to better AI visibility
Step 1: make sure AI crawlers can reach you
Start with the basics, because many brands are invisible to AI search for purely technical reasons.
- Check robots.txt. Confirm you are not blocking OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot or Bingbot. Some security plugins and CDN settings block "unknown bots" by default.
- Keep key content in HTML text. Your services, locations, team and answers should be readable text, not baked into images, PDFs or sliders.
- Fix speed and indexing. Pages that fail to load, return errors or sit outside your sitemap are less likely to be retrieved.
- Use structured data honestly. Organisation, LocalBusiness and FAQ schema help machines understand your entity, but it must match what is visible on the page.
If your site is old or built on a heavy page builder, a rebuild can be the fastest fix. Our web design team in Dubai builds bilingual sites with clean, crawlable HTML from the start.
Step 2: write pages that AI can quote
AI assistants favour content that answers a question directly and can be lifted into a response without losing meaning. That is a writing discipline, not a trick.
- Answer first. Open each page or section with a two- to three-sentence answer, then expand.
- Name things precisely. Say "event photography and videography in Abu Dhabi and Dubai", not "visual storytelling solutions".
- Cover the questions buyers actually ask. Process, timelines, what affects cost, languages, locations served and who the service is for.
- Use clear headings and lists. They help both readers and retrieval systems find the passage that answers the query.
- Publish in Arabic and English. Many UAE users ask AI assistants in Arabic. A proper Arabic page, not a machine translation, gives you a chance to appear in those answers too.
Producing this volume of structured, bilingual content is where AI-assisted content creation helps, as long as a human expert checks every fact.
Step 3: keep your brand facts consistent everywhere
AI models build a picture of your brand by connecting mentions across many sources. When your company name, services, locations and leadership are described differently on your website, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile, directories and press coverage, the picture becomes blurred and the model is less confident recommending you.
Audit the places that describe you and align them: one official name and spelling in English and Arabic, one clear description of what you do, the same contact details and the same list of cities served. Update old bios and remove outdated service lines. This is unglamorous work, but it is one of the highest-impact GEO tasks for established UAE companies.
Step 4: earn independent proof
Your own website tells AI what you claim. Independent sources tell it what is true. Reliable third-party coverage is the strongest signal that a brand deserves to be recommended.
- Editorial coverage in respected regional and trade media, based on genuine news or expertise rather than sponsored posts.
- Reviews on Google and relevant industry platforms, answered professionally.
- Speaking slots, awards with transparent judging and partnerships that are documented publicly.
- Where your company genuinely meets the criteria, a Wikipedia article. Wikipedia's notability guideline for companies requires significant coverage in multiple independent, reliable, secondary sources, so it follows earned reputation rather than creating it. Our Wikipedia guidance service starts with an honest notability check.
Step 5: measure AI visibility
You cannot improve what you do not track. Build a list of the 20 to 30 questions your ideal customers would ask an AI assistant, in English and Arabic, and test them regularly in ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews. Record whether your brand appears, how it is described, which competitors are named and which sources are cited. Watch your analytics for referral traffic from AI tools as well. Over a few months, this gives you a practical scorecard and shows which content and coverage moves the needle.
| Signal | What to check | Typical fix |
|---|---|---|
| Access | AI and search crawlers allowed | Update robots.txt, CDN and firewall rules |
| Clarity | Answer-first service and FAQ pages | Rewrite key pages in AR and EN |
| Consistency | Same facts across profiles | Entity audit and profile clean-up |
| Proof | Independent coverage and reviews | Digital PR and review programme |
What GEO cannot do
Be wary of anyone promising guaranteed placement in ChatGPT. Nobody controls how AI models answer, answers vary between users and sessions, and platforms change quickly. GEO raises the probability that you are found, understood and trusted; it does not buy a slot. It also works best alongside strong SEO, because much of what AI tools retrieve comes from pages that already perform well in search.
Next step
If you want to know how AI assistants currently describe your brand, start with an audit. Our AI search optimisation team in Dubai can test your priority questions in Arabic and English and show you what to fix first. Message us on WhatsApp or ask for a free growth audit.