Should I block AI crawlers so they do not "steal" my content?

It depends on what you want. If you want to be recommended in ChatGPT or Perplexity, their search crawlers have to reach you. You can block training crawlers (GPTBot, Google-Extended) separately and allow the search ones (OAI-SearchBot, Googlebot). For most businesses that want customers, blocking everything is a loss.

Do AI Overviews show in Romania?

Google has expanded them gradually to many countries and languages since 2024, and availability keeps changing. The safest test: search on your phone, in Romanian, for your customers' questions and see what appears.

How long until I show up in AI answers?

There is no guaranteed timeline. Systems that search live (Perplexity, ChatGPT with search, AI Overviews) can reflect a new page in days or weeks, if it is indexed and clear. Fact consistency and authority take months to build.

What GEO is: how to get cited inside AI answers

The customer never clicked anything

A customer asks ChatGPT: "Which dental implant clinic in Cluj do you recommend, with transparent prices?" She gets an answer with three names, a summary and a few links. She calls one of the three. She never saw the first page of Google. She never saw an ad.

That is the reality in 2026 for a growing share of searches: the answer forms before the click. GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the discipline of being present, correct and cited inside that answer.

Where it happens

ChatGPT (OpenAI) — with integrated web search; it cites sources with links.
Gemini (Google) — the app, the assistant on Android and in Workspace.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode — answers generated directly on the Google results page, expanded since 2024 to more and more countries and languages. Check for yourself what shows up for your searches, on your phone.
Perplexity — built from the start around answers with citations.
Microsoft Copilot — on Bing, in Windows and in Office.

Each has its own index, its own rules and a behaviour that changes every few months. What works in one does not automatically work in another. Nobody outside these companies knows the exact formula; what follows is what is observed consistently and what the official documentation says.

How AI systems pick sources

An AI assistant does not "know" the answer about your business. In most cases it runs one or more searches, reads the pages it finds and composes an answer citing what it used. That means:

Retrieval — you have to be findable in the index the system uses. AI Overviews use Google's index. OpenAI and Perplexity run their own crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot). If you block them in robots.txt, you do not exist for them.
Clarity — passages that answer a concrete question directly, in two or three sentences, are the ones extracted. Vague marketing copy cannot be cited.
Freshness — pages with a visible date and recent updates win over undated ones.
Entity consistency — if your site says one price, Google Business Profile another and a business directory a third, the system does not know what to cite and often skips you.
Authority — mentions on other sites, reviews, presence in sources the system considers trustworthy.

GEO versus SEO

GEO does not replace SEO; it sits on top of it. If Google cannot index you, AI Overviews cannot cite you. If the page takes 9 seconds to load and the crawler gives up, you do not exist. The real differences:

	Classic SEO	GEO
The outcome	A position in a list	A mention or citation inside an answer
The unit	The page	The passage, the fact, the entity
What wins	Relevance + authority	Clarity + consistency + authority
Measurement	Search Console, positions	Questions asked to assistants, referral traffic, mentions

What you can do this month

Clear answers on every important page. The first paragraph answers directly: what it is, for whom, how much, where. No preamble.
Real FAQs — the questions customers ask you on the phone, with complete answers, as text present in the HTML (not loaded only on click).
The same facts everywhere — identical name, address, phone, hours, prices and services on the site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, Facebook and directories.
Do not block AI search crawlers by accident. Check robots.txt. One important nuance: Google-Extended controls whether your content is used to train Gemini models, not whether you appear in AI Overviews — those use the regular Googlebot.
llms.txt — a plain-text file at the root of the site that summarises what the site is and points to the essential pages, proposed in 2024. It is an emerging convention, not a standard: no major AI system has publicly confirmed using it. It costs 20 minutes and does no harm, but do not expect results from it. Do it after points 1–4.

How to check whether you show up

There is no "Search Console for ChatGPT" yet. The practical method:

Write 10–20 questions exactly the way your customers ask them ("implant clinic Cluj price", "SRL accountant Timișoara recommendation").
Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google (AI Overviews or AI Mode, if they appear). Ideally logged out or in a fresh session, so your history does not shape the answer.
Note: do you appear? are you cited with a link? are the facts about you correct? who appears instead of you?
Repeat monthly. Answers vary from session to session — the trend matters, not a single result.
In GA4, look at referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com. It is usually a small fraction of the total; check in your own data how it converts, because the person arrives with the question already answered.