Can you appear in AI for free?
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Yes, when your client names you: AIs will then read your own website, and appearing costs nothing more than a website that is open to their bots and clear about what you sell. No, most of the time, when they do not know you: on a market question, AIs first cite sources other than brand websites, and being present there requires work or money. A listing published for free elsewhere than on your website can add a source when you are named; it is not enough to make you found by those who do not know you.
For what type of question? Everything depends on the question. On a question that names your company, what is free goes a long way. On a question that does not name you, such as "which provider for such a need?", it rarely goes all the way to the answer.
What is free: being read when you are named
When a question names a company, the AI will look in that company's direction. On professional software troubleshooting questions that named a brand, that brand's documentation or support accounted for 58% of ChatGPT's citations, 30% for Claude, and 36% for Gemini. To be cited in this case, your website just needs to be found, read, and clear: no payment comes into play.
The condition is access. AI bots must be able to read your pages: in our measurements, less than 1% of the websites retrieved by ChatGPT's search blocked its search bot, and none of the websites it cited. A website closed to bots removes itself from the responses, even when it is named.
What is not: being found when you are not known
On a market question, the AI decides where to look. Muck Rack analyzed more than 25 million links cited by ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini across seventeen sectors: in May 2026, 13.7% of the citations went to the content of the company targeted by the question; the rest went to the press, encyclopedias, institutions, or other companies.
In our measurements, ChatGPT writes the name of a specific publisher in 72 to 91% of its searches: a company whose name it does not know is not searched for. On our troubleshooting questions asked without asking for a brand name, the administration accounted for 45% of its citations. Appearing in those answers requires being present in the sources that the AI consults, which takes time, work, or a budget.
A free listing off your website
A listing describing your company and your product on a website other than your own adds an external source that confirms what you sell. When a client has spotted you and verifies your name with an AI, it can count. This is what FaireDuBruit offers for free: a company listing and a product listing, on the thematic website of your choice, validated by you and dated.
Its limits must be stated. The listing is written based on your facts: it is not an independent opinion. It makes your information easier to find, not your company better known. And its effect on a question that names you is not yet measured. To appear when you are not known, you must answer the questions your market asks: this is distribution.
What we do not know
Our figures by type of question cover professional software troubleshooting and market questions, in French and in English, via the models' API; Muck Rack's figures cover consumer questions in seventeen sectors. The effect of a listing published outside the company's website is not yet measured.
Sources
- Muck Rack — "What is AI Reading?" (Generative Pulse), p. 5, .
- OpenAI — OpenAI's indexing bots, .
- FaireDuBruit measurements, from September 4 to 16, 2026 — see "How we measured".