B.I.S.C.U.I.T. Framework

Introduction

ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, etc. are exploding in popularity. But, more and more I’m seeing bland articles written about how to rank in them that boils down to a vague “just keep doing what you’re doing and hope things will be fine”.

Reader: That’s like sleepwalking into a blender.

What’s changing in Search?

At the highest level, Google’s implicit agreement with the Internet is breaking down.

Google’s original promise was that as people searched, they’d send traffic to your site; they only asked for the ability to put a few ads next to the results.

They are no longer in the business of sending traffic to your site.

While this is a topic that could be debated for hours all on its own, I’ll just refer you to Sparktoro’s new research on how people actually use Google as well as Google’s own actions in the local and ecommerce search space.

This has some very real implications for what type of content you create, where that should be distributed, and how best to reach people.

Top-of-funnel educational articles (the “how to..” and “what’s a”) that were big traffic drivers for content marketing are seeing their traffic evaporated by Google’s AI Overviews.

These AI Overviews are now used by a billion people because AI services provide a better experience to searchers by directly answering questions better than traditional search.

Into this, the AI search services like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude are now out-Googling Google by providing a qualitatively better “search” experience.

Why you should trust me

B.I.S.C.U.I.T. Framework

From our experience auditing sites for AI search rankings, we’ve built a framework to help SEOs in multiple ways:

• It’s steps you can take _today_
• The steps are all positive marketing actions beyond just “AI Search”
• They’re easily communicated to executives and stakeholders

Why a framework?

The rise of AI search is a tremendous opportunity for search professionals.

The field is no longer “just rank in Google,” so you can no longer be “just an SEO”.

Brands need leadership to help navigate how to perform in the many different AI search platforms, what type of content to produce, and where, how, and when to distribute it.

The steps

The B.I.S.C.U.I.T. framework sets out how to take your current content and search efforts and incrementally bring them into the AI search world we’re all now living in.

1. Bots
2. Indexing
3. Sentiment
4. Competitive Ranking
5. Unique Data Sources
6. Intelligence
7. Truthfulness

(B)ots

Problem

Some people have a knee-jerk reaction to AI bots crawling their site, believing that AI bots or their responsible companies are “stealing” your content and, therefore, should be blocked.

But there are many different types of “content” in the world.

Steven King’s content is NYT bestsellers like “IT”, and my content is literally this article, which, much to my dismay, is unlikely to be made into a movie with one of the Skaargard boys kitted out in scary clown makeup.

There’s a fine line between distribution and theft - but services that amplify the marketing messages you’re putting out in the world and provide you with greater reach and visibility aren’t ripping you off.

Action

Since I do want AI search services to index my site, rewrite my copy, and present it as an answer to questions that prospects are looking for, I need to make sure I’m not accidentally blocking any AI bots from crawling my site.

There are two ways you might be doing this:

Passively

Passively (aka “asking nicely”) with your sites ‘robots.txt’ file

You can check any website for robots.txt issues by appending that to their domain and looking at the result. <your-domain.com\>/robots.txt

Actively

Actively with a website firewall or some type of security plugin.

Checking for active blocks is more difficult to do manually, which is why we developed an AI Search Console (accessible via the Knowatoa dashboard), which will check if any of the 24 different AI bots we monitor aren’t able to successfully reach your site.

If you’d rather manually check them, you could use an extension like User Agent Switcher and manually use the following user agents

AI2Bot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; AI2Bot/1.0; \+http://www.allenai.org/crawler)  
  
Amazonbot  
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10\_10\_1) AppleWebKit/600.2.5 (KHTML\\, like Gecko)
Version/8.0.2 Safari/600.2.5 (Amazonbot/0.1; \+https://developer.amazon.com/support/amazonbot)

Anthropic AI Bot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; anthropic-ai/1.0; \+http://www.anthropic.com/bot.html)

Claude Web  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; claude-web/1.0; \+http://www.anthropic.com/bot.html)

ClaudeBot  
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible;
ClaudeBot/1.0; \+claudebot@anthropic.com)

Applebot-Extended  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Applebot-Extended/1.0; \+http://www.apple.com/bot.html)

Applebot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Applebot/1.0; \+http://www.apple.com/bot.html)

BingBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; BingBot/1.0; \+http://www.bing.com/bot.html)

Bytespider  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Bytespider/1.0; \+http://www.bytedance.com/bot.html)

GPTBot  
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible;
GPTBot/1.1; \+https://openai.com/gptbot

ChatGPT-User  
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible;
ChatGPT-User/1.0; \+https://openai.com/bot

OAI-SearchBot  
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko); compatible;
OAI-SearchBot/1.0; \+https://openai.com/searchbot

CCBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; CCBot/1.0; \+http://www.commoncrawl.org/bot.html)

DuckAssistBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DuckAssistBot/1.0; \+http://www.duckduckgo.com/bot.html)

Google-Extended  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Google-Extended/1.0; \+http://www.google.com/bot.html)

LinkedInBot  
LinkedInBot/1.0 (compatible; Mozilla/5.0; Jakarta
Commons-HttpClient/3.1 \+http://www.linkedin.com)

Meta External Fetcher  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; meta-externalagent/1.1
(+https://developers.facebook.com/docs/sharing/webmasters/crawler))

FacebookBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; FacebookBot/1.0; \+http://www.facebook.com/bot.html)

Omgili Bot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; omgili/1.0; \+http://www.omgili.com/bot.html)

PerplexityBot  
Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible;
PerplexityBot/1.0; \+https://perplexity.ai/perplexitybot)

YouBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; YouBot (+http://www.you.com))

Cohere AI  
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; cohere-ai/1.0; \+http://www.cohere.ai/bot.html)

Timpi  
Timpibot/0.8 (+http://www.timpi.io)

DiffBot  
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729
Firefox/3.5.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729; Diffbot/0.1; \+http://www.diffbot.com)

(I)ndexing

Problem

In AI, search results come from many different sources. You need to make sure that your company or brand is seen as a distinct concept or entity within the AI search services.

People unfamiliar with AI search services will often say that they “just return nonsense” and that “they can’t be trusted,”…which makes them pretty much the same as anything else on the Internet.

Let’s use an example because it’ll be easier to understand than something abstract.

Consider Taylor Swift (because how can we not).

Asking any of the services “Who is Taylor Swift?” gets an answer that says she’s a singer.

Despite all the talk of hallucinations and weirdness of AI search (aka “pizza glue”), an alien who had never heard of TravisAndTaylor ™ would get a reasonable answer out of any of the AI services.

Right now, your brand index is likely all over the place. Some services have a clear idea of who you are, and some have no knowledge. The good news is that you can change this.

Action

1. Check manually

Check each AI service manually, asking questions like “what does <company-name> do?”, “who is <company-name>?”, and “what is <company-name> best known for?”

Here are some examples for us:

2. Brand Statements

Start developing “brand statement” type content that clearly answers:

• What it is that your brand does (solves problems, entertains people, connects buyers and sellers)
• Who the brand serves (Consumers? Businesses? Small breed dog owners concerned about the dental hygiene of their pups?)
• What uniquely sets the brand apart
• How does the brand deliver on its promise?

This type of content is often not part of established search content strategy either because it’s considered “too on the nose” or difficult to agree on - but failing to publish at least some aspirational brand statements leaves too much opportunity for a stray Reddit comment or review to color your brand perception in AI search services.

(S)entiment

Problem

AI search “mashes up” (technical term) all of the different aspects of a company’s online presence in more holistic ways than a traditional search engine.

In many ways, it’s like having an argument with your partner about how to load the dishwasher, and they shoot back with, “Well, at least I wasn’t fined $185 million for creating approximately 1.5 million unauthorized deposit accounts and over 500,000 credit card accounts without customer consent.”

In many ways, it’s like having an argument with your partner about how to load the dishwasher, and they shoot back with, “Well, at least I wasn’t fined $185 million for creating approximately 1.5 million unauthorized deposit accounts and over 500,000 credit card accounts without customer consent.”

Which is what happens anytime you mention the Wells Fargo Bank to ChatGPT, any time you ask what the best bank is when you ask where to get a mortgage, etc.

ChatGPT brings up the bad actions that Wells Fargo has previously engaged in.

Compare this to ChatGPT’s “con” about Navy Federal Credit Union, which is that you have to be in the Navy to join (which I mean _fair_ but still).

These sentiments were previously cordoned off to social media platforms, sub-reddits, and forums, but in AI search, those are all now mashed up together and front and center for your answer.

Action

You need to start by understanding the sentiment that AI search has for your company and brand. We recommend asking the following set of questions to AI services, as the answers to these influence the opportunities for your business, like the content to create to influence the bottom-of-the-funnel responses that you want to win.

Here’s what we have on our checklist:

• “Is [my company] ethical?”
• “Does [my company] respect user privacy?”
• “Is [my company] honest in its marketing?”
• “Does [my company] handle data responsibly?”
• “Is [my company] environmentally responsible?”
• “Does [my company] treat its employees fairly?”
• “Does [my company] prioritize customer safety?”
• “Does [my company] have good business practices?”
• “Is [my company] transparent about its practices?”
• “Is [my company] trustworthy as a business partner?”

(C)ompetitive Ranking

Problem

Like traditional search, you want to come out on top; seeing how you stack up (or don’t) against competitors in AI search results is key to identifying opportunities for content and reaching prospects.

In general, AI services will directly answer informational queries (instead of sending them to your site), so you want to focus on the commercial queries that result in people opting to learn more about your company.

These are the middle-of-funnel questions that used to make up the latter part of people’s search journeys.

Now folks are using AI to cut the time and hassle of that research and jumping right into “what’s the best X”, “top y in Z”

Action

Knowatoa builds these questions for you based on the traditional search keywords that you already rank for and filters them to the types of questions prospects are asking in AI Search.

But it’s up to you to then write the appropriate answers to these questions, publish them to your site, and push them out to the right distribution channels for each AI search service, which we will cover next.

(U)nique Data Sources

Problem

Each AI Service builds its models off of different data sources, some of which they heavily favor. By taking the opportunities that reporting on competitive rankings shows, you can then build content and strategically distribute it to help rank your brand.

Action

For example, if you want to rank in ChatGPT beyond just having your site accessible, you should put your content on LinkedIn as they have a partnership with Microsoft (who also owns LinkedIn); if it’s technical content, also put it on GitHub (owned by Microsoft).

However, both Claude and ChatGPT have signed agreements to access data on Reddit.

Track which services rely on which data sources in order to out-distribute and outrank your competitors.

(I)ntelligence

Problem

In a marketing world with less and less direct attribution, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to “prove” the worth of the work you’re doing in content and search.

Action

Collect business intelligence data to dispassionately and objectively show the value of the work you’re doing:

• Advocate for collecting “How did you hear about us?” data in onboarding. Customers doing this tell us that this routinely results in 3x reporting of search attribution for leads and signups than cookie-based attribution.
• When communicating to executives and stakeholders emphasize the competitive nature of ranking. Position results in terms of outcompeting rivals instead of with abstract statistics.

Track these data points over time in relation to competitors as a way of proving value.

(T)ruthfulness

Problem

A CMO said to me: “ChatGPT is now our most popular and least well-trained representative”.

Why? Because people were asking important bottom-line money questions in ChatGPT, like:

• “Do you do business in California?”
• “Does your product work with this service?”
• “Where can I get support?”

While ChatGPT was supremely confident in giving these answers, it was quite often wrong, quoting bad pricing and dissuading leads.

Action

AI hallucinations are categorized in two ways:

1. Ignorance (lack of information)

With respect to AI search, 99% of the issues are caused by a lack of data, where the AI model responds with a (to it) “reasonable” extrapolation of the data it’s been given.

By providing real information into these gaps. You can short-circuit the “guesstimating” that the AI would otherwise create.

“ChatGPT is now our most popular and least well-trained representative”. -- everybody

Track critical business questions via customer service, support, and sales channels in Knowatoa.

Develop clear answers to these questions, publish them on your site, and distribute them to social platforms.

These FAQs will function as AI bait” content, which will then influence your AI search rankings.

2. Logic (flaws in reasoning)

These are much more subtle and not possible to fix with the same approach. Fortunately, they’re much less common in AI search.

Conclusion

The rise of AI search is fundamentally reshaping the search landscape, forcing marketers, SEOs, and brands to adapt or risk irrelevance. It’s an unprecedented opportunity for those willing to embrace the change.

Success in the AI-driven search world requires a shift in mindset: from a laser focus on Google SERPs to a broad strategy that positions your brand in multiple ways across multiple AI ecosystems.

It demands new tools, sharper content strategies, and an aggressive approach to creating and executing campaigns. For those ready to lead this charge, the rewards are immense.

By leveraging frameworks like B.I.S.C.U.I.T., brands can build resilient strategies that go beyond traditional SEO, ensuring relevance and visibility in this new era of search.

AI isn’t just a disruption; it’s the next great wave of opportunity in digital marketing.

The tools, insights, and frameworks are here. The question is: are you ready to take the lead?

Tnanks

Special thanks to John Doherty from EditorNinja, Kai Davis founder of Double Your ECommerce and Martin McGarry from Search Assistance for their feedback and suggestions with this article.

What to do next?

• Sign up for Knowatoa to start tracking your AI search rankings and opportunities.
• Book a call to learn more about how we can help you with your AI search strategy.