How to rank in Gemini? Get your company named (2026)

To rank in Gemini, your pages need to be in Google's Search index and easy to retrieve, with your company the best-backed answer there. Google documents that the Gemini app grounds answers in content from that index, with live searches run at prompt time. So the work is SEO first. Rank for the questions your buyers ask, publish facts your rivals can't, and earn mentions on sites Google already trusts. One setting can rule you out. If your robots.txt blocks the Google-Extended token, Google says your content won't ground answers in the Gemini app, even though Google Search still shows you.

I'm Brenden House. I run Searchmaxxed, an SEO and AI SEO agency for enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies. On 28 October 2026 (AEST) I reread Google's Gemini, Search and crawler documentation, the top-ranking guides, and the robots.txt files of 40 well-known B2B sites.

In summary

Gemini names companies Google Search can find, trust and cross-check.

• Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode all draw on Google's index, but they're separate surfaces with separate controls and different answers.
• Search Console's Generative AI performance report covers AI Overviews and AI Mode. It doesn't report the Gemini app.
• Cloudflare's "Training: Disallow" setting adds a Google-Extended block to robots.txt, which also takes you out of Gemini app grounding.
• Google tells site owners to ignore llms.txt files, content "chunking" and inauthentic mentions.

How does Gemini choose its sources?

Gemini decides whether a Google search would improve the answer, runs one or more searches, then writes a reply with citations from the results. Google describes those steps in its Grounding with Google Search documentation. When the model doesn't search, it answers from what it learned in training, and nothing on your site changes that reply this week.

Grounding means giving the model fresh pages from a search index at the moment someone asks, so it can answer from them and cite them. Google's crawler documentation confirms the Gemini app grounds this way, using the Google Search index "at prompt time".

That gives you two targets:

1. The retrieval step: Gemini's searches have to return your page, which is ordinary Google ranking for the prompt and the searches the model writes.
2. The selection step: Out of everything it retrieves, Gemini quotes a few sources and names a few brands, and yours has to make the cut.

The selection step is tight. Profound, an AI visibility software company, published tracking from May 2026 showing Gemini citing 6.6 sources per answer, against 15.2 for AI Mode. It counted about 4.4 brands named per Gemini answer. Those are one vendor's figures, so treat them as a guide. The shape is what counts: a short list, with every slot on it contested by your rivals.

The pattern holds in other engines too. We put 300 Australian agency-buyer questions to ChatGPT three times each, with search on. It pulled 17,870 search results into those 900 answers and kept 4,389 as sources. Being found is the easy part. About three in four results it reads never make the answer.

How is Gemini different from AI Overviews and AI Mode?

Gemini, AI Overviews and AI Mode all run on Google's models and draw from its Search index, yet they live in different places. They give different answers and answer to different site-owner controls. You can appear in an AI Overview and be missing from the Gemini app on the same day, for the same question.

Sources: Google's common crawlers page, AI features guide, and help pages on the Search generative AI control and Generative AI performance report. Usage: Sundar Pichai's Q2 2026 earnings remarks, 22 July 2026.

Query fan-out is the set of related searches a model runs alongside the user's question, so it can gather more results to answer from. Google's own example turns "how to fix a lawn that's full of weeds" into searches like "best herbicides for lawns".

What this means for a B2B company: AI Overviews and AI Mode decide inside a results page, next to your organic listing. The Gemini app answers in a chat, often a long one, where a buyer asks for a shortlist, then a comparison, then the pricing model. Each follow-up is a fresh chance to drop you. I cover the results-page side in how to rank in AI Overviews.

What does Google say you need to do?

Google says the same SEO foundations apply to its generative AI features, and that no special file, markup or writing style is required. Its guide to optimising for generative AI features, last updated in July 2026, calls them "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems."

Google wrote that guide for AI Overviews and AI Mode. Because the Gemini app grounds in the same index, its advice is the best primary source you have for Gemini as well. The points that matter most:

• Non-commodity content: Google contrasts "7 Tips for First-Time Homebuyers" with a first-hand piece on why a buyer waived an inspection. Google says this kind of content will likely do more for your AI search presence "than any of the other suggestions in this guide."
• Indexable with a snippet: A page must be indexed and able to show a snippet.
• Crawlable, including JavaScript: Google says it can process JavaScript content "as long as it isn't blocked", and points JavaScript-heavy sites to its JavaScript SEO guidance.
• Business details kept current: Google says Merchant Center feeds and Business Profiles can help products and services show in AI responses.

Google also lists what you can skip. You don't need llms.txt or other AI text files, and you don't need to break pages into tiny chunks or rewrite them for AI. Chasing "inauthentic mentions" isn't as helpful as it might seem, and structured data isn't required, though Google still recommends it for rich results.

Can a robots.txt setting keep you out of Gemini?

Yes. Google says the Google-Extended token controls two things. One is whether Google may train future Gemini models on your content, and the other is grounding in the Gemini app and Vertex AI. Block it and Gemini app answers stop drawing on your pages. Your rankings stay put, because Google says the token "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search."

This catches companies out, because teams switch it on to stop AI training, not to leave Gemini. One route is Cloudflare's managed robots.txt feature. Set Training to Disallow and Cloudflare adds this to the top of your file:

User-agent: Google-Extended
Disallow: /

Under Google's definition, that one line also opts the site out of grounding in the Gemini app. A security or IT team can flip it in a settings screen without the marketing team ever seeing it.

It's worth a two-minute check on yours, especially after a CDN, bot-management or security change, because some of those tools edit the file for you. Look for Google-Extended in yourdomain.com/robots.txt and ask who added it and why.

There's a separate switch for Search. Since 31 August 2026, Search Console's Search generative AI setting can exclude any site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and Discover's AI features. Google says it doesn't affect AI training, and it doesn't mention the Gemini app. Check both.

How do you rank in Gemini, step by step?

Get eligible, rank for the questions, give Gemini a better passage than anyone else, and build agreement on other sites. Then measure Gemini on its own. Here's the order I'd run it in for a B2B company.

1. Check eligibility: Confirm Googlebot can crawl and render your key pages. Confirm robots.txt doesn't block Google-Extended. Confirm Search Console's Search generative AI setting is on "include", then inspect your top 20 pages there to check they're indexed.
2. Write down 30 buyer prompts: Use the questions your sales team hears on calls. Think "best [category] for [company type]", "[your brand] vs [rival]" and "how much does [category] cost". Add questions where you're the subject, like "is [your brand] SOC 2 certified", because Gemini describes companies too.
3. Run them in Gemini and record the answer: Note who's named, which sources appear and what Gemini gets wrong about you. In my experience, wrong facts are the quickest fix.
4. Rank for the searches behind the prompts: Gemini writes its own searches, so build pages that rank for the plain versions. That means category, use-case, integration, comparison and alternatives pages, plus a page explaining your pricing model even if you quote per account.
5. Answer first, with facts only you have: Put the answer in the opening lines of each section. Add the specifics a rival's page lacks: benchmarks, rollout times, dated certifications and the real limits of the product.
6. Make your company facts identical everywhere: Name, category, founding year, leaders, products and certifications should match on your site, LinkedIn, G2 and in the press. Use Organization and Product structured data that matches the visible page.
7. Earn the outside sources Gemini leans on: Industry "best of" lists, analyst and review sites, trade press, conference talks, partner directories and YouTube walkthroughs. Google warns that inauthentic mentions won't help, so this is digital PR and real customer reviews, not seeded posts.
8. Refresh, then retest monthly: Update pages when facts change, request indexing, and rerun the same 30 prompts. Grounded answers can change once Google recrawls a page, while what the model learned in training only changes with a new model.

Lists matter more than most teams expect. Across 900 ChatGPT answers about Australian agencies, a single third-party "best agencies" site was cited in 168 of them. The next three were a second listicle, Semrush's agency directory and Clutch. If you want to be recommended, the job is getting onto the handful of pages the model already trusts.

That test was ChatGPT. Profound's tracking put Reddit, YouTube and Wikipedia at the top of Gemini's cited domains. Treat your own 30-prompt test as the source of truth for your category.

A worked example: contract management software

Say you lead growth at a contract lifecycle management (CLM) company selling to legal and procurement teams in Australia and the US. A general counsel asks Gemini for "the best contract management software for a 500-person company", and Gemini names three rivals.

Here's how I'd map the work:

Month one is usually technical and factual. Check robots.txt, state the certification in plain text, and make the integration page render without JavaScript errors. In months two and three, the comparison and category pages go live and the PR work starts. The list placements take longest, because editors decide when.

How do you measure Gemini visibility?

Test a fixed set of prompts in the Gemini app every month and record who's named and which sources appear. Search Console can't help here. Its Generative AI performance report covers AI Overviews and AI Mode only.

Track four things:

1. Mention rate: How many of your 30 prompts name you, run twice each, because answers vary between runs and signed-in accounts.
2. Sources cited: Which domains appear under Sources for the prompts you lose. That's your PR target list.
3. Accuracy: Whether Gemini gets your category, pricing model, integrations and certifications right.
4. Visits and enquiries: Sessions in GA4 with gemini.google.com as the source, and what they do next.

Be careful with that last one. A client's GA4 showed AI-assistant visits jump from 354 to 6,050 in a month. Almost none of it was real. About 5,700 came in three one-hour bursts: same 1920x1080 desktop Chrome, all new users, no referrer, about 20 seconds each, landing on two pages. Real AI traffic was 385 sessions against 354 the month before, roughly flat.

That was an enterprise B2B client of ours. Check any jump in AI traffic for bots before it goes in a board report. If you'd rather run this with software, I compared the trackers in AI visibility tools, including which ones report Gemini separately.

Does ranking in Gemini also get you into ChatGPT?

Partly. The groundwork carries over: crawlable pages, answer-first content, consistent company facts and mentions on trusted sites help in every engine. The retrieval layer doesn't. Gemini grounds in Google's index, while ChatGPT runs its own searches and leans on a different set of sources.

So a page that ranks well in Google has a head start in Gemini that it may not have in ChatGPT. The outside sources overlap only in part, which is why I test each engine separately. The ChatGPT side is in how to rank in ChatGPT.

Where does Searchmaxxed fit?

Searchmaxxed is an SEO and AI SEO agency. We do technical SEO, content, link building, digital PR, GEO, AEO and LLM SEO for enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies. The goal is the one in this article. You rank in Google and get named in Gemini, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI answers for searches that bring pipeline.

For Gemini, that means the eligibility checks, the pages Gemini's searches retrieve, the company facts it cross-checks, and the outside coverage it trusts. Our AI search optimisation service sets out the work in full.

A page release is an approved new page or a substantial rebuild of one. Every managed package includes ongoing audits, a 90-day plan in weekly releases, the build work and a monthly decision memo. You own the site, repository, content and data from day one.

Here's how we do it. We build on a website you own, our Agentic Website. AI agents pull your Search Console and GA4 data, read the Google results and check what Gemini says about you and your rivals. That feeds the Managed Search Loop, which shows which page, fix or link should bring in the most enquiries next. We build it, check the live page and measure the change. Off your site, the Off-Page Source Layer builds the links, digital PR and mentions that AI answers draw on.

Searchmaxxed's work has generated more than A$10 million in revenue through search for its clients.

Is Searchmaxxed right for you?

We suit marketing and growth leaders at enterprise, B2B SaaS, venture-backed, manufacturing and public-sector companies. They want the work shipped across Google and AI answers together. If you need a dashboard and nothing more, we're the wrong call.

If you're in the right-hand column, the steps above and a visibility tool will take you a long way.

Frequently asked questions

What should you do next?

Open your robots.txt and search for Google-Extended. Then write down the 30 questions your best customers would ask Gemini, run them, and note who's named. If you'd like us to scope the work for your site, let's talk pricing.