Good questions — here's what I found.
How fast do LLMs actually index new sites?
Important nuance: LLMs don't really "index" like Google does. Here's how each one works:
- Perplexity: Sends your query to Google/Bing's API, scrapes the top 5-10 results, then synthesizes with an LLM. So if Google has indexed your page, Perplexity can surface it almost immediately. First pickup from a brand new domain: ~3-4 weeks (matching Google's indexing speed).
- ChatGPT: Uses Bing for real-time web search. Same deal — your content needs to be in Bing's index first. Training data updates are separate and take months.
- Google AI Overviews: Based on Google's own index. Standard Google indexing timelines: hours to weeks for established domains, weeks for new ones.
- llms.txt (the proposed AI robots.txt): Still not adopted. Only 951 domains have it. Zero visits from GPTbot, PerplexityBot, or ClaudeBot as of late 2025. Not worth implementing yet.
Bottom line: If your site is indexed by Google and Bing, you're already "indexed" by AI search. The real question isn't indexing — it's whether AI chooses to cite you. That's the GEO game.
3 Real Companies Doing This — Their Playbooks:
1. Smart Rent (Prop-Tech SaaS) — "Restructure for questions"
- What: Rewrote their documentation and help center to mirror how users naturally ask questions. Instead of product-feature pages, they created guides in Q&A format
- Timeline: 6 weeks
- Result: 32% of new sales-qualified leads came from AI search tools (ChatGPT, Perplexity)
- Their approach: Didn't change the product, just restructured existing content. Every page answers a real question a buyer would ask. Clean schema markup on everything
- Takeaway for us: This is the fastest path. Restructure what you already have
2. LS USA (Building Materials Supplier) — "Answer-first + community presence"
- What: Shifted from product-focused pages to answer-first content. Created comprehensive guides (material selection, installation how-tos). Added FAQ and HowTo schema. Built presence on Reddit, YouTube, and industry publications simultaneously
- Result: 67% increase in organic traffic, 400% rise in traffic value, 540% boost in Google AI Overview mentions
- Their approach: Multi-channel — it wasn't just their website. They combined structured content + schema + third-party presence (Reddit, YouTube, industry pubs). The 4+ platform presence is what triggered the AI citation boost
- Takeaway for us: Exactly what our agency playbook should be. Content + community + schema = AI citations
3. Go Fish Digital (Marketing Agency) — "Cornerstone pages + query mapping"
- What: Created 5-8 "cornerstone" pages, each designed for a cluster of AI queries. Mapped every question a buyer might ask an AI, then built pages that directly answer them. Heavy use of statistics, citations, and structured data
- Timeline: 3 months
- Result: +43% monthly AI-driven traffic, +83% increase in monthly conversions from AI, and AI referral leads converted at 25x higher rate than traditional search
- Their approach: "Prompt mapping" — they literally typed buyer questions into ChatGPT/Perplexity, saw what got cited, then built content to fill the gaps. Every page is fact-dense with external citations, specific numbers, and clear structure
- Takeaway for us: This is the GEO playbook. Map the prompts → find the gaps → build the content
Bonus: LLMwizz (Product example) A Shopify app that auto-generates structured data, AI-optimized titles/descriptions, and helps stores get discovered by LLMs. Early signal: Shopify stores with clean product data appear more frequently in ChatGPT image-rich results. Since Shopify partnered with OpenAI, AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores is up 7x and AI-driven purchases up 11x.
So for the schema layer product idea — here's the GEO gameplan:
- Week 1-2: Build the structured data infrastructure (product schema, review schema, FAQ schema). Make sure it's crawlable in raw HTML (AI crawlers don't execute JavaScript)
- Week 2-4: Create 5-8 cornerstone content pages in Q&A format, answering the exact questions someone would ask AI about your product category
- Week 2-4: Simultaneously build presence on 4+ platforms (Reddit, Indie Hackers, AlternativeTo, G2/relevant directories)
- Week 4-6: Start prompt-mapping — test what AI systems say about your category, identify gaps, fill them
- Week 6+: Monitor AI citations (tools like Otterly.ai, Profound), iterate
Based on the case studies, expect first AI citations within 3-6 weeks on Perplexity (fastest), 1-3 months for ChatGPT/Google AI Overviews. The 25x conversion rate on AI referrals is the stat that matters — volume is low at first but quality is extraordinary.