How to Get Your Business Mentioned by Google Gemini (and Why Google-Extended Matters)

To get your business mentioned by Google Gemini, do three things: make sure your pages are indexed and rank in Google Search for your customers’ questions, because the Gemini app grounds its answers on Google’s index; check that your robots.txt doesn’t block Google-Extended, which controls whether Gemini Apps can ground answers on your content; and, if you serve customers locally, complete your Google Business Profile and keep collecting reviews, because Gemini in Maps recommends from Maps data. The rest is the same off-site work as every assistant: be mentioned on the pages Google ranks for your category.

Where Gemini’s answers come from

Google’s own wording on Google-Extended is precise: it controls whether content “may be used for training future generations of Gemini models that power Gemini Apps and Vertex AI API for Gemini and for grounding (providing content from the Google Search index to the model at prompt time…) in Gemini Apps”. And: “Google-Extended does not impact a site’s inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal in Google Search.”

The Google-Extended trap

Many sites added “User-agent: Google-Extended / Disallow: /” in 2023 and 2024 to keep their content out of AI training. That still works for training. But because the same token covers grounding in Gemini Apps, it can also keep your pages out of the Gemini app’s search-backed answers, while your Google rankings, AI Overviews and AI Mode carry on as normal. Whether that trade is worth it is your call; it should be a decision, not an accident. Check yours:

1. Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and search for “Google-Extended”.
2. If there’s a Disallow under it and you want to appear in Gemini’s grounded answers, remove that group (or change it to Allow: /).
3. If you’re on Cloudflare or another CDN with a managed robots.txt, check what it adds; managed files often include AI opt-outs you didn’t write. Our Cloudflare guide shows where.

The separate controls for AI Overviews and AI Mode (nosnippet, max-snippet and the Search Console setting) are covered in why your page isn’t in AI Overviews.

Rank in Google for the questions people ask Gemini

Grounding retrieves from Google’s index, so the pages Gemini can draw on are the pages Google ranks. Google says plainly that optimizing for its generative AI features “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO”. In practice:

• Publish a page for each question that matters, with the answer in the first paragraph and the customer’s words in the heading.
• Keep the page indexable: no stray noindex, a sensible canonical, facts in the HTML rather than loaded by scripts.
• Earn the mentions and links that help pages rank: coverage, directories and lists in your field.

Our technical SEO checklist and guide to improving your Google ranking cover the foundations.

Local businesses: the Business Profile is the main lever

Google’s AI optimization guide says Business Profiles can help your products and services be visible “in both AI responses and other Google Search results”. Gemini in Maps raised the stakes in March 2026: Ask Maps builds recommendations from more than 300 million places and reviews from more than 500 million contributors, rolling out first in the US and India (AP). Make the profile complete, not just claimed:

• Primary and secondary categories that match how customers search, not how you describe yourself.
• Hours, including holiday hours, updated on the day they change.
• Services or menu with prices, attributes (accessibility, parking, payment), and photos.
• A steady flow of recent reviews, with replies. In BrightLocal’s 2026 survey, 74% of consumers look only at reviews from the last three months.

The full local playbook, including Apple, Bing and Yelp, is in getting a local business recommended by AI.

How to tell if Gemini mentions you

There’s no Gemini report for site owners. Search Console’s generative AI report shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode only (reading the Search Console AI report). For the Gemini app, ask your customers’ questions monthly, three times each, and note whether you’re named and whether the Sources button shows your pages; Google notes that not every response includes sources. Don’t assume Gemini matches the others: when Custom Legal Marketing ran 3,200 prompts about law firms, Google AI Mode, ChatGPT and Claude rarely recommended the same firms.