Give the agent something worth finding
An AI agent cannot use a resource it never reaches. Give the resource a stable page anyone can reach, link to it from the right places and make the first answer clear enough to use.
The practical work starts there.
Start with the page people need
The page is where a person should understand what the resource does and why it matters. It also gives crawlers a title, headings, links and a canonical URL to follow.
A strong opening answers the main question before it explains the system behind it. If the useful answer is buried, adding more technical files only gives the confusion more places to live.
Give crawlers a clear entrance
Different systems reach public resources in different ways.
Google says its crawlers discover URLs through known pages, links and submitted sitemaps. OpenAI separates automatic search crawling from model-training crawling and user-requested visits.
OAI-SearchBotis used for ChatGPT search.GPTBotis used for content that may help train OpenAI models.ChatGPT-Usermay visit a page because a person asked ChatGPT to use it.
Those jobs are not interchangeable. The current details belong in the OpenAI crawler documentation, while Google's discovery process is documented in How Search works.
Keep one resource identity
The page title, canonical URL and public records should describe the same thing. A resource becomes harder to trust when one layer calls it a guide and another calls it a product.
Keep these parts aligned:
- The title and opening answer on the human page
- The canonical URL and internal links
- The sitemap entry
- The JSON record and Dataset identity
- The related glossary, FAQ and directory links
This does not mean copying the same sentence everywhere. It means giving every layer the same job.
Add reusable source files after the page works
Public JSON is useful when a system needs named fields or an inventory. Markdown is useful when the explanation should remain readable without the page design. A public content catalog is useful when the site needs one record of its available datasets.
None of those files replaces the human page. They make the page easier to find, understand and reuse.
Test the same route an agent must follow
Do not stop because the files exist.
- Fetch the live URL and confirm it returns the intended page.
- Read the opening as a cold visitor.
- Follow the canonical and internal links.
- Fetch the public JSON or Markdown record.
- Confirm the same resource identity appears in every layer.
Then check the logs. A successful request proves the crawler reached the file. It does not prove the system used the answer or sent a person back.
The useful result is a connected answer
AI discovery is not a contest to publish the most endpoints. It is the work of connecting one useful answer across the routes and records a system can reach.
The AI content discovery guide shows how to check that chain across a whole site. The AI Network Readiness Review turns the gaps into a ranked repair plan.