Gemini SEO: how Google's Gemini app picks sources for B2B software questions

Gemini SEO means making your pages the ones the Gemini app pulls in and links when it answers a question. Gemini grounds answers in Google's Search index, so ranking in Google still comes first. For B2B software questions it cites vendor sites far more than ChatGPT or Perplexity do. This guide covers the data and a seven-step plan.

What Gemini SEO actually means

The Gemini app is Google's standalone assistant, the one people open on their phone or at gemini.google.com, as distinct from the AI Overviews and AI Mode that sit inside Google Search. Google said in August 2026 that the app had passed 1 billion monthly active users. Some of those people ask it the same questions your buyers used to type into Google: which tools belong on a shortlist, how two products compare, what a category costs.

When Gemini answers with sources, it links to specific pages. Gemini SEO is the work of making your pages the ones it pulls in and links. That's narrower than "AI visibility" in general, and it matters because Gemini picks sources differently from ChatGPT and Perplexity. If you already follow our guide to ranking in Google's AI Mode, much of the groundwork carries over, but the source mix is not the same.

What people are searching for

We pulled Gemini-related optimization and tracking queries from Ahrefs Keywords Explorer this morning (US data, November 3, 2026). "Gemini seo" gets about 300 searches a month, with "google gemini seo" (150, KD 6), "seo for gemini" (100) and "how to rank in gemini" (80, KD 0) behind it. The bigger numbers are about measurement: "gemini visibility tracker" shows 1,000 searches with a KD of 0, and "gemini rank tracking" and "ai visibility metrics gemini" show 700 each.

Two things stand out. Most of these keywords are too new for Ahrefs to give a difficulty score at all. And the demand skews toward "how do I see where I stand," which tells you most teams haven't yet measured Gemini on its own. We cover measurement near the end.

How the Gemini app finds pages to cite

Google is unusually direct about this. Its crawler documentation describes grounding in Gemini Apps as "providing content from the Google Search index to the model at prompt time." In plain terms, when Gemini looks something up, it draws on the same index Google Search uses. A page that isn't indexed, or doesn't rank anywhere near the top for the searches behind a question, has little chance of being picked.

The same documentation names the switch that controls this: the Google-Extended token in robots.txt. It governs whether Google can use your content to train future Gemini models and to ground answers in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI. Google also states that Google-Extended "does not impact a site's inclusion in Google Search nor is it used as a ranking signal."

That second sentence is the important one. Blocking Google-Extended buys you nothing in Search and can take you out of Gemini. Tinuiti's Q1 2026 citation report gives a real example: Amazon blocks Google-Extended but allows Googlebot, and it was effectively absent from Gemini's citations in January 2026.

What the citation studies show, and why they disagree

If you read two Gemini studies back to back, you can come away confused. One says Reddit is Gemini's most-cited domain. Another says Gemini barely cites Reddit at all. Both are accurate. They measured different questions.

The Ahrefs dataset is broad. It includes product searches, health questions, car research and how-to queries, which is why Walmart, Edmunds and Healthline sit in its top ten and why forums and video dominate. Tinuiti and Overthink used buying-stage prompts. For a B2B SaaS team, those two are the closer match to the questions you care about.

Put the commercial-prompt studies together and a consistent picture forms. On buying questions, Gemini leans away from social platforms and toward the vendors themselves. Overthink found that about three-quarters of the top domains in Google's tools were vendors. That is the opposite of the Reddit-heavy strategy many teams built for Perplexity, which our Reddit marketing guide shows can swing sharply from month to month.

One caveat applies to all of this. Each study used its own prompts, categories and counting method, and none of them tested your category. Treat the numbers as direction, then check your own prompts.

A seven-step Gemini SEO plan for B2B SaaS

Because Gemini grounds in Google's index and favors vendor sites on commercial questions, most of the work happens on your own domain. Here's the order we'd tackle it in.

1. Unblock Google-Extended unless you've made a deliberate decision to stay out of Gemini. Check robots.txt, and check any CDN or bot-management rules that might block it separately.
2. Confirm your money pages are indexed and ranking. Use Search Console's page indexing report for your pricing, product, integrations and comparison pages. Then check where those pages rank for the plain searches behind your buyers' questions, such as "[category] software" and "best [category] for enterprise." Grounding draws on that index.
3. Publish the page Gemini needs to cite you. Overthink's prompts were shortlist questions: "What is the best [category]?" and "What vendors belong on my shortlist?" If your site has no page that states plainly what you do, who it's for and how you compare, there is nothing on your domain to ground that answer. A category page and an honest comparison page usually close the gap.
4. Make the facts easy to lift. Put pricing model, integrations, security certifications, deployment options and ideal company size in text, near the top, in short declarative sentences. Gemini can only quote what it can find on the page.
5. Keep those pages current. Show a visible "last updated" date and actually update the content when prices, features or plans change. Stale facts on your own site push assistants toward third-party pages that describe you instead.
6. Fix how third parties describe you. Gemini still cites publishers and review sites alongside vendors. Make sure your G2 and Capterra profiles and your top analyst or media mentions match your own site. Our piece on how much review sites matter to AI answers covers where that effort pays off.
7. Measure Gemini separately. Don't assume your ChatGPT or Perplexity results carry over. Run Gemini as its own column in your tracking (next section).

Where YouTube fits

Ahrefs' broad dataset puts YouTube second among Gemini's most-cited domains at 14.6%. Tinuiti's commercial data puts it at 0.7%. The difference again comes down to question type: how-to, tutorial and review queries pull in video, while shortlist questions mostly don't.

For a B2B SaaS team, that suggests a narrow role. If you already publish product walkthroughs or setup tutorials, give each video a clear, descriptive title and a full description, and link it from the matching help or product page. Don't start a video program just for Gemini until your own prompt checks show video getting cited in your category.

How to tell if you're cited in Gemini

There's no Gemini app report in Google's tools today. Search Console's generative AI performance report covers impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode on Google Search. It doesn't mention the Gemini app. So you need to sample.

1. Pick 20 to 40 prompts that match real buying questions in your category: shortlist, comparison, pricing, "is [your product] good for [use case]," and two or three problem-led questions.
2. Run each prompt in the Gemini app, signed out or in a clean profile, two or three times. Answers vary from run to run.
3. Open the sources on each answer and log every cited URL in a sheet: prompt, date, your URLs, competitor URLs, third-party URLs.
4. Repeat monthly on the same day. Report citation rate for your priority pages and the domains cited instead of you.

Our guide to LLM citation tracking has the full ledger format and the metrics worth reporting. If you're setting a baseline across all engines for the first time, the steps in how to run an AI visibility audit include a free template you can reuse for Gemini.

Common Gemini SEO mistakes

• Treating "AI search" as one channel. On commercial prompts, social media made up 31% of Perplexity's citations and 3% of Gemini's in Tinuiti's January data. A single strategy can't serve both equally.
• Blocking Google-Extended by default. It doesn't protect your Search rankings, and it can remove you from Gemini answers.
• Relying on third parties to explain your product. On B2B questions, Gemini is more willing than other assistants to cite the vendor directly. Give it a page worth citing.
• Reading one study as a rule. The headline numbers depend on the prompt mix. Check what Gemini cites for your own buyers' questions before you shift budget.

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