How to rank in Gemini: getting cited in the Gemini app

Settle Google-Extended, then test grounded answers

1. Find your Google-Extended rule. Open your live robots.txt and search for Google-Extended. If there is no group for it, your general rules apply. If it is disallowed, decide whether keeping content out of Gemini training is worth being left out of Gemini's grounded answers, because Google offers one token for both.

# Allows Gemini training and grounding in Gemini Apps
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /

2. Confirm indexing. Run your ten most important URLs through URL Inspection in Search Console. Gemini can only ground on pages that are in the index.
3. Test current-information questions. Gemini answers many prompts from the model alone, without links. Questions about prices, recent changes, this year's rules or local availability are more likely to trigger grounding. Write ten of those for your topic and run them.
4. Use the double-check feature. Gemini can check a response against Google Search and highlight supported or contradicted statements. Run it on answers about your business and note which of your pages come up.
5. Add a referral segment for gemini.google.com in analytics.
6. Date your facts. On pages with changing information, add a visible "prices checked" or "rules as of" line and keep it honest.

What to publish for Gemini

Gemini is used for planning, research and drafting as much as for quick questions, and its grounded answers lean on sources that state current facts clearly. The pages that fit:

• Pages with dated, specific facts: fees, deadlines, opening hours, version requirements, availability by region.
• Plain explanations of processes: how to apply, what happens in which order, how long each step takes.
• Accurate business data in Google's own systems. For place questions, Gemini can draw on Google Maps, so your Google Business Profile carries the hours, services and attributes it repeats. Check that profile at the same time as your site.
• Pages that match how Gemini is asked. People often give Gemini a task rather than a query: "plan a three-day trip to Lisbon with a toddler", "compare these two mortgage offers". Pages that break a task into parts, with a clear answer for each part, give a grounded response something to cite at each step.

Gemini's Deep Research reports read and list many sources for a single request. More sources per answer means more openings for a specialist page, provided it covers its narrow topic thoroughly and says where its facts come from.

Finding Gemini in your data

Search Console has no Gemini report, and Google does not separate Gemini traffic from its other products in any tool it gives site owners. Your evidence comes from three places:

• referral visits from gemini.google.com, where the app passes a referrer;
• your monthly prompt run, using the current-information questions from step 3 and noting linked domains;
• source lists in Deep Research reports on your topic, which are long enough to show patterns.

Google's user-triggered fetchers, such as the agent used when people add URLs to Gemini notebooks, may also appear in your logs. They show that someone chose to bring your page into Gemini, which is a useful signal, though not a citation. The Google-Extended entry lists the related agents.

What Gemini decides without you

Gemini decides when to ground an answer and when to rely on the model alone, and an ungrounded answer carries no links at all. It decides which grounded sources to show. Allowing Google-Extended is a permission, not a request to be included, and it does not improve your Google rankings; Google says the token is not used as a Search ranking signal. And because Gemini reaches your pages through the Search index, anything that weakens your standing in Search weakens your chances here too. Gemini inside Workspace also answers from a user's own files, which is out of scope for any website. For Google's Search-based AI features, see AI Mode and AI Overviews, where Google-Extended has no effect.