Google is no longer the only index that matters. Learn which AI indices Swiss B2B companies need to be in — and how to get there.
For twenty years, "being indexed" meant one thing: Google. If Googlebot crawled your site and your pages appeared in Google Search, you were discoverable. Everything else was a rounding error.
That era is ending. Today, at least five major AI providers maintain their own indices, crawlers, and data pipelines — each deciding independently which companies to surface when a user asks a question. If you are only indexed by Google, you are visible in only one of these systems. The others may not know you exist.
For Swiss B2B companies, this is not a theoretical problem. When a procurement manager in Zurich asks ChatGPT for supplier recommendations, the answer does not come from Google's index. It comes from Bing's index, OpenAI's own crawler data, and the model's training corpus. If you have spent years optimising exclusively for Google, you may be invisible in the channel that is growing fastest.
This article maps the complete AI index landscape, explains which providers power which AI tools, and provides a concrete action plan for ensuring your Swiss B2B company is discoverable across every relevant AI system.
Each major AI provider draws from different sources. Understanding this map is the first step to a multi-index strategy:
ChatGPT's real-time search is powered by Bing's index, not Google's. In addition, OpenAI runs its own crawler — GPTBot — which builds a separate content index. When a user asks ChatGPT a question, it may combine Bing search results, GPTBot-crawled content, and the model's training data to generate an answer.
The implication: if your site ranks well on Google but you have never checked Bing Webmaster Tools, ChatGPT may not have access to your latest content.
Google's AI features — Gemini and AI Overviews in Search — naturally use Google's own index. If you have been doing SEO, you are already covered here. Google also uses the Google-Extended crawler specifically for AI training purposes.
Perplexity operates its own crawler — PerplexityBot — and combines this with results from multiple search indices. It is one of the most aggressive AI search tools in terms of real-time web retrieval, which means your current web presence matters especially for Perplexity answers.
Anthropic runs ClaudeBot, its own web crawler, and has web search partnerships that provide real-time retrieval capabilities. Claude's answers draw from both its training data and these live search results.
Apple crawls the web with Applebot and is integrating AI features across its ecosystem — Siri, Safari, and system-wide intelligence. For Swiss B2B companies whose clients use Apple devices (common in executive and creative sectors), Applebot indexing matters.
Many AI models — including open-source ones that enterprises increasingly use internally — are trained on Common Crawl, a massive open dataset of web content. If your site is not in Common Crawl, it may be absent from the training data of dozens of models you have never heard of but that your prospects might use.
In Switzerland, Bing's market share for traditional search is negligible — roughly 3-5% depending on the source. Because of this, most Swiss B2B companies have never set up Bing Webmaster Tools, never submitted a sitemap to Bing, and never checked whether their pages are actually indexed there.
This was a reasonable decision when Bing was just a search engine. It is no longer reasonable now that Bing powers ChatGPT's real-time search — arguably the most influential AI tool in the market. Every Swiss company that ignores Bing is effectively invisible to ChatGPT's search capabilities.
The fix is straightforward: register at Bing Webmaster Tools, submit your sitemap, and verify your site. It takes fifteen minutes and immediately expands your AI discoverability.
Even if your content is excellent, AI providers can only index what their crawlers can access. Many Swiss websites — especially those managed by security-conscious IT departments — block unknown bots by default. This means GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Applebot may be receiving 403 errors when they try to crawl your site.
Check your robots.txt file. A configuration that supports AI discoverability should explicitly allow these crawlers:
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
User-agent: ClaudeBot
Allow: /
User-agent: PerplexityBot
Allow: /
User-agent: Applebot
Allow: /
User-agent: Google-Extended
Allow: /If your robots.txt contains a blanket User-agent: * / Disallow: / rule with exceptions only for Googlebot, you are blocking every AI crawler. This is more common than you might think — we have seen it on the websites of major Swiss IT consultancies, engineering firms, and SaaS providers.
AI models are not updated in real time. Each model has a training data cutoff — a date after which no new information is included in its base knowledge. GPT-4's training data, for example, has a cutoff that does not include content published in recent months.
This creates an invisible gap: even if your website has been indexed by Google for years, the content you published last quarter may not exist in any model's training data. Only through real-time retrieval (RAG) can AI tools access your recent content — and that retrieval depends on being indexed in the search systems each provider uses.
The practical consequence: you need both strong historical presence (for training data) and current indexation across multiple search systems (for RAG). Neither alone is sufficient.
Here is a concrete action plan to ensure multi-index coverage:
Here is a detailed process for auditing and fixing your multi-index presence. Most Swiss B2B companies can complete this in a single working day.
site:yourdomain.ch on Google to see your actual indexed pages.This single step is the highest-impact action most Swiss companies can take for AI visibility. Because ChatGPT's web search is Bing-powered, registering with Bing Webmaster Tools directly affects whether ChatGPT can find and recommend your company.
Disallow rules that might block non-Google crawlers.Allow rules for GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Applebot, and Google-Extended.Use this matrix to track your coverage across all relevant indices. Score each as Green (fully indexed), Yellow (partially indexed), or Red (not indexed or blocked):
| Index / Crawler | Powers | How to Verify | How to Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google / Googlebot | Google AI Overviews, Gemini | Google Search Console | Submit sitemap, fix crawl errors |
| Google-Extended | Gemini training data | Check robots.txt | Allow Google-Extended in robots.txt |
| Bing / Bingbot | ChatGPT web search, Copilot | Bing Webmaster Tools | Register, submit sitemap, verify pages |
| GPTBot | ChatGPT training data | Server logs for GPTBot | Allow GPTBot in robots.txt |
| ClaudeBot | Claude training data and search | Server logs for ClaudeBot | Allow ClaudeBot in robots.txt |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity search and answers | Server logs for PerplexityBot | Allow PerplexityBot in robots.txt |
| Applebot | Apple Intelligence, Siri | Server logs for Applebot | Allow Applebot in robots.txt |
| Common Crawl | Open-source model training | Common Crawl index search | Ensure public access, fast pages |
Your web server logs contain valuable information about which AI crawlers are visiting your site and whether they are succeeding. Here is how to analyse them:
Being present in multiple indices is not just additive — it compounds. When your company appears in Bing's index, Google's index, Common Crawl, and the proprietary indices of each AI crawler, several things happen:
Different Swiss B2B sectors face different multi-index challenges. Here is what to watch for in key verticals:
Tech companies often have JavaScript-heavy websites that render poorly for AI crawlers. Server-side rendering is especially important in this sector. On the positive side, tech companies tend to have good SEO fundamentals and may already be in Google's index. The gap is usually Bing and AI-specific crawlers.
FINMA-regulated companies often have restrictive security configurations that block AI crawlers. Review your WAF and CDN settings carefully. Financial companies also tend to have strong press coverage, which helps with training data inclusion — but only if their websites are accessible to AI crawlers for real-time retrieval.
Manufacturing companies frequently have older websites with poor technical foundations. Page speed, mobile rendering, and clean HTML are common issues. The good news is that competition for AI visibility in Swiss manufacturing niches is still low — establishing presence now creates a durable advantage.
Consulting firms rely heavily on reputation and word-of-mouth. AI recommendations are a natural extension of this dynamic. The challenge is that many consulting firms have thin websites with minimal specific content. Investing in detailed methodology descriptions, case studies, and FAQ content pays outsized dividends for AI visibility in this sector.
The window for establishing multi-index presence is open but narrowing. AI providers are actively crawling the web and building their knowledge bases right now. The companies that are indexed today will be the companies these models "know" and recommend tomorrow.
For Swiss B2B companies, the stakes are particularly high. The DACH market is competitive, niches are well-defined, and the first company to establish strong AI visibility in a category tends to hold that position. LLMs develop a form of knowledge inertia — once they consistently recommend a company, displacing it requires significantly more effort than establishing the position in the first place.
This is exactly why per4mx monitors your visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Google AI, and Perplexity simultaneously. Each provider draws from different indices, and a gap in any one of them means missed opportunities. Understanding where you stand across the full landscape is the first step to closing the gaps.
The action items are clear and most of them cost nothing but time: register with Bing, update your robots.txt, create an llms.txt file, and start monitoring. The companies that do this today will have a structural advantage that compounds with every model update, every new AI feature release, and every prospect who asks an AI assistant for a recommendation.
Bing typically begins processing a submitted sitemap within 24-48 hours, but full indexation of all your pages may take one to two weeks. You can accelerate the process by using Bing's URL submission tool to submit your most important pages individually. Once your pages are in Bing's index, they become available to ChatGPT's web search feature — which is the primary reason this matters for AI visibility. Monitor your Bing Webmaster Tools dashboard for crawl progress and address any errors promptly.
Blocking crawlers like GPTBot and ClaudeBot in your robots.txt does prevent those providers from using your content in future training data updates. However, this comes at a significant cost: if AI models cannot access your content, they cannot recommend you. For most Swiss B2B companies, the visibility benefits of allowing AI crawlers far outweigh the risks. Your website content is already public — the question is whether you want AI models to be able to read it and potentially recommend your company, or whether you prefer to be invisible in AI-powered search. For the vast majority of B2B companies, visibility is the clear choice.
This is the most common scenario we see with Swiss B2B companies. The typical causes are: (1) your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers even though Google can access your site; (2) you have never registered with Bing Webmaster Tools, so ChatGPT's search cannot find you; (3) your website relies on JavaScript rendering that AI crawlers cannot process; or (4) your content is optimised for short keywords rather than the conversational queries AI users type. Start with the multi-index audit described above to identify which specific gaps apply to your situation.
The primary risk is that AI models may surface inaccurate information about your company if your web presence contains errors or inconsistencies. This is why consistency auditing — ensuring your company name, description, and key facts are identical across all web properties — is so important before actively pursuing multi-index coverage. If your information is accurate and consistent, multi-index presence is overwhelmingly positive. If your information is inconsistent, fixing those inconsistencies should be your first priority.
per4mx monitors your AI visibility across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI simultaneously. Because each of these platforms draws from different indices and data sources, per4mx effectively gives you a cross-index view of your AI presence. It identifies which platforms mention you, which do not, and what specific information gaps exist on each. This makes it straightforward to diagnose whether a visibility gap is caused by a Bing indexation issue (affecting ChatGPT), a crawler access issue (affecting Claude), or a content quality issue (affecting all platforms).
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