How your site shows up in search and AI answers
What every Firetend site does for search engines and AI assistants out of the box, and the few settings that are yours to choose.
Every Firetend site is built to be found: by search engines like Google and Bing, and by AI assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity that answer questions from the web. You don't need a plugin or a setting for any of this. It's part of every site and stays up to date as we improve it.
Information search engines read
Each page carries structured data: a description of the page in the format search engines use to understand it. Your business, with its phone number and logo; each location, with its address, opening hours and services; each service, team member, article and author; glossary terms; FAQs; and the breadcrumb trail that shows where a page sits on your site. It comes from your content and settings, so it stays correct when you edit them.
Sitemap and robots.txt
Your site has a sitemap at /sitemap.xml listing every page, with dates for articles and other dated entries, and a robots.txt that lets search engines read the whole site. Both are rebuilt every time you publish. To help Google find your pages sooner, add your site to Google Search Console and submit the sitemap there.
robots.txt also tells AI companies what they may do with your site. Appearing in search results and in AI answers is always allowed. Using your site to train AI models is not, unless you turn on Allow AI training under Settings → AI and search. Your site shows up in search and AI answers either way.
A copy for AI assistants
Next to each page, your site keeps a plain Markdown copy of its text, without menus or styling. AI tools that ask for it get the copy, which is quicker for them to read and quote accurately. Your site also has an /llms.txt file: a short summary of your business, your contact details and a list of your pages with a line about each, linked to their copies.
Titles and descriptions
The title and description of each page are what people see in search results. When you edit a page or entry under Content, the In search results preview shows how it will look, with the length of each:
- The title tag (the title, then your site name) should be 60 characters at most, or search engines cut the end. To keep a longer heading on the page, set a shorter SEO title.
- The description should be 140–160 characters.
- No two pages should share a title or a description.
The site's own check fails on any page that breaks these rules, and the agents run it after their work. The content agent also checks every page it writes for search and AI-readiness.
Sites in more than one language
On a site with several languages, each page tells search engines where its translations are, and the sitemap lists them too, so people see the page in their own language. See More than one language.
Telling search engines about changes
When you publish, Bing and other search engines that support IndexNow are told which pages are new, changed or removed. Google doesn't use IndexNow; it finds changes through your sitemap.
Your firetend.app address
While your site is only on your-name.firetend.app, search engines are asked not to list it, and IndexNow isn't used. Once you connect your own domain, every page, the sitemap and the structured data use it. If you want to be found on the free address in the meantime, turn on Show in search results under Settings → Domains.
Page speed
Fast pages rank better and keep visitors. Your pages are built in advance as plain HTML and served from servers around the world, with fonts served from your own site. Maps, videos and booking calendars load only when a visitor clicks them: see Search, maps, videos and booking.