A .com earns its keep three ways: email from your own address, a website search engines can find, and pages AI assistants can read and cite.
Basics
How do you send email from your .com without landing in spam?
Set up SPF or DKIM before you send anything. If you send more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail, Google requires all three checks plus easy unsubscribing.
| Requirement | All senders | Over 5,000 a day |
|---|---|---|
| SPF or DKIM | Either one | Both |
| DMARC | Not required | Required |
| Spam rate | Under 0.3% | Under 0.3% |
| One-click unsubscribe | Not required | On marketing messages |
Sources [4]
How do you get your site found on Google and Bing?
Verify it in Google Search Console, submit a sitemap, and use IndexNow to tell Bing and other engines when pages change.
| Step | What to know |
|---|---|
| Search Console | Google reports AI Overviews traffic inside the normal Performance report |
| Sitemap | Up to 50,000 addresses; Google trusts last-modified dates only if they're always accurate |
| IndexNow | A key file at your site's root; one ping is shared with every engine that takes part |
Advanced
How do you get cited by AI assistants?
For Google's AI Overviews, a page only needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet; no special files or markup. Other assistants use their own crawlers, so let their search bots in.
| Crawler | Company | If you block it |
|---|---|---|
| OAI-SearchBot | OpenAI | You're left out of ChatGPT's search answers |
| Claude-SearchBot | Anthropic | You're less visible in Claude's search results |
| PerplexityBot | Perplexity | You're not surfaced or linked in Perplexity search |
| GPTBot, ClaudeBot | OpenAI, Anthropic | Your pages are left out of model training only |
What did we do for zero-to-1000.com?
These steps, on 25 October 2026. Results will follow here once Search Console has data.
| Step | Status |
|---|---|
| robots.txt welcoming search, AI search and AI training | Live |
| Sitemap with real last-modified dates | Live |
| IndexNow key and first ping | Live |
| llms.txt, a short guide for AI tools | Live (Google says it doesn't need one) |
| Google Search Console | Verified |
| Email: SPF and DKIM | Set by Cloudflare Email Routing (24 Oct) |
| Email: DMARC | Not yet |
Where else should you claim your .com name?
On the social platforms and app stores your customers use. Check the same name on the .com, Instagram and X at once.
Sources (9)
- PrimaryGoogle Search Central: AI features and your website
- PrimaryGoogle Search Central: Build and submit a sitemap
- PrimaryIndexNow documentation
- PrimaryGoogle Workspace Admin Help: Email sender guidelines
- PrimaryOpenAI: Overview of OpenAI crawlers
- PrimaryAnthropic: Does Anthropic crawl data from the web?
- PrimaryPerplexity: Perplexity crawlers
- Primaryzero-to-1000.com robots.txt and sitemap
- PrimaryDNS TXT records for zero-to-1000.com (SPF, DKIM selector cf2024-1, no _dmarc record)