Use case: a dot as your SEO manager
SEO is a natural fit for an always-on agent: it never ends, it spans several tools, and it only works if someone checks it every week. This setup turns one dot into the owner of a site's organic channel.
Based on a setup published by Nicholas Dulait, co-founder of an SEO tool. He writes from Europe, where dots aren't available on Pro yet, and says he hasn't run a dot himself. The prompts below are our own adaptation. Treat this as a well-reasoned starting point, not proven results.
- Give your dot one ongoing job: the organic channel of one site.
- Connect real data first. Without Search Console, its advice is guesswork.
- Write the rules before the first task, including a check for anything a change would remove.
- Run SEO on Monday and GEO (AI answer citations) on Thursday, every week.
- When you reject a draft, record why. Those reasons become your dot's standards.
What a dot can and can't do here
| Good at | Repeating the same weekly check, clicking through a CMS or search results like a person, drafting fixes for approval, remembering what you rejected |
|---|---|
| Can't know on its own | Your rankings, clicks and impressions; search volumes; which competitor pages are taking your traffic |
| So it needs | Data connections, such as Search Console and an SEO data tool, before it can make good calls |
1. Give it one job
At launch you get one dot. Spending it on scattered errands wastes it; dots are built for ongoing responsibility. Send this as the first message:
You're responsible for the organic search channel of [your domain] until I say otherwise. Every Monday, report in [channel]: 1. Organic clicks for the last 7 days vs. the 7 days before 2. Pages that lost the most clicks this month 3. Whether [your brand] is cited for the prompts in my "GEO prompts" list You may read data, keep a log and write drafts without asking. Never change a live page without my approval. Our audience is [who you serve]. Our most important pages are [3 URLs]. Before you start, list every app and data source you can and can't access.
The last line matters most: it makes your dot show its blind spots on day one instead of week three.
2. Connect the data
- Search Console: the scoreboard.
- Your CMS: WordPress, Webflow, Shopify or similar. Drafts only at first.
- A log sheet: every action, proposal and approval, as an audit trail.
- A place to approve: Slack, or keep it in ChatGPT.
- An SEO data source for search volumes and competitor pages, if you use one.
Your dot can only use apps available as plugins on your account, within their permissions. Check what's available in ChatGPT's Plugins settings before you rely on a connection.
3. Write the rules before the first task
Dots check risky actions against your instructions and Custom Rules, but they can't check against a rule you never wrote. A starting set for SEO:
| Take action without asking | Read Search Console and analytics; create CMS drafts; write to the log; post in your SEO channel |
|---|---|
| Ask before taking action | Publish or update a live page; change a title or meta description on a page that gets clicks; add or change a redirect; add internal links to key pages |
| Hand off to you | Delete any page, post or file; edit robots.txt, the sitemap or canonical tags; email anyone outside the company; buy anything |
Then add one rule for every approval request. This catches the most painful agent mistake: silently dropping part of a page.
Before you ask me to approve a change to a live page, compare it with the current page and list anything the new version removes: tables, FAQs, embeds, images, internal links, structured data. If anything is missing, say so in the first line.
On some workspace accounts, Custom Rules are turned off by an admin. In that case, put these rules in your first message instead.
4. The weekly loop
Monday: SEO
Every Monday at 8 AM [time zone]: 1. Compare the last 28 days with the previous 28 in Search Console. 2. List the 5 pages that lost the most clicks. For each, say whether the ranking dropped or the click-through rate dropped. They need different fixes. 3. List pages ranking 8 to 15 with the most impressions. 4. For the top 3 in each list, create a draft fix in the CMS. 5. Send me a short summary with one approval link per draft. Confirm this schedule.
Step 2 is where the value is. A lost ranking usually needs a better page. A lost click-through rate at the same ranking usually needs a better title, or means an AI answer now sits above you.
Thursday: GEO (are you cited in AI answers?)
Every Thursday: 1. Run each prompt in my "GEO prompts" list in ChatGPT search and Perplexity, 3 times each. 2. Log whether [your brand] is mentioned, whether [your domain] is cited, and which URLs are cited. 3. List URLs cited 2 or more times where we're absent. 4. For each, draft how we could earn a mention. Drafts only. Never send anything. Confirm this schedule.
Three runs per prompt isn't optional: AI answers change between runs, and a single run is noise. And don't let your dot chase special AI files or markup for Google: Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in its AI features. The levers are the usual ones: accurate, crawlable pages and being cited by pages the engines already trust.
5. Reject with a reason
OpenAI says a dot learns your preferences and standards over time. That works both ways, so make the learning explicit:
Keep a document called "SEO standards". Every time I reject something, add the reason as one line. Read it before every draft.
Open questions
- Budget: 10 prompts × 2 engines × 3 runs is 60 searches every Thursday. Tasks your dot starts in Codex or ChatGPT Work count toward your limits. See usage limits.
- Connectors: check that Search Console and your CMS are available as plugins on your account.
- Drift: whether a dot keeps the same method week after week for months is untested.
Questions
Can an OpenAI dot do SEO?
It can run the repetitive parts: weekly Search Console checks, drafting fixes in a CMS and checking AI answer engines with its own browser. It needs connected data, such as Search Console, to make good recommendations.
Can a dot publish changes to my website?
Only if the connected CMS plugin allows it. A safer setup is drafts only, with every change to a live page requiring your approval.
Can a dot track whether ChatGPT or Perplexity cites my site?
Yes. A dot has its own browser, so it can run prompts in answer engines on a schedule and log which URLs are cited. Run each prompt several times, because answers vary between runs.