A new site can appear in AI answers within days, not months, when it ships crawlable HTML on launch, submits URLs via IndexNow and Google Search Console, and publishes content on questions with real user demand — the fastest documented paths run through Bing (for ChatGPT Search) and Google's fresh-content signals (for AI Overviews).
The mechanics are documented. Bing's IndexNow announcement promises near-real-time crawl of submitted URLs. Google's Search Console URL Inspection tool lets a publisher request a crawl on specific pages. Both surfaces feed the retrieval layer that answer engines use.
Real-world observations vary by topic, competition, and site authority. Sites publishing on low-competition question phrasings — long-tail queries with clear intent — see citations sooner than sites competing on head terms. Fresh sites benefit from novelty signals: a page that answers a newly-asked question can be preferred over an older page that never squarely addressed it.
What does not accelerate the process: sitemap-only submissions (they help but are slower than IndexNow), keyword-stuffing (helps neither classic Search nor answer engines), and paying for "AEO submission services" (there is no such thing at any major engine).
Focus effort on the four levers that do compress the timeline: crawlability, canonical URL, entity markup, and immediate discovery ping on every publish.