Skip to content

GEO FAQ Pages on Your Domain

The GEO Agent generates FAQ pages from real visitor questions and publishes them as fast, SEO-optimized static pages. By default they are served from faq.userose.ai. You can optionally serve them from your own subdomain (e.g. faq.yourcompany.com) so the content lives on your brand.

Why a Custom Domain

  • Brand consistency — visitors and search engines see your domain in citations (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews).
  • SEO authority — backlinks and engagement accrue to your domain, not ours.
  • Single canonical URL — Rose enforces one indexable URL per tenant. With a custom domain, requests to faq.userose.ai/{your-domain} are 301-redirected to your domain.

You don't need a custom domain to benefit from the GEO Agent. The default faq.userose.ai/{your-domain}/frequently-asked-questions is fully indexable and submitted to search engines for you. Skip this guide unless you want the brand-on-domain benefits.

What You Need to Do

1. Pick a Subdomain

A subdomain is required — for example:

  • faq.yourcompany.com ✅
  • help.yourcompany.com ✅
  • answers.yourcompany.com ✅
  • yourcompany.com ❌ (apex/root domain not supported)

CNAME records cannot live at the apex of a domain in most DNS providers, so you must use a subdomain.

2. Add a CNAME Record

In your DNS provider's dashboard, add the following record:

Field Value
Type CNAME
Name / Host faq (or whatever subdomain you chose)
Target / Value faq.userose.ai
TTL 300 (or your provider's default)
Proxy / Cloud DNS-only (not proxied)

Provider-specific notes:

  • Cloudflare DNS — set the record to DNS-only (grey cloud ☁️), not proxied (orange cloud 🟠). Rose terminates SSL on its own edge; double-proxying breaks the TLS handshake.
  • Route 53 / Google Domains / GoDaddy / OVH / Gandi / Namecheap — standard CNAME, no special flags.
  • Do not also add an A or AAAA record for the same subdomain. CNAME only.

3. Confirm With Rose

Once the record is live (usually 1–5 minutes after saving), email your Rose contact with the chosen hostname, e.g.:

"Please configure faq.example.com as our GEO FAQ public host."

We will:

  1. Register the hostname with our edge worker so it resolves to your tenant.
  2. Provision the TLS certificate (automatic, ~5 minutes).
  3. Update your geo.publishing.public_host configuration.
  4. Re-render your FAQ pages with the new canonical URL baked into the HTML and <link rel="canonical">.
  5. Update your sitemap.xml and re-submit it to IndexNow (Bing / ChatGPT / Yandex) and Google.

You'll receive a confirmation when it's live.

4. Verify It Works

After go-live, check the following URLs:

URL Expected Response
https://faq.yourcompany.com/frequently-asked-questions 200 OK — your FAQ page renders
https://faq.yourcompany.com/sitemap.xml 200 OK — XML sitemap with one URL
https://faq.yourcompany.com/robots.txt 200 OK — allows all crawlers
https://faq.userose.ai/yourcompany.com/frequently-asked-questions 301 Moved Permanently → https://faq.yourcompany.com/frequently-asked-questions

The 301 from the default host to your domain proves canonical enforcement is working — search engines will only index your domain.

Add your new subdomain (faq.yourcompany.com) as a property in Google Search Console and submit your sitemap URL. This is optional but speeds up Google indexing significantly (hours instead of days).

The sitemap URL to submit is:

https://faq.yourcompany.com/sitemap.xml

You do not need to do this for Bing — Rose submits new content to Bing automatically via the IndexNow protocol, which is also the index ChatGPT search reads from.

What Rose Handles for You

You do not need to:

  • Upload or maintain a verification key file (Rose serves the IndexNow key from our infrastructure).
  • Configure SSL / TLS — certificates are issued and renewed automatically.
  • Maintain sitemap.xml or robots.txt — both are served and kept fresh by our edge worker.
  • Manually re-submit content after each pipeline run — IndexNow pings are automatic.
  • Set up redirects from the default host to your custom domain — the worker handles it.

URL Reference

Path What it serves
/frequently-asked-questions The full FAQ page (HTML + JSON-LD structured data)
/sitemap.xml Single-URL sitemap with <lastmod> set to the latest pipeline run
/robots.txt Permissive crawler policy with sitemap pointer

Troubleshooting

"This site can't be reached" or DNS error

The CNAME hasn't propagated yet, or it's pointing somewhere other than faq.userose.ai. Check from a terminal:

dig faq.yourcompany.com CNAME +short
# Expected output: faq.userose.ai.

Wait 5–10 minutes after adding the record, then retry. If it still fails after an hour, double-check the record in your DNS provider.

SSL / certificate warning in the browser

The certificate provisioning hasn't completed yet (it runs after we register the hostname on our side). It typically takes 5 minutes after we confirm. If you still see a warning after 30 minutes, contact us.

Page loads but content is wrong (other tenant's FAQ)

Email us — the hostname-to-tenant mapping on our edge worker needs to be corrected.

Cloudflare-proxied subdomain (orange cloud)

If you turned on Cloudflare's proxy for the subdomain by mistake, you'll see a 525 or 526 error. Switch it back to DNS-only (grey cloud).

Reverting

If you want to stop serving on your domain and go back to faq.userose.ai:

  1. Tell us — we'll clear geo.publishing.public_host and re-render with the default canonical URL.
  2. Delete the CNAME record at your DNS provider.
  3. (Optional) Submit a removal request in Google Search Console for the custom subdomain to clear it from the index faster.

Existing visitors and bookmarks pointing to the custom domain will fail to resolve once the CNAME is removed — plan accordingly.