What is GEO? How to get your business cited by AI assistants.

What is GEO?

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand, trust and cite. When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews for a recommendation, those systems assemble an answer from sources they can access. GEO improves the odds that your business is one of them.

It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. A site that search engines can't crawl or understand is rarely one that AI assistants can use well either. GEO adds a second question to every piece of content: if a machine had to summarise this page in two sentences, would it get the facts right?

Why GEO matters now

Buyers increasingly start with a question, not a search. Instead of scanning ten links, they ask an assistant to compare three options, explain a process or recommend a supplier near them. The assistant answers in a paragraph and names a handful of businesses, sometimes with links, sometimes without.

That shifts where the decision happens. If your business isn't mentioned in the answer, you may never get the chance to compete on your website. And if it is mentioned but described inaccurately, the first impression is one you didn't write.

None of this means search traffic disappears. Google still sends most referral traffic on the web. But the businesses that prepare for AI answers now are building an advantage that compounds, because the same work also improves classic SEO.

GEO vs SEO vs AEO: how they differ

SEO aims for a ranking: a position in a list of links. AEO, answer engine optimisation, aims for the box above the links: featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice answers. GEO aims for a mention: being named, quoted or linked inside a written AI answer. That changes what matters most.

In practice, one content strategy serves all three. The differences are in emphasis: GEO puts more weight on consistency across the web and on content that is easy to quote accurately.

How AI assistants decide what to cite

Each assistant works differently, and none publishes a full recipe. Some draw mainly on what they learned in training. Others run a live web search and summarise the results, which is why the same question can produce different sources on different days.

In practice, the sources that get cited tend to share a few traits. They answer the question directly. They're easy to parse, with clear headings, lists and tables. And the facts in them match what other reputable sources say about the same business.

That last point matters. If your services, location or name differ between your website, your Google Business Profile and directory listings, an assistant has less reason to trust any of them. GEO is partly a content job and partly a housekeeping job.

7 proven ways to improve your GEO

1. Make your basics consistent. Use the same business name, description, services and location everywhere you appear online, from your website footer to directory listings.
2. Answer first. Open each page and section with a direct answer in one or two sentences, then add detail. Assistants quote the clearest sentence they can find.
3. Add structured data. Organization, Service, FAQPage and LocalBusiness schema from Schema.org (opens in a new tab) describe your business in a format machines read reliably.
4. Publish real FAQs. The questions your customers actually ask, answered plainly, are some of the most quotable content you can have.
5. Let the right crawlers in. Check that robots.txt doesn't accidentally block the crawlers AI providers use, such as OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic) and PerplexityBot.
6. Consider an llms.txt file. It's a proposed convention for giving AI tools a plain-language summary of your site. Support is still limited, but it's cheap to add and easy to maintain.
7. Earn mentions elsewhere. Reviews, directory listings, partner pages, podcasts and press all reinforce what your own site says. Assistants trust facts they can confirm in more than one place.

A technical GEO checklist

Before investing in new content, make sure the foundations are sound. Most of these are quick to check and quick to fix.

• Your important pages are indexable, load quickly and don't rely on JavaScript to show their main text.
• Each page has one clear H1 and descriptive H2s that read like questions or answers.
• Your Organization schema includes your legal name, logo, address, contact details and social profiles.
• Service pages say plainly what you do, who it's for, where you work and how the process runs.
• Your robots.txt file allows the AI crawlers you want, and you've made a deliberate choice about the ones you don't.
• Your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn page and key directories match your website word for word on the basics.

Google's own guidance on AI features (opens in a new tab) is a useful reminder: the same best practices that help pages appear in search also help them appear in AI Overviews.

Common GEO mistakes to avoid

The most common mistake is treating GEO as a trick. Stuffing pages with phrases like "best agency" or writing for machines instead of people doesn't help. Assistants are built to summarise useful content, and thin pages give them nothing to quote.

The second mistake is blocking everything. Some sites block every AI crawler by default, then wonder why assistants describe them from outdated third-party sources. Blocking is a valid choice, but make it deliberately.

The third is ignoring the rest of the web. Your website is one source among many. An out-of-date directory listing or an old press release with the wrong services can shape an AI answer as much as your homepage does.

How do you measure GEO?

There's no Search Console for AI answers yet, so measure directly. Write down ten to twenty questions your buyers ask, run them through the major assistants each month, and record whether your business is mentioned, how it's described, and which source is cited.

Track the wording as well as the mention. If an assistant describes your services inaccurately, that usually points to an inconsistency somewhere in your online footprint.

Alongside this, watch referral traffic from AI tools in your analytics. Visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and similar sources are small for most businesses today, but the trend line tells you whether the work is paying off.

The short version

GEO is SEO with a new audience: AI systems that read, summarise and recommend. Clear facts, consistent information, structured data and genuinely useful answers serve both. Start with the basics, measure monthly, and improve what the answers reveal.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. GEO builds on SEO. Assistants that search the web rely on many of the same signals as search engines, so a technically sound, well-structured site is the foundation for both.

How long does GEO take to work?

It varies by assistant. Assistants that search the live web can reflect improvements within weeks. What a model learned during training changes more slowly, because it depends on when the model is updated.

Should I block AI crawlers?

It's a business decision. OpenAI, for example, documents separate crawlers for training (GPTBot) and for search (OAI-SearchBot), so you can allow one and block the other. Decide deliberately rather than relying on defaults.

Does schema markup help with GEO?

Yes. Structured data helps machines read facts about your business accurately, such as your name, services and location. It doesn't guarantee a citation, but it removes ambiguity.

Can small businesses compete in AI answers?

Yes, especially for local and specialist questions. Assistants look for clear, specific and consistent information, which a focused small business can often provide better than a large competitor.