What Is GEO? The SEO Techniques That Help Your Business Get Found in AI Search

A customer opens ChatGPT and types, "Who's a good web designer near Banbridge?" Or "Which accountants in Belfast work with small charities?" They get a short, confident answer naming two or three businesses.

The question is whether yours is one of them.

That's what GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is about. It sounds like a brand-new discipline. Most of it isn't. It's good SEO, done properly, for a reader that happens to be a machine.

GEO is SEO with a different reader

Traditional SEO asks: will Google show my page in its list of results?

GEO asks a slightly different question: when an AI tool writes an answer, will it use my information, and will it name me?

The difference matters. A search results page offers ten options and lets the person choose. An AI answer usually offers two or three, and the choice has been made for them. Being fourth is the same as being invisible.

The good news is that AI tools aren't inventing their answers from nowhere. They search the web, draw on search indexes and lean towards sources the wider internet already treats as credible. Everything that helps Google trust you helps here too. GEO adds a few techniques on top.

You'll also see this called AEO (answer engine optimisation) or AI SEO. The industry hasn't settled on a name. The work is the same.

Make sure AI can actually reach your site

This is the least glamorous step and the one most often missed.

AI companies use their own crawlers to read the web, separate from Google's. Some websites block them without the owner knowing, through a security setting, a hosting default or a line in the robots.txt file someone added years ago. Blocking them might feel protective. In practice it removes you from the conversation.

Check three things:

• Your robots.txt file isn't blocking the main AI crawlers unless you've made a deliberate decision to.

• Your content is in the page itself, not loaded later by scripts some crawlers can't run. Text hidden behind tabs, sliders and pop-ups is easy to miss.

• Your site is fast and works on a phone. Slow, heavy pages are harder to crawl and easier to skip.

Also register with Bing Webmaster Tools as well as Google Search Console. It takes ten minutes, and several AI assistants are widely reported to draw on Bing's index as well as Google's.

Answer the question before you explain it

AI tools are looking for answers they can lift and summarise. The pages they use most often put the answer first and the context second.

That means:

• Question-shaped headings. "How much does a kitchen extension cost in Northern Ireland?" works better than "Our Pricing".

• A direct answer straight underneath. One or two plain sentences that would make sense on their own, then the detail.

• FAQ sections on service pages, built from the questions customers actually ask you on the phone and by email.

A useful test: if someone read only the first sentence under each heading, would they get the answer? If not, the page is making the machine work too hard.

Structure your pages so machines can read them

A person can scan a messy page and work it out. A machine reads structure.

• Use headings properly. One main title per page, with sections underneath in a logical order. Not headings picked because they look the right size.

• Add schema markup. This is code behind the page that tells search engines and AI tools what things are: this is a local business, this is its address, these are its services, these are its reviews, this is an FAQ. Visitors never see it. Machines rely on it.

• Keep your business details identical everywhere. Name, address, phone number and opening hours should match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. Inconsistency creates doubt, and AI tools avoid recommending what they're unsure about.

Be specific enough to be quoted

Generic content doesn't get cited. If your services page says you offer "high-quality solutions tailored to your needs", there's nothing there for an AI to repeat, because a thousand other pages say the same thing.

Specific content does get cited. Give:

• Real numbers: price ranges, timescales, how many projects you've completed.

• Real places: the towns and areas you actually serve.

• Real examples: named projects, case studies and client quotes.

• Your own view: an opinion grounded in experience, which no one else can copy.

This is also where AI-written content quietly fails. It produces the average of everything already published, which is exactly what AI tools have no reason to quote. As we covered in Will Google Penalise Me for Using AI-Generated Content?, the risk isn't a penalty. It's sameness.

Build proof beyond your own website

Your website tells AI what you say about yourself. Everything else on the web tells it whether to believe you.

• Google reviews, plenty of them, recent, and replied to.

• A complete, active Google Business Profile with photos, services and regular updates.

• Mentions on other credible sites: local press, industry bodies, suppliers, partners, community organisations you support.

• Relevant directories, chosen for quality, not quantity.

• LinkedIn, where your expertise is visible under your own name.

None of this is new. It's what local SEO has always rewarded. The difference is that an AI answer squeezes the shortlist down so far that proof decides who makes it.

Show the real people behind the business

AI tools, like Google, give weight to content that clearly comes from someone with real experience.

Make it easy to see:

• Who runs the business, with a name, a face and a short, genuine background.

• Who wrote each article, with a byline linked to that person.

• Why they're qualified: years in the trade, accreditations, memberships, notable projects.

An anonymous website asks to be trusted. A named expert has already earned some of that trust.

Measure what you can

GEO is harder to measure than traditional SEO, and anyone claiming precise AI-ranking reports should be treated with caution. But you're not working blind.

• Check your analytics for visits from AI tools. Traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and similar sources shows up as referrals.

• Watch impressions in Google Search Console, not just clicks. As we explored in Only a Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click, being seen and being visited are increasingly different things.

• Ask the AI tools yourself. Every month or so, ask the questions your customers would ask and note who gets named.

• Ask your enquiries. "How did you find us?" is still the most reliable measurement tool there is.

A quick GEO check for your own site

Ask yourself:

• Could an AI crawler read every important page on your site today?

• Does each service page answer its main question in the first two sentences?

• Is there anything on your site specific enough that only you could have written it?

• Do your business details match everywhere they appear online?

• If someone searched your name, would they find proof from people other than you?

If several answers are "not sure", that's normal, and fixable. Is Your Website Invisible to AI? goes further into the strategy behind it.