AI SEO: getting your business into AI answers

AI SEO is the work of getting your business recommended when people ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity or Google's AI Overviews instead of scrolling a list of links. It goes by several names (generative engine optimization, GEO SEO, answer engine optimization, LLM SEO), and research now shows which parts of it work. Here is what AI search optimization is, what the research measured, how assistants find businesses, and what an AI SEO service should do for you.

What is AI SEO?

AI SEO is making sure AI assistants can find your business, understand what you do and choose to mention you. When someone asks an assistant for a plumber, an accountant or the best local bakery, the assistant builds one answer from the sources it can reach and trusts, and names a few businesses in it. Being one of them is the goal. The same work is called generative engine optimization (GEO), after the research that first measured it, and answer engine optimization (AEO), after the idea that assistants answer rather than rank. The names differ; the work does not. It rests on three things: a website that answers questions clearly, with sources and numbers; business information that is complete and consistent everywhere assistants look; and the ordinary SEO that gets pages found in the first place, which none of the new names replaces.

GEO vs SEO: is AI SEO different from regular SEO?

Less than the new names suggest. Google says of its AI Overviews and AI Mode: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary", and that "you don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features" (Google Search Central, updated December 10, 2025). Its guide to generative AI search goes further: "You don't need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search", and rewriting pages to catch every phrasing "primarily to manipulate rankings or generative AI responses in Google Search violates Google's scaled content abuse spam policy" (Google Search Central, Optimizing your website for generative AI features, updated July 10, 2026). Microsoft's Bing, whose index Copilot answers from, now names GEO in its own guidelines and states that GEO doesn't guarantee citations, just as SEO doesn't guarantee rankings (Search Engine Journal, February 27, 2026).

So the difference between GEO and SEO is the goal, not the work. SEO aims for a place in the results; GEO aims for a mention inside the answer. Both rest on the same foundations, plus one addition that matters: assistants also draw on sources beyond your website, such as business listings and reviews. A tactic that has no ordinary SEO justification, like special AI files, chunking pages for machines or rewriting content with AI, is unproven at best and spam at worst, and we leave it out.

Why does AI search matter for a business now?

Because customers moved quickly. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found that 45% now use AI tools like ChatGPT for local recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier, while the share using Google for local business reviews fell to 71% from 83% (BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey, February 11, 2026). The same survey found that 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses. For a business, that means a growing share of first impressions now happens inside an assistant's answer, before anyone visits a website. If an assistant does not know your business, or has its details wrong, you are not on the shortlist, and you will not see the customers you lost. The chart shows how fast the change came.

What actually works in generative engine optimization?

Evidence, not tone. The research that named GEO tested methods against real generative engines and found that "GEO can boost visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses" (Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD 2024). The detail matters more than the headline. For a source that ranked fifth, citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics roughly doubled its visibility in the answer. For a source already ranked first, the same methods lowered it. An authoritative tone barely moved anything, and keyword stuffing did nothing at all. The authors add that "the efficacy of these strategies varies across domains". For most businesses, which rank nowhere yet, the lesson is simple: pages that cite real sources and carry real numbers get used in answers; confident adjectives do not.

How do you rank in ChatGPT?

By letting its crawler in first, then being worth citing. A website can block that crawler by accident. OpenAI states that "OAI-SearchBot is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features. Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though can still appear as navigational links" (OpenAI, Overview of OpenAI Crawlers). The first ChatGPT SEO check is therefore a line in your robots.txt: if it blocks OAI-SearchBot, no amount of content will get you into ChatGPT search answers. Our free website check reads that file for you and names every AI search crawler it blocks. The second is what the assistant can read about you elsewhere: your listings, your reviews and the pages that mention you. That is why AI search optimization covers business listings, not only your own site. Other assistants run their own crawlers, so how to rank in ChatGPT is also how to rank in the rest: be reachable, be consistent, and be worth citing.

What should an AI SEO checklist include?

Seven checks, each with an ordinary SEO reason behind it. Work through them in order; the first two cost nothing and fix the most common reason a business never appears in AI answers at all:

• Allow the AI crawlers in robots.txt, including OAI-SearchBot.
• Answer real questions on your pages, one clear answer per section.
• Cite sources, quote them and add numbers, the methods the research measured.
• Mark up your business with structured data search engines can read.
• Keep your details identical on every listing: name, address, phone and hours.
• Collect and answer reviews; 97% of consumers read them.
• Make every page fast on a phone, measured on mobile data, not office wifi.

Can someone do this for you?

Yes. Our AI SEO services do the checklist above for you and keep it up every month, so AI assistants can find, trust and recommend your business. Our Growth plan, at $189€189 a month with the website included, brings you AI SEO (GEO) and higher rankings on Google and Bing: we claim and complete the listings assistants read, including Bing Places, Apple Business, Foursquare and Yelp, keep your name, address and phone identical on every one, and add the structured data that describes your business. We write and publish content that answers what your customers ask, with sources and numbers. And every month we check what the assistants say about you and report it to you, because an assistant with your details wrong is worse than one that has never heard of you. No AI text files and no tricks: only the work the research and Google's own guidance support. See SEO services for small business, the pricing, or start with a free website design.