What is GEO, and what should your business do about it?

GEO means making reliable information available to answer engines

Generative engine optimization, usually shortened to GEO, describes work intended to help a business’s information be found and used in AI-generated answers. Instead of receiving only a list of links, a person may see a written response that combines information from several sources. Some responses include citations that lead back to the websites used.

For a business, the useful question is practical: when someone asks about your services, what accurate information can the system find? If your website gives a vague offer, an outdated price and an incomplete service area, a new acronym will not resolve those gaps.

GEO is a developing area with different systems and limited visibility into how each answer is assembled. Treat it as work on the quality and availability of your information. Promises of guaranteed citations or a permanent place in an AI answer go beyond what a website owner can control.

How it relates to SEO

SEO helps search engines discover and understand your pages, and helps people find them through search. GEO puts extra attention on whether a response system can use the information to answer a question accurately. The two overlap in clear content, discoverable pages and a credible description of the business.

Google says its existing SEO practices remain relevant to AI features in Search. Its AI features documentation is a useful starting point when assessing claims about special optimization techniques.

You still need a useful page after a click. If an answer cites your explanation of a service, the visitor should land on a page that makes the offer, limitations and next step easy to understand. A short passage written for extraction cannot replace a complete service explanation.

For businesses serving nearby customers, keep the local SEO foundations in place too. Accurate locations, service areas and contact details matter whether a person arrives through a map, a conventional result or an AI-generated answer.

Start with questions customers actually ask

Collect the questions that appear in enquiries and early project conversations. A web agency might hear: what does the quoted price include, can we edit the site, who owns the domain and can the site be maintained in two languages? Those are good reasons to publish an explanation.

Give the answer promptly, then explain the conditions. If the price depends on supplied content, say so near the price. If a product works only on particular platforms, make that clear next to the download. Readers should not have to join fragments from several pages to discover an important limit.

Use headings to help readers navigate the subject. They should describe the actual question or decision. A heading such as “What maintenance covers” gives more information than “Our complete solution”. There is no need to reshape every paragraph into the same question-and-answer formula.

Keep normal editorial judgment. An explanation can include an example, a table or a short checklist when it helps someone decide. Adding those formats mechanically does not establish accuracy.

Give your business a consistent identity

Check that your site explains who operates the business, what it offers and where it works. Use the same factual identity across the about page, contact page, service pages and relevant external profiles. If a project belongs to your own ecosystem, explain that relationship rather than presenting it as an unnamed client success.

For a Swiss company, language and geography can be easily confused. An English page may serve customers in Geneva and Lausanne; it does not become a UK or US offer just because it is written in English. Keep the service area and currency clear.

Structured data can help describe the entities and page types using supported vocabulary. It needs to match the visible information. A claim in markup should be just as defensible as a claim in the main text. Do not add fabricated reviews, qualifications or awards to make the business look established.

Publish evidence that a reader can inspect

A useful case study explains the problem, the work and the result within a stated scope. Where you have permission, show the actual product, screenshots or deliverables. If you publish a performance measurement, describe the page, tool, date and test conditions. Those details make the claim meaningful.

Distinguish a controlled test from real user data, and a technical improvement from a business outcome. A faster page can be a worthwhile result without proving additional revenue. If enquiry data is unavailable, say what was observed and stop there.

The same discipline applies to articles. Link technical statements to the documentation that supports them, keep product limits visible and update facts when the product changes. A publication date records when a piece appeared; an update date should correspond to a real revision.

Consider an illustrative example: a software page says “works offline”, while an optional conversion feature needs a separate installed program. A clearer page states both the offline capability and the dependency. That gives readers and answer systems a more accurate description to work with.

Check access at the website and network layers

A public page can still be difficult to retrieve if the server returns an error, the essential text requires an unsupported interaction or a security rule blocks the request. Check the actual response and rendered content. Do not assume that a browser opening the homepage proves every page can be fetched.

Review robots.txt, page-level indexing directives and relevant firewall rules with the person responsible for the site. They serve different purposes. Google’s robots.txt introduction explains crawl control; it should not be treated as a way to protect confidential data.

AI providers can document different automated agents for discovery and other uses. Read the current provider documentation before changing access, and verify any request you intend to allow. Perplexity’s crawler documentation, for example, distinguishes its agents and describes access details.

Make access decisions deliberately. Private customer data belongs behind proper access controls. Allowing a crawler to retrieve public content establishes availability, not a guarantee that the content will be selected or cited.

Put llms.txt in proportion

The llms.txt proposal describes a text file intended to help agents use a website. A concise overview and links can be useful for tools that choose to read it. Treat it as supplementary documentation.

It is not an access-control mechanism and it cannot make an inaccurate page reliable. It should point to real, current pages and stay consistent with them. If maintaining the file takes priority over fixing broken content or contact information, the work has become misplaced.

Google’s guide to generative AI search explicitly advises focusing on effective SEO and useful content instead of tactics such as creating unnecessary AI text files. Ask what a proposed file will help in your situation and how that benefit could be observed.

Measure samples honestly

AI-generated answers can vary with the wording, system, date and context. If you want to monitor them, keep a small set of representative questions and record the exact conditions. Save the response, whether your business was mentioned and whether a citation actually led to your page.

A mention, a citation and a website visit are different observations. Keep them separate. A provider may show your name without a link; a citation may receive no visits; a visit may lead to an enquiry. Combine the evidence you can access without inventing the missing steps.

Review referrals and search reports where available, then compare them with the business’s real enquiries. Do not interpret one favourable answer as a durable ranking. Equally, an absent mention in one test is not a complete audit of visibility across every system.

A useful report states what was tested, what was seen and what remains unknown. The next action should follow the finding: correct an outdated fact, publish a missing explanation or investigate a blocked request.

A practical starting plan for a small business

Choose a service page customers already use and a handful of recurring questions. Improve the explanation, make the limits visible and add evidence you can support. Check that the page is reachable and linked from the rest of the site. Record the change and review the available evidence later.

That is work you can evaluate even if an AI system never cites the page. It makes the offer easier for customers to understand and gives other systems clearer material. Build from that foundation rather than commissioning a large collection of nearly identical “AI optimized” articles.

For help assessing the current site, our SEO audit and guide to reading an audit explain the kind of evidence to expect.

Questions about AI search visibility

Can you guarantee that an AI assistant will recommend us?

No. An agency can improve the information it controls and document the checks it performs. It cannot control every provider’s retrieval, generated response or selection of sources.

Do we need a separate website for GEO?

Usually the first task is to improve your existing public information. Check content, access and consistency before adding another publishing surface that also needs maintenance.

Should we write more articles?

Write when a real question needs a useful answer and you have something accurate to add. The volume of pages is not evidence of useful coverage. Keep each piece connected to your services, sources and readers.