What is GEO, and how do you get found in AI search?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It is the work of making sure AI assistants like ChatGPT and Gemini can find your business, understand what you do, and name you when someone asks for a recommendation. It is the same underlying job as SEO, aimed at AI answers instead of Google's list of blue links.

SEO is about your position in a list of ten results. GEO is about whether you are one of the two or three businesses named in a single answer. The practical difference is that a list has room for you at number seven and an answer does not. Most of the underlying work is shared: a fast, well-structured site, a page for each thing you do, consistent business details everywhere, schema markup and genuine reviews. The genuinely GEO-specific parts are writing so a model can quote you cleanly, and actually measuring whether it does.

Near enough, yes. AEO is answer engine optimisation. You will also see AI search optimisation, LLM SEO and AI visibility. The acronyms come from different people naming the same shift at the same time. Nobody has settled it yet, and anyone insisting their acronym is the real one is selling something.

There is nothing to sign up to, which is the first thing worth knowing. ChatGPT has no business directory and no listing form, so you cannot add yourself the way you would with Google Business Profile. It finds you the same way a person researching you would: by searching the web and reading what is there. So getting your business on ChatGPT means being findable and readable on the open web. A page for each service you offer, business details identical everywhere they appear, mentions on sites that are not your own, and schema markup so a machine can tell what you are and where you work.

Usually one of four dull reasons. It cannot find you, because you are barely mentioned anywhere outside your own site. It cannot tell what you are, because your services sit in one vague paragraph. Your details disagree between your website and the directories, so it is not confident enough to name you. Or nobody other than you vouches for you. Work back through that list and the answer is normally obvious inside a minute.

Same answer for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, because they work the same way. Be findable, be readable, be consistent, and be corroborated by someone other than you. There is no submission form and no paid placement in an organic AI answer. Anyone offering to get you "featured" is either describing ordinary optimisation or making it up.

Give it something clean to quote. A model lifting a line from your site wants a self-contained, checkable claim: "We cover the Hawkesbury and Penrith seven days, with a two-hour emergency response" is quotable. "Tailored solutions for your needs" is not quotable by anyone, about anything. Facts, plainly stated, in text rather than inside an image or a PDF, are what get cited.

Yes, and you should, because otherwise you are guessing. The manual version is free: ask ChatGPT and Gemini the question your customers would ask, write down who gets named, repeat next month. The paid version does it consistently across engines and keeps the results so you can see a trend. That is what is included in my SEO plans, and it is what the free check on this page gives you a sample of.

Be findable, be readable, and be consistent. In practice: make sure you have a page for each service you offer that actually answers the question someone would ask, keep your business name, address and phone identical everywhere they appear, get mentioned on sites that are not yours, and add schema markup so a model can tell what you are and where you operate. Then check whether it worked, because the whole thing is guesswork otherwise.

It searches, it reads what it finds, and it picks a small number of sources it can understand and considers reliable. Then it summarises them. There is no ranking algorithm to reverse-engineer in the way there is with Google. What decides it is whether a model can locate you, read you without ambiguity, and see the same facts about you in more than one place.

No, and it will not any time soon. Google still sends the overwhelming majority of the traffic for a local Australian business. What is changing is that a slice of the highest-intent research now happens inside an AI assistant instead. Treat GEO as an extension of doing SEO properly, not a replacement for it.

Ask it. Open ChatGPT and Gemini and type the question a customer would type: "who is the best electrician in Penrith", or whatever fits your trade and area. Note who gets named. Do it again next month. That is the manual version, and it is genuinely worth ten minutes of your time. The only thing a paid service adds is doing it consistently, across engines, with the results kept so you can see the trend.

Worth doing, not worth paying a premium for. Australian agencies are quoting $2,000 to $4,000 a month for generative engine optimisation as a standalone service. That is hard to justify when most of the work overlaps with ordinary good SEO and the traffic volumes are still small. It should be part of what you already pay for. That is why it is included in both of my SEO plans rather than sold separately.

The AI-written summary that now appears above the normal results for many Google searches. It is powered by Gemini. It matters because it pushes the ordinary results further down the page, so a search that used to send you a click may now answer the question outright. Being cited inside the overview is the local-business version of winning that search.

Roughly the same as SEO, which is three to six months for anything competitive, because the underlying work is largely the same. Some of it moves faster: fixing schema and business-detail inconsistencies can change what a model says about you within weeks, because there is no ranking queue to wait in.