GEO: Getting Recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews
Your customers now ask ChatGPT, not Google, "which is a good architecture office in Istanbul?". The AI doesn't show ten links; it names a few businesses and cites a few sites. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of getting your name into that answer.
Where does the AI get its answer from?
From two sources:
- The model's own knowledge. What it learned from the texts it read during training. It updates slowly; a change you make today shows up there months later.
- The search it runs while answering. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode search the web while answering, read the pages they find, summarise them and cite them as sources.
GEO gets fast results in the second one. The AI picks the clearest, most trustworthy and most easily quotable piece for the question asked. If your page contains that piece, your chances of being picked go up.
What I do in GEO
Making sure AI can reach your site
- robots.txt and firewall: I check that bots like OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot and ClaudeBot aren't being blocked without you knowing.
- Content has to be in the HTML: Many AI bots don't run JavaScript. A page whose text is loaded later with JavaScript can look empty to them.
- Bing Webmaster Tools: Some AI search also draws on Bing's index, so I register the site with Bing too.
- llms.txt: A new proposal that gives AI a summary of your site. Not every AI reads it; it does no harm, but it's no miracle either.
Quotable content
- Every section starts with a clear sentence. The AI can take that sentence and put it in its answer.
- Concrete facts: numbers, price ranges, timelines, addresses, dates. "We provide quality service" doesn't get quoted; "a business website delivered in 3–5 weeks" does.
- Comparison tables and lists. The AI uses them easily when answering "X or Y?" questions.
- Sources and an up-to-date date. A 2023 GEO study by researchers including a team from Princeton University showed that content with added sources, quotes and statistics appeared noticeably more often in AI answers.
Brand information and trust
- The AI doesn't only know you from your site: Google Business Profile, industry directories, news sites, forums, YouTube and LinkedIn are sources too. We make sure your name, what you do and where you are is written the same way everywhere.
- Genuine customer reviews and being mentioned on other sites.
- Organization or Person structured data, with sameAs links connecting your social accounts; this is how the AI answers "whose site is this?".
Measurement
- I regularly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode 20–30 questions about your industry and track whether you're mentioned and which of your pages gets cited.
- Visitors from AI sites in your analytics: chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com.
The difference between GEO and SEO
In SEO the goal is to rank high in Google's list and get clicked. In GEO the goal is to be mentioned inside the answer the AI writes; often the user learns your name without clicking at all. The foundation is still the same: a page Google can't find is usually one the AI can't find either. That's why GEO starts by checking the SEO foundation. I explain the difference between the three in one table.
Frequently asked questions
What is GEO?
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of getting a business mentioned, recommended and cited in AI answers such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews.
Can you guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend me?
No, nobody can. AI answers change with the person, the question and the day. What I can do is make your site and brand information something the AI can find, understand and trust, and measure the result regularly.
Should I block AI bots?
It's worth separating them. You may want to block training bots like GPTBot; that stops your content being used to train the model. But if you block search bots like OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, the AI can't read your site while answering and can't cite you. On Google, the Google-Extended setting affects Gemini's training; it doesn't block AI Overviews.
When will I see results?
In AIs that search the web to answer, within a few weeks after the pages are indexed. Getting into the model's own knowledge takes months and depends on new model versions.
Does a small business need GEO?
If your customers ask AI about businesses like yours, yes. For a small business, most of GEO is basic work: a proper site, an up-to-date Google Business Profile, clear service and price information, genuine reviews. It doesn't have to be a separate, expensive project.