What is GEO, and does a small business need it?

Ask ChatGPT to recommend a plumber in Manchester, a wedding photographer in Cardiff or an accountant who understands small online shops, and it will usually name a few businesses. It may describe what they do, mention their reviews and link to their websites.

If your business is one of the names, that's a warm introduction you didn't pay for. If it isn't, a potential customer has just been pointed at someone else, and you'll never know it happened.

Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the work of making your business one of those names.

How AI assistants decide who to mention

AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude build their answers from two sources.

The first is what they learned in training: a huge amount of public text, collected up to a cut-off date. If your business was described clearly and often across the web before then, the model may already know about it.

The second is a live search. For many questions, especially ones about local businesses, products or anything recent, the assistant searches the web first, reads the pages it finds and summarises them. This is where most small businesses can make a difference quickly, because it depends on what's on the web today.

In both cases, the assistant favours businesses that are:

• Described clearly. It needs plain facts to repeat: what you do, where, for whom and what's different about you.
• Described consistently. The same name, services and location on your website, your Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles.
• Mentioned by others. Reviews, directory listings, local news, supplier pages and industry sites all count as evidence that you're real and trusted.
• Easy to read. A fast website that crawlers can reach, with pages that answer questions directly.

Is GEO different from SEO?

Partly. A lot of the groundwork is the same: a website search engines can read, useful pages that answer real questions, and a good reputation across the web. Assistants that search the web often draw on pages that already rank well in search engines, so good SEO still does much of the work.

GEO adds a few things that matter more for AI: consistent facts about your business everywhere it appears, mentions on the sites assistants tend to cite, and checking what the assistants say about you so that mistakes can be corrected at the source.

Does a small business need it?

If your customers might ask an AI assistant for a recommendation in your field, then yes, it's worth some attention. That increasingly includes local services, professional services and anything people research before buying.

The good news is that the first steps cost little and help your ordinary search visibility too.

Five things to do first

1. Ask the assistants. Try ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity with the questions your customers would ask. Note who gets named, what's said about you, and which websites are cited.
2. Fix your About and service pages. Say plainly what you do, where you work and who you work for. Assistants can't repeat what you haven't written down.
3. Complete your Google Business Profile. Categories, services, areas, hours and a proper description. Google uses it across Search, Maps and its AI features.
4. Make your details match everywhere. Same business name, address or service area, phone and description across directories and social profiles.
5. Check your site lets AI crawlers in. Some website settings block AI search crawlers by default, which keeps you out of their answers.

What not to fall for

Nobody can guarantee that an AI assistant will recommend you. Answers vary between conversations, and the companies behind the assistants change how they work often. Be wary of anyone selling a guaranteed placement or a trick to "rank in ChatGPT". The businesses that do well are the ones that are clearly described, consistently listed and well regarded by real customers.