GEO: How AI Assistants Find and Mention Your Business

What is GEO?

More and more people put their questions to assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews. GEO describes how you prepare your website so that these systems know and mention you correctly.

What AI assistants need

Clear facts: Who are you, what do you offer, where, since when, and how can people reach you?
Answers instead of platitudes: The questions customers ask, with a short, precise answer at the start.
Structure: Clear headings, short paragraphs, lists.
Structured data: Machine-readable details about your business, services and frequently asked questions.
Consistency: The same details on your website, Google profile and in directories.
Trust signals: Author, date, traceable sources, a recognisable company behind the content.
Access: Do not block crawlers unintentionally, and keep a clean page structure.

What does not help

Guarantees such as “always number 1 in ChatGPT” are not credible. Content written only for search terms, with no real benefit, helps neither people nor assistants.

How AI assistants arrive at their answers

Depending on the system, assistants draw on two sources: what they learned during training, and a web search that they run when needed. You have hardly any direct influence on what they have learned. You do have influence on the web search, because it favours pages that can be found, read and clearly understood. The providers do not fully disclose how the individual systems choose their sources. Treat every statement on this with caution, including our own.

Practical example: a facts page

A facts page briefly summarises the basic details of your business: name, year founded, services, area served, contact person, contact details and a price range, as far as one can sensibly be given. Each detail appears as its own sentence or list item, so that it can be quoted without context. Add only what is true and what you can back up. The same goes for answer content: begin with the answer in one or two sentences, then give the reasoning.

Myth versus fact

Myth: GEO replaces SEO. Fact: AI search mostly draws on web pages that are also easy to find in conventional search. The fundamentals stay the same.
Myth: A special file lets you control whether you are mentioned. Fact: Proposals such as llms.txt are not formally recognised by every provider. They do no harm, but they are no substitute for good content.
Myth: More text means more mentions. Fact: Clear, well-supported statements are more useful than long texts.

How to check where you stand

Put five typical customer questions (“Who does … in Stuttgart?”) to several assistants.
Note whether your business is mentioned, whether the details are correct and which sources are shown.
Repeat the queries after a few weeks. Answers vary, so the trend counts, not a single test.
Correct any wrong details where they originate, usually in directories or on your own site.

Technical requirements

Check whether your robots.txt excludes the common AI crawlers, and make that decision deliberately. If you want to be read, you should not block them without intending to; individual providers, such as those that only collect data for training, can be treated separately. You can read more in AI crawlers and robots.txt and in the guide Getting mentioned in ChatGPT and Perplexity.

How to deal with errors in AI answers

If an assistant gives the wrong opening hours, an old name or a service you do not offer, it is worth looking at the source. The error usually comes from an outdated directory entry or an older page. Fix it there, and make sure your own page states the correct detail clearly and prominently. A direct correction within the assistant itself is generally not possible.

How to get started

First check what assistants say about your business, and fix any wrong or missing details. Then build a clear facts page and answer content. We support you with this in our GEO and AI visibility service.