What GEO is, and how AI decides who to mention
People are asking AI before they ask Google. This article explains how it picks who to mention in its answers, and what to do so you're the answer.
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What GEO is, and how AI decides who to mention
In the last article I explained how my site came up first on Google.
I told you the next part would be about AI: how it picks which sites to mention in its answers.
This is it.
First: why it matters
The way people search is changing.
Plenty of people now ask ChatGPT or some other AI tool before they ever open Google.
They type their question and get one finished answer. No results page, no ten links to choose from.
And here is the big difference:
- On Google, even at the third or fourth result, you still exist and a visitor can still reach you.
- In an AI answer, if you aren't mentioned, you aren't there.
The field is still new. Few people are working in it right now. Whoever gets there first, wins.
What is GEO?
GEO means Generative Engine Optimization.
A new field, and the idea is this: how do you make AI understand your company and your information well enough to mention you in its answers.
SEO works to get you into Google's results.
GEO works to get you into the AI's answer.
The two complete each other. Most of what helps SEO helps GEO. But GEO is not SEO under another name, there are different things involved, and I'll go through them one by one.
And this isn't theory
I got into this field from its first days.
The last company I worked with had an old site.
Ask any AI tool about their field and you wouldn't find them. Not on a single platform.
They had no chance of being mentioned at all.
I built them a new site and applied everything you're about to read in this article.
Now they come up as the first result on ChatGPT, and on nearly every AI tool.
On a range of questions, written the way a real customer writes them, not one memorised prompt.
And this is in a field where the competition is very high.
The same company I wrote about in the first article. The same site. Work done right works for search and for AI together.
How does AI decide who to mention?
Before the practical work, there is one rule.
AI does not know you. It reads sites, gathers information, and mentions what it understood and could verify.
So, three conditions:
Clear written text, not images and PDFs
AI reads text.
Your prices inside a designed image? It doesn't see them.
Your services in a PDF? Most of the time it never reaches it.
Every piece of information you want mentioned has to be written text on a page of your site. Not an image, not a design, not a file.
Specific facts it can verify, not slogans
"The best in the region" and "high quality at competitive prices" are useless. It can't verify those, and it won't mention them.
What works:
- What year you've been working since
- What your services are exactly, one by one
- Your prices, or where they start
- Where you are, and which areas you cover
- What makes you different, in something a person can actually check
AI mentions facts it can repeat with confidence. Slogans it ignores.
The same name everywhere
If your name is written one way on your site, another way on Instagram, and a third way on Google Maps, the AI can't be sure these are all the same business.
It hesitates. And what it hesitates about, it doesn't mention.
Settle on one name, spelled exactly the same, on your site and your accounts and everywhere you're listed.
The practical work: what makes GEO different from SEO
Everything I explained in the first article still applies: SSR, the sitemap, the robots.txt, the titles. That's the foundation.
On top of it, here is the work specific to GEO:
1. How the content is written
When AI answers, it takes the sentence that answers the question directly.
So write this way:
- Each paragraph answers one question.
- The direct answer in the first line or two, the detail after it.
- Subheadings phrased as the question people actually type.
- Short sentences. A long sentence carrying five ideas doesn't get quoted.
If your answer is buried in the middle of a long paragraph, the AI takes the answer from another site that wrote it more clearly.
2. Questions and answers on the site
Put a real questions and answers section on your pages.
Questions in the same phrasing a customer uses, and a direct answer for each one.
Why is this strong for GEO? Because this is exactly how AI works: someone asks, and it answers. When it finds the same question and its answer on your page, quoting it becomes easy.
And back it with FAQPage in JSON-LD so it's read as data, not just as text.
3. Structured data, JSON-LD
I explained it in the first article for SEO, and the same thing works for GEO.
Hidden code on the page that tells the crawler what type of page this is and who owns it:
OrganizationorPersonso it knows exactly who you areServicefor every service you offerFAQPagefor questions and answersArticlefor every blog post
This hands the AI your information in a form it can't get wrong: name, description, links, all structured.
4. Updating the content
AI prefers recent sources.
A page last updated two years ago will lose to a page published this month.
So:
- Review your main pages and update them from time to time.
- Keep the update dates in your sitemap accurate.
- Publish regularly. A blog you write in every week or two keeps the whole site looking alive.
5. The llms.txt file
This is the newest thing on the list, and I'll explain it properly because few people know it.
A simple text file you put at the root of your site, reachable at a URL like:
yoursite.com/llms.txt
Just as robots.txt is aimed at search engine crawlers, llms.txt is aimed at AI tools.
What goes in it? Text in Markdown:
- A line defining your site: who you are and what you do.
- A list of your most important pages, each with its link and a one-line description.
Why does it help? Because when an AI tool reads your site, it has limited time and limited size. This file gives it the summary and the important links in one place, instead of wandering the site and guessing.
And honestly: this is a new standard, not every tool uses it yet. But writing it is easy, the downside is zero, and my site has had one from day one.
One last note: don't block AI crawlers
There are sites blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt or from their hosting settings, and their owners have no idea.
If the crawler is blocked from reading your site, there is no GEO at all.
Make sure your file isn't blocking them.
Have a site?
I can work on it, depending on its condition:
- Redo its SEO from the ground up.
- Redesign it.
- Add sections and pages so it shows up more in AI and in search.
Don't have a site?
I'll build you one from scratch.
And everything you read in this article, and the one before it, will be built into it from day one.