Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting an AI answer engine to actually name your business when someone asks it a question. Here's what actually influences that, and what to do about it.
Google is no longer the only front door. A growing share of local searches now happen inside an AI assistant instead of a search bar, and those tools don't hand back ten blue links, they hand back one answer, usually naming two or three businesses by name. Getting into that shortlist is a different job than classic SEO, though the two overlap heavily. This guide covers what actually decides who gets named, and what to do about it.
Generative Engine Optimization means structuring your business's online presence so that large-language-model tools, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Grok, and Google's AI Overviews, cite or recommend you when they answer a relevant question. It's less about ranking in a list and more about becoming the specific answer to a specific question.
GEO doesn't replace classic SEO, it layers on top of it. Google's own AI Overviews pull heavily from pages that already rank well organically, so the two priorities reinforce each other rather than competing for your attention.
Every month, more of your customers ask an AI which business to call before they ever open Google. Sitework's monthly plan builds the exact structured content, schema, and consistency signals covered above, specific to your trade, so you're the name that gets said out loud instead of a competitor's.
See plans →No, though they overlap heavily. Classic SEO optimizes for ranking in a list of links. GEO optimizes for being the specific business an AI tool names in a single answer. Many of the same fundamentals, structured content and consistent listings, help with both.
ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews (built directly into regular Google search), Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Grok are the ones currently used widely enough to matter for local discovery. AI Overviews carry the most volume today since it's already built into search results people use daily.
It varies, since these tools change how they weigh sources over time. But the same signals that help classic local SEO, consistent listings, structured content, and real reviews, tend to show up in AI answers on a similar timeline to organic ranking improvements: typically weeks to a few months, not overnight.
This guide covers the general version. A Sitework plan does ai-search-optimization-geo specifically, every month.
The same fundamentals covered in every Sitework monthly plan.