Generative engine optimization (GEO) explained, and who offers it for small businesses

The short answer

Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of getting a business named, cited, and recommended in the answers that AI assistants write: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Where SEO works on a position in a list of links, GEO works on whether you are in the answer at all, and whether the answer links to you as a source.

For a small local business, it is offered in three forms: software that tracks your mentions in AI answers, agencies that have added it to their SEO work, and services that do the technical work and measure it every week. CiteMy is one of the last kind, for home-services businesses in Phoenix. The same work also goes by answer engine optimization (AEO), AI search optimization, and AI visibility.

Where the term came from

The name comes from a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, first posted in 2023 by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues (the paper on arXiv). It described "generative engines" as systems that gather information from several sources and summarize it with a language model, and it pointed out the problem this creates for website owners: they have little control over when and how their content appears in those answers. The paper proposed ways to measure and improve that visibility.

Since then the term has spread from research into marketing, and it now covers a wide range of practice, some of it careful and technical, some of it old content marketing with a new label.

How GEO differs from SEO

The two overlap more than the new vocabulary suggests. Both need a site that crawlers can reach, pages that say clearly what the business does, and a good reputation on the sites that describe you. The differences are in what gets read and what gets measured.

Different readers. AI assistants with search send their own crawlers. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot¹ as the crawler that surfaces websites in ChatGPT search, Anthropic runs Claude-SearchBot² for Claude's search, and Perplexity documents PerplexityBot³ for its results. A site that welcomes Googlebot can still block these without anyone noticing.

Different sources. An engine answering a local question reads a handful of pages, often directories and review sites rather than the business's own site. BrightLocal found Yelp used as a source in 33%⁴ of its local test searches across ChatGPT Search, Gemini, Google AI Mode, and Perplexity. Your listings are part of GEO in a way they were only partly part of SEO.

Different outcomes. The engines do not simply repeat Google's list. Our Phoenix comparison of the businesses Google shows with the businesses the engines name covers window and door businesses and two engines so far, Claude and Gemini. Of the 6⁵ businesses Google showed that we could compare, the share Claude on its own never named was 33%⁶. Going the other way, 5⁷ of the 11⁸ businesses the engines named were ones Google did not show. The full method is on our Google vs AI research page.

Different measurement. There is no rank to check. The answer to the same question changes from one asking to the next and from one engine to another. GEO is measured as share of voice: across a fixed set of questions, asked repeatedly on each engine, how often is your business named, cited, or recommended?

Google is the partial exception. Its own documentation says there are no additional requirements⁹ to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. For Google's AI features, good SEO is most of the job.

What GEO work looks like for a local business

Stripped of the jargon, the work is five things:

• Crawler access. Let each engine's search crawler reach the site, in robots.txt and at the host or CDN. See llms.txt and AI crawler access.
• One consistent entity. One schema.org business node on the site, with a stable identifier and links to every profile, and the same name, address, and phone everywhere. See structured data for AI visibility.
• Listings the engines read. The directories and review sites the engines cite, accurate and complete. Our citation source research shows which ones for Phoenix contractors.
• Facts worth citing. Prices, specs, service areas, and timelines from your own jobs, published as structured data and plain tables, under a named author.
• Measurement. The same questions, asked of every engine, every week.

Who offers it for small businesses

There are three kinds of provider. We describe them by what they do, because each suits a different business.

AI visibility software

Dedicated platforms track how brands appear in AI answers: which prompts mention you, which competitors appear, and which sources are cited. Profound, Peec AI, Otterly.AI, Scrunch, and AthenaHQ are examples. Established SEO suites have added the same kind of tracking, such as Semrush's AI visibility toolkit and Ahrefs' Brand Radar. Many of these are built with national brands and marketing teams in mind.

Software is the right fit if you have someone who will read the reports and do the fixing. It measures; it does not change your schema or your listings.

Listings and reputation platforms

Yext, BrightLocal, and Birdeye manage the directory listings and reviews that engines read about local businesses. That covers one important part of GEO, consistent business data across the web, and pairs well with the rest.

Agencies and done-for-you services

SEO and marketing agencies, including home-services marketing agencies such as Scorpion, now offer AI search work alongside their existing services. Quality varies. The questions to ask are what they will fix, what they will publish and whose numbers are in it, and how they will measure the result. Our guide to hiring an SEO agency or an AI visibility service goes through that choice.

CiteMy sits in this group. We do the technical work (the entity graph, listings, crawler access, published datasets) and measure share of voice across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude every week, for Phoenix home-services businesses, one client per city and trade. We can work alongside an SEO agency or replace one. What it costs, ours and in general, is in how much AI search optimization costs.

What to be wary of

No one can guarantee that ChatGPT will recommend you. The engines decide what they say, and their answers vary. Treat any promise of a ranking as a reason to look elsewhere. Also be careful with GEO that is only content: AI-written posts with no real author and no real numbers are what engines already have too much of.

What this means for an owner

GEO is not a replacement for a good website and a good reputation. It is the technical work that makes both readable to the engines, plus a way to measure whether it worked. The cheapest first step is to see where you stand: our free AI visibility audit checks crawler access, structured data, and whether your name, address, and phone agree, and emails you the findings that matter most.