GEO knowledge base for small businesses

• What is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization explained

  GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: setting up your website so that AI search engines can read, understand and cite your pages in their answers. Where SEO is about a place in the search results, GEO is about whether an AI answer names your business and links to your page.

• SEO vs GEO: what is the difference?

  SEO focuses on a place in the search results, GEO on a mention in the answer an AI search engine writes. The basics overlap: a crawlable site with clear text helps with both. The difference lies in what you measure and in what a model can take from your text.

• From SEO to GEO: a step-by-step plan for small businesses

  You move from SEO to GEO in five steps: check whether AI crawlers may read your site, put your text in the HTML, make your key sentences readable on their own, back up claims with figures and sources, and measure in series. You do not throw away your existing SEO, because it remains the foundation.

• Getting mentioned in ChatGPT: what you can do yourself

  To be mentioned in ChatGPT at all, OAI-SearchBot must be allowed to read your site, because that crawler determines whether you can appear in the search results of ChatGPT. After that, clear and well-supported text helps. There is no guarantee: citations change from day to day, so a single test says little.

• Google AI Overviews optimisation: what really counts

  For Google AI Overviews you need no special markup or AI files. Google writes that a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet in Search. No extra technical requirements apply beyond that. A high position helps, but in measurements by Ahrefs 37.9 percent of the citations ranked in the top 10.

• Schema markup and AI: needed or not?

  Schema markup is not needed to appear in the AI features of Google, Google itself writes, and no special AI markup exists either. It stays useful as a clear description of your organisation, articles and products, and for rich results. Google has not shown FAQ rich results since 7 May 2026.

• AI crawlers in robots.txt: which to allow and which to block

  In robots.txt you decide per AI crawler whether it may read your site. Search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot determine whether you can appear in answers. Training crawlers such as GPTBot and ClaudeBot collect content for models. You can allow the first group and block the second. That choice is yours.

• Measuring GEO results: why one test tells you nothing

  You measure GEO in series: put the same questions to the same AI tools at fixed moments and note whether your brand is named and cited. A single measurement says little, because in research by Ahrefs about 60 percent of ChatGPT citations had already disappeared the next day.

• GEO checklist with a free template in Word and PDF

  This GEO checklist covers, in four blocks, what you can check yourself: facts and figures, sources and authority, clear text and technical access. Each point states whether it rests on research, documentation or a rule of thumb. You download it as a Word file or PDF and then work through it point by point.

Prefer short answers? See the questions about GEO or the figures and sources.