What is GEO? Visibility in ChatGPT & Co.

What is GEO?

GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is the work of making sure that AI systems like ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews understand a business correctly, represent it accurately and mention it in their answers.

An AI system doesn't answer a question with ten blue links, but with a finished text. That text contains a few names — and everyone else simply doesn't appear. GEO makes sure your business is among those named: findable, clearly described and with information that matches everywhere.

The term comes from research: a paper introduced in 2023 and published in 2024 by researchers from, among others, Princeton University coined it (arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735).

How does GEO differ from SEO?

The difference between SEO and GEO lies in the outcome: SEO works toward your website ranking high in a list of search results — GEO works toward your business being mentioned in a finished AI answer.

Both start in the same place — with a website that is technically sound and answers questions people actually ask. After that, the paths diverge: SEO optimizes for clicks, GEO for mentions.

	SEO	GEO
Goal	rank high in the search results list	be mentioned in the AI answer
Result	a list of links	a finished answer text
Who decides	a ranking algorithm	a language model composing an answer
Measuring success	position, clicks, visitors	Is the business mentioned and represented correctly?

GEO doesn't replace SEO — it builds on it. A website that is invisible to search engines is hardly found by AI systems either.

How do AI systems decide whom to recommend?

AI systems preferentially mention businesses about which they find clear, contradiction-free and verifiable information.

No provider discloses exactly how its selection comes about. What can be observed is a pattern — four things keep showing up among businesses that get mentioned:

Your information matches everywhere. Company name, location, services and contact details read the same on your website, in directories and in profiles.
Your claims are verifiable. Numbers, references, certificates — checkable facts carry more weight than advertising promises.
Your sentences are citable. A sentence that fully answers the question can be picked up as is.
Your content is described in machine-readable form. Markup in the source code tells the machine: this is a question, this is an answer, this is an address.

AI answers can be influenced, but not controlled. The same question can be answered differently today than tomorrow. Anyone selling you a guaranteed placement in ChatGPT is selling something that doesn't exist.

What does GEO actually consist of?

GEO consists of a handful of concrete building blocks — technical and content-related — that together ensure a website can be read, understood and cited by AI systems.

Question-and-answer content

A question-and-answer piece of content is a section whose heading is a real user question and whose first sentence fully answers that question. It's the most effective and at the same time most unspectacular building block — this very page is built on the same principle.

Structured data (Schema.org)

Schema.org is a shared vocabulary a website uses to describe its own content for machines — for example: "This is an organization", "This is a question with this answer". The markup sits invisibly in the source code and spares the machine the guesswork.

Consistent entity (NAP)

An entity is the unambiguous digital identity of your business. NAP stands for name, address, phone — the three details systems check to determine whether two sources mean the same business. If your company name is spelled three different ways in three directories, in the worst case you end up with three half businesses instead of one whole one.

Access for AI crawlers (robots.txt)

The robots.txt is a small text file that determines which automated visitors may read your website. The AI providers' programs have different names than classic search engine crawlers — if an old rule accidentally locks them out, even the best content can't do anything. That's the first thing to check.

llms.txt

An llms.txt is a simple text file that summarizes a website's most important content briefly and in machine-readable form (llmstxt.org). To be honest about it: a proposed standard whose impact is judged differently by different people. The effort is small, the potential benefit real — so we do it, but we don't build a strategy on it.

Evidence and demonstrable experience (E-E-A-T)

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. For you, that simply means: show who is behind the business, what that person can do and how one can tell — a legal notice with names, qualifications, named references with a link.

Who does GEO pay off for — and who not yet?

GEO pays off for businesses whose customers do research before they buy — and not yet for businesses where the decision is made elsewhere.

It pays off if …

your customers do research before making first contact — consulting, skilled trades that need explaining, education, B2B services
you have a clearly defined niche you can name in a single sentence
you already have a website whose content you can edit
you need the information about your business to be accurate — false statements in AI answers are a real risk

It doesn't pay off yet if …

you're just starting out and it's not yet clear what you do for whom — then positioning is the first step
your customers come exclusively through referrals and you have no capacity for more
a website relaunch is coming up anyway — then you do GEO as part of it, not before it
you need revenue in the short term — GEO works over months, not weeks. Then paid advertising is the more honest tool.

How does a GEO project at MYDEA work?

A GEO project at MYDEA runs in three steps: audit, workshop and implementation — individually or building on each other, depending on your needs.

1. Audit — where does your business stand today?

I check your website point by point: Can the AI crawlers get in? Is structured data in place? Do the headings answer real questions? The result is a report with a status for each checkpoint and an order of what to do first.

2. Workshop — your team learns it on your own website

We work on your own site, not on examples. Afterwards, your team knows what citable content looks like. Also offered as a course in cooperation with Europe-MPO International Consulting GmbH, hybrid in Vienna and Graz.

3. Implementation — the building blocks go into the website

Technical building blocks, reworked texts, structured data. Afterwards, your website is made not only for people, but also for the systems that are supposed to cite it.

Case study

weiterbildungszeit.online — Europe-MPO International Consulting GmbH

For Europe-MPO International Consulting GmbH (Graz, member of bit group), I built the platform weiterbildungszeit.online from concept to launch — and then audited and reworked it against GEO criteria. The audit report covered 41 points: access rules for AI crawlers, an llms.txt, structured data for the organization and FAQ, definition sentences for every core term — and headings phrased as user questions instead of ad copy.

See the GEO offer →

Which questions about GEO come up again and again?

How long does it take for GEO to work?

First changes usually show after a few weeks; reliable conclusions take several months. The reason: AI systems work partly with training data that is only rarely updated, and partly with a live search that picks up new content faster. Technical building blocks such as structured data or access for AI crawlers take effect faster than content authority, which builds over time. Anyone who promises you a result in two weeks can't deliver on it.

Can I do GEO myself?

Part of it, yes. Consistent information about your business, clear answers to real customer questions and well-maintained directory profiles are things you can handle yourself — that's diligent work, not specialist technology. The technical building blocks such as structured data, llms.txt or crawler access require access to your website's source code and some experience. If you want to learn it yourself, the workshop is the right path; if you want to hand it off, the project.

What does GEO cost?

That depends on how large your website is and how much of it already exists. A one-off audit of a manageable business website is a clearly defined effort; an ongoing implementation across many pages and pieces of content is a project. Because every business starts from a different place, I only name concrete figures once I've seen your website — that happens in the free intro call.

Is GEO only for large companies?

No — for small businesses the leverage is often even greater. In classic search results you compete with portals and large providers that have been pouring budget into visibility for years. An AI answer, by contrast, usually names only a few providers and chooses them by how well someone fits the specific question. If you describe your niche clearly and verifiably, you have a real chance of being named there.

Does GEO also work for a regional business?

Yes, GEO works especially well regionally. Questions like “Who does bookkeeping for sole proprietors in Vienna?” are exactly the kind of question people ask an AI system today. What matters is that your company name, location and service area are written identically everywhere — on your website, in industry directories, in your Google Business Profile. Contradictory information is a common reason a regional business never even shows up as an option.

Can anyone guarantee that ChatGPT recommends my business?

No. Nobody can, and anyone who promises it isn't telling you the truth. AI answers are generated anew with every request, they vary depending on how the question is phrased, and the systems change constantly. What can be influenced is the foundation: whether your business is findable, clearly described and verifiable. The outcome can't be controlled — but it can be improved.

Do I need a new website for GEO?

In most cases, no. GEO works with what's already there: texts are rewritten so they answer questions directly, and structured data that was previously missing is added behind the scenes. A new website is only necessary if the existing one is technically outdated or its content is practically impossible to edit. The audit shows that quickly.

How do you find out where your business stands?

The simplest first step is to ask an AI search yourself: put the question your customers would search with to ChatGPT or Perplexity — and see who gets mentioned.

If you don't appear, or something wrong about you comes up, a closer look is worth it. We do that together: 20 minutes, free, no strings attached. I'll look at your website beforehand and tell you honestly whether and where GEO can help you.

Book a free intro call →

Prefer to test it yourself first? The GEO Quick Check walks you through the key points. Go to the GEO Quick Check →