How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode

The short answer: AI assistants recommend businesses they can find, understand and check. That means a website search engines and AI crawlers can read, pages that state your services, area and credentials plainly, evidence such as reviews and specific facts, and consistent listings elsewhere on the web. Google says there are no extra technical requirements for its AI features beyond being indexed and eligible for a search snippet, and OpenAI says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search unless it blocks OpenAI's search crawler. ¹³⁴

This guide explains what generative engine optimization, or GEO, actually is, how an AI answer gets put together, what the platforms themselves say, what independent research has found, and a practical checklist you can work through this month. It is written for local and service businesses, the plumbers, dentists, accountants, contractors and shops whose customers ask an assistant who to trust.

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and cite when they write an answer. The name comes from a 2023 research paper by Princeton and other researchers that tested how changes to a web page affect whether AI answers mention it. You will also see it called answer engine optimization, AI SEO or AI search optimization. ⁵

It is not a replacement for search engine optimization. Google's own 2026 guide to its generative AI features describes the work as still SEO: be crawlable and indexed, write helpful content, and keep the facts on your site accurate. Microsoft says much the same about Copilot, adding that it reads pages in chunks, so clear structure and headings help it lift the right passage. What changes is the goal. Instead of only ranking a page, you want your business named, correctly, inside the answer itself. ²¹¹

How an AI assistant builds an answer

When a customer asks a question like "who is a good emergency plumber near me open on Sundays", the assistant usually does three things. It searches the web, much as a search engine does, to find pages, listings and reviews that look relevant. It reads and compares what it found, looking for clear statements that answer the question. Then it writes a short answer and, in most tools, links to the sources it relied on. A business that is hard to find, vague about what it offers, or contradicted by other sources is easy for the assistant to leave out.

This is also why your search rankings still matter. ChatGPT search uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode draw on Google's index. An Ahrefs study of 15,000 prompts found that only about 12% of the pages AI assistants cited ranked in Google's top 10 for the same prompt, so ranking first is not required, but being indexed, readable and trusted is. Ahrefs sells SEO tools, so treat its figures as one useful view. ³⁹

What Google, OpenAI and Microsoft say you need

Google: to appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. There are no additional technical requirements, no special markup and no new AI text files to create. Clicks from these features are counted in Search Console under the normal Web search type. Google-Extended, the setting that controls whether Google can use your content for Gemini models, does not affect your inclusion in Google Search. AI Mode itself now reaches nearly 200 countries and territories in 98 languages, according to Google's I/O 2026 announcement. ¹²⁸¹⁶

OpenAI: ChatGPT search finds sites through a crawler called OAI-SearchBot. If your robots.txt file blocks it, your pages will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as plain navigational links. A separate crawler, GPTBot, collects content for training OpenAI's models, and the two settings are independent, so you can allow search while declining training. Changes take about a day to apply. ³⁴

Microsoft: Bing powers Copilot's web answers. Microsoft recommends fresh, authoritative, well-structured content, with crawlability, metadata and internal links still essential. Since February 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools has a public preview report showing how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing AI answers, and it recommends IndexNow so new and changed pages are found quickly. ¹¹¹²

What the research says works

The original GEO study, published at the KDD conference in 2024, rewrote web pages in different ways and measured how visible they became in AI-generated answers. The best methods raised visibility by up to 40%, though results varied by subject. The methods that helped most all added evidence: citing reliable sources, adding quotations from credible people, and adding specific statistics. Making text more fluent and easier to read also helped. Keyword stuffing, the old trick of repeating search phrases, did worse than leaving the page alone. ⁵

For a local business the lesson is practical. A page that says "we offer quality plumbing services" gives an assistant nothing to cite. A page that says you are licensed in Washington, serve Spokane and Spokane Valley, answer emergency calls within 90 minutes on weekends, and back repairs with a one-year warranty gives it four checkable facts. Only state what is true and current; assistants compare your claims against other sources, and so do customers.

Fewer clicks, so being named matters more

AI answers change what happens after a search. Pew Research Center tracked 900 US adults' real Google searches in March 2025. When an AI summary appeared, people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when it did not, and they clicked a link inside the summary in just 1% of visits. Searches ending with no further browsing rose from 16% to 26%. Seer Interactive, an agency, measured organic click-through rates on informational searches with AI Overviews falling 61% between mid-2024 and September 2025. ⁶¹⁰

For many businesses that is not as bad as it sounds. Someone looking for a plumber does not need to read ten pages; they need a name and a phone number. If the assistant names you, with your number or booking link, you can win the job without the click. That is why it matters that the facts an assistant finds about you are complete and correct everywhere it looks.

A five-step plan for local businesses

Listings deserve particular attention. Google has not published a statement on exactly how Business Profile data feeds its AI answers, but AI Mode's local results show ratings, reviews, opening hours and call and directions buttons, and an agency has observed AI Overviews quoting individual reviews. Keep your profile complete, add real photos, reply to reviews and make sure your name, address and phone number match your website and other directories.

What does not help

• Keyword stuffing. In the GEO study it made pages less visible than doing nothing. ⁵
• llms.txt files and special AI markup. Google's 2026 guide says you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup, and that Google Search ignores them. Google's John Mueller has said no AI system currently uses llms.txt. ²¹³
• Blocking the wrong crawler. Blocking OAI-SearchBot or Bingbot removes you from ChatGPT search or Copilot answers. Decide on training crawlers separately. ³
• Guarantees. No one can promise a ranking or a mention in an AI answer. Be wary of anyone who does.
• Waiting for search to disappear. Gartner predicted in 2024 that traditional search engine volume would drop 25% by 2026; It was a forecast, and Google still handles enormous search volume. Optimize for both. ¹⁴

How to test your AI visibility in 30 minutes

You do not need special software to start. Write down the ten questions customers most often ask before they hire you, such as "best roofer in Spokane for metal roofs" or "dentist near me that takes walk-ins". Ask each one in ChatGPT, Gemini, Google's AI Mode and Copilot. Note whether you are named, which competitors are, which pages are cited and anything the assistant gets wrong about you. Repeat monthly. Answers vary from one try to the next, so look for patterns rather than single results.

Then check your analytics. ChatGPT adds a source tag of chatgpt.com to many of the links it shows, so in Google Analytics 4 you can filter traffic sources for chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com, or group them in a custom channel. Some AI visits arrive without any referrer and show up as direct traffic, so treat the count as a minimum. Google counts clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode inside the normal Web report in Search Console, and Bing's AI Performance report shows Copilot citations. Our holiday guide shows how online stores can run the same test for product questions. ¹¹²¹⁵

What this means for your business