Generative engine optimization, usually shortened to GEO, is the term that has emerged for the practice of making a business visible to AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and Perplexity, rather than to a traditional search results page.
SEO and GEO are solving different problems
Traditional SEO is built around ranking a web page in a list of results: keywords, backlinks, page speed, and structure all feed into where a page lands among ten blue links. GEO is built around a different output entirely: an AI assistant synthesising a single answer or a short list of recommendations, often without showing the underlying sources at all. The inputs overlap, a clear website still matters for both, but the goal is different. SEO wants you to rank. GEO wants you to be the answer.
Where the term comes from
GEO started showing up in marketing and search industry writing as AI assistants began handling a meaningful share of the queries that used to go to a search engine. As more people ask an AI directly for a recommendation rather than searching and clicking through results themselves, the practice of optimising specifically for that behaviour earned its own name, distinct from SEO, even though the two share a lot of underlying overlap.
What GEO actually involves
In practice, GEO for a local business comes down to a small number of concrete things: keeping your business information identical and accurate everywhere it appears online, having enough recent, detailed reviews that an AI system has real material to draw on, responding to reviews so engagement reads as active rather than dormant, and writing clear, plain language content that answers the actual questions customers ask, rather than content stuffed with keywords aimed at an older style of search ranking.
Reviews sit at the centre of it
Of everything that feeds GEO, reviews carry an outsized share of the weight for local businesses specifically, more than they typically do for traditional SEO. AI systems treat detailed, recent reviews as evidence, not just decoration, when deciding whether to confidently recommend a business. A business with thin or stale reviews gives an AI assistant very little to work with, regardless of how well built its website is.
Where to start
The most useful starting point is not a technical audit, it is an honest look at three things: how recent your reviews are, how detailed they are, and whether your business information matches across your website, your Google Business Profile, and any directories you appear on. Most small businesses find at least one of these three is genuinely thin, and fixing it does more for AI visibility than any amount of technical tinkering elsewhere.
A realistic timeline
GEO is not a one off project with a finish line. AI systems reassess constantly, and the signals that matter, recency of reviews, response rate, consistency, are ongoing habits rather than one time fixes. A business that builds steady review collection into its normal operations sees AI visibility improve gradually over months, the same way local search ranking improves gradually rather than overnight. There is no quick technical trick that substitutes for that consistency.