SEO, AI and GEO: what's changing and how to get ready

When your customers look for a provider, they no longer just type a few words into Google. They ask ChatGPT a complete question, or read the summary Google shows at the top of its results. The AI answers in a few lines and cites two, three or four businesses. GEO aims to make yours one of them.

The term comes from an academic study published in November 2023, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, presented at the KDD conference in 2024. Its authors showed that certain changes to a page, such as adding cited sources or precise figures, increased its visibility in a generative engine's answers, by up to 40% on their benchmark.

Other names are used for the same idea:

• AEO, for answer engine optimisation: optimising for engines that answer directly, from featured snippets at the top of Google to voice assistants;
• LLMO, for large language model optimisation: the same goal, seen from the language models' side;
• AI SEO or AI search optimisation: the terms business owners use most often.

There are nuances, but the work is largely the same. In the UK, people actually search for “AI SEO” more often than for “generative engine optimisation”: the two go together.

What stays the same. AI platforms rely largely on the pages that search engines index. Google says so in its documentation: to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet; there is no additional technical requirement. A website with poor SEO is therefore unlikely to be cited.

What changes. Ranking well is no longer enough. Some people read the AI's answer without clicking. If the AI cites a competitor, that's the name your prospect remembers, even if your website appears just below.

In February 2026, OpenAI announced that 900 million people use ChatGPT every week. Google, for its part, places its AI Overviews above the links: of the 18 SEO-related searches we checked in the UK in September 2026, 17 showed an AI Overview.

Questions are changing shape. People no longer type “joiner Manchester”; they ask “Which joiner should I choose for a bespoke kitchen in Manchester?”. The answer doesn't point to ten websites: it recommends a few businesses and explains why.

For a business, what's at stake is simple: being one of those few names.

Two mechanisms coexist. The AI can answer with what it learned during training, or search the web at the moment it answers, as ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude with web search and Google's AI Overviews do. To recommend a local business, the AI needs precise, up-to-date information: that's where live search comes in.

In both cases, an AI only recommends what it can:

1. read: its crawlers can access your pages, and the content shows without depending on JavaScript;
2. understand: your pages answer questions clearly; your business, your area and your prices are described without ambiguity;
3. verify elsewhere: other websites talk about you (directories, comparisons, reviews, media) and say the same thing as your website.

A single weak link is enough to make you disappear. A robots.txt file that blocks ChatGPT's search crawler, and ChatGPT can no longer use the content of your pages. Vague pages, and the AI uses those of a more precise competitor.

Each AI platform has its own crawlers. Some are used to train models, others to find sources for answers. Blocking the second kind means giving up on being cited. Check your robots.txt file: the AI crawlers guide gives the settings, AI by AI.

Pages indexed in Google and in Bing, content visible without JavaScript, a fast website, one page per service and per area. OpenAI says that ChatGPT also relies on third-party search engines: checking your website in Bing Webmaster Tools is a simple precaution.

List the questions your customers ask before they buy. For each one, plan a page or a section that answers it in the very first sentence, with precise facts: lead times, prices, area, after-sales service. Add an FAQ to your key pages.

Schema.org markup, in JSON-LD format, describes your business, your services and your contact details in a format that search engines read without ambiguity. Google says that no special markup is required for its AI features; it's still the most reliable way to state the facts.

A complete Google Business Profile, your industry's directories, customer reviews, comparisons, local press: AI platforms cross-check. If your competitors are in the comparisons and you aren't, they are the ones AI cites.

And the llms.txt file? It's often presented as the GEO shortcut. Its effect hasn't been demonstrated, and Google says it doesn't need it. It takes a few minutes to create and does no harm, but it doesn't come before these five areas of work.

You can start by hand: ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude your customers' questions, and note who is cited. Three limits soon appear: answers vary from one time to the next, they depend on the language and the country, and the check takes time.

A reliable measurement therefore asks each question several times, in your customers' language and country, and records for each answer:

• whether your business is cited, and in what position;
• the competitors cited instead of you;
• the sources the AI relies on;
• any incorrect information about your business.

Two indicators are already within your reach. Since August 2026, Google Search Console has counted, in a separate report, how many times your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode; the clicks they bring are still mixed in with the rest of the “Web” traffic. And ChatGPT adds “utm_source=chatgpt.com” to the links in its search results: these visits show up in your analytics, Google Analytics or Matomo.

That's what iasyo does: the tool asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude your questions, checks Google's AI Overviews, then calculates a visibility score out of 100. See the methodology

1. Measure your starting point: the free audit gives you your score and the competitors mentioned instead of you.
2. Remove the technical blockers: blocked crawlers, invisible pages, missing structured data.
3. Rewrite your key pages so that they answer your customers' questions.
4. Build your presence on the websites that AI platforms consult.
5. Track progress question by question, and adjust as the measurements come in.

Each blocker you remove improves your chances of being cited by AI, and you can measure it, question by question.