Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini who in your city does what you do. If the answer names a competitor but not you, that is no accident. An AI assistant repeats what it can safely read about your industry online. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of making sure you are in that text too.
How an AI assistant decides what to recommend
A language model does not know your company personally. When a question calls for fresh information, the assistant searches the web, reads a few pages and summarises them. So you are competing in two rounds: first you have to be found in the search index, then you have to be clear enough for your text to be useful in the answer.
Models prefer sources where the facts are easy to extract: what it is, who it is for, where it is available, what it costs. If those answers are buried under slogans on your page, the assistant will take a competitor’s page that puts them in the first paragraph.
Five reasons you do not show up
1. The page does not speak in facts
“Quality solutions for your business” tells neither a person nor a machine anything. “We install solar panels on private houses in Kurzeme, from 4 500 € including installation” is a sentence that can be quoted.
2. No separate pages for services
If all your services sit in one list, there is no single page that fully answers a specific question. That is exactly what an AI assistant looks for.
3. Nobody talks about you elsewhere
Assistants compare sources. If a company appears only on its own website, it looks less reliable than a competitor mentioned in industry articles, directories and reviews.
4. The data does not match
Different addresses, an old phone number in a directory, another name on the Google profile. A person understands, a machine has doubts, and it would rather not mention a doubtful source.
5. The site is closed to crawlers
Some robots.txt files still block AI search bots, often by accident, through a setting in an old plugin or theme. If content only appears after JavaScript loads, some bots do not see it at all.
What a quotable paragraph looks like
Compare two openings for the same page. The first: “We are a dynamic company offering a wide range of services and an individual approach.” The second: “We install air-source heat pumps in private houses in Riga and the surrounding area. Installation in 3 working days, from 2 900 € including materials, 5-year warranty.”
From the second, the assistant can extract the service, location, timeframe, price and warranty. From the first, it can extract nothing. If your page looks like the first version, the AI answer will feature the competitor who wrote the second.
What to do this month
- In the first paragraph of every service page: what, for whom, where and a price guide
- An FAQ section with the questions customers ask on the phone
- Organization, LocalBusiness and FAQPage schema data
- The same name, address and phone number on the site, the Google profile and in directories
- A robots.txt check: GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended are not blocked by accident
- The site is registered in both Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
We mention Bing deliberately. Several AI assistants use more than just Google, and for many of them the Bing index is an important source. Registration takes ten minutes.
How to check whether it is working
Write down ten questions customers ask before buying. Put them to three assistants and note which companies they name and which sources they cite. Repeat once a month. It is not a precise measurement, but the trend will be visible, and you will see which competitor pages the assistants treat as trustworthy.
In Search Console, watch long, question-style searches. If they grow, the page is becoming more useful for AI answers too, because both processes rely on the same clear answers.
Frequently asked questions
Does GEO replace traditional SEO?
No. GEO is built on SEO: if a page is not indexed and technically clean, an AI assistant will not find it. GEO adds an emphasis on clear facts, structured data and mentions in other sources.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It does no harm, but for now it is not a standard that all assistants follow. Sort out your content and schema data first; after that, llms.txt can be a nice addition.
How quickly can I see changes?
Pages that assistants already find can start being cited within a few weeks of improving the content. If a company lacks mentions elsewhere, the road is longer, usually several months.
