GEO: getting your business cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

Search is splitting in two. Some buyers still type a query into Google. A growing number ask an assistant and act on whatever it says. If your business is invisible to the second group, you are losing pipeline you will never see in analytics.

How AI assistants pick who to mention

They are not ranking pages the way a search engine does. They are assembling an answer from sources they can parse, trust and attribute. In practice that rewards:

Clear, extractable facts. Prices, service areas, timelines and specifications stated plainly in text — not locked inside an image, a PDF or a carousel.

Structured data. Organization, Service, Product, FAQ and LocalBusiness schema give the model unambiguous machine-readable claims about who you are and what you sell.

Third-party corroboration. A claim on your own site is weak on its own. The same claim reflected in directories, press, reviews and partner sites is what makes a model confident enough to name you.

Content that answers the actual question. Assistants surface sources that directly address the query. Pages written to hit a keyword density target do not qualify.

A practical checklist

1. Put your pricing in text on the page. Hidden pricing is invisible pricing.
2. Add FAQ schema to the questions buyers genuinely ask.
3. Publish a proper Organization schema with your address, contact and service area.
4. Keep an accurate, consistent NAP (name, address, phone) everywhere it appears.
5. Write at least one thorough page per service that a model could quote verbatim.

What not to do

Do not stuff pages with AI-generated filler hoping for volume. Assistants are unusually good at ignoring content with no substance behind it, and thin content actively suppresses the pages that do have substance.

GEO is not a separate discipline from SEO so much as a stricter version of it. Sites that were already clear, fast and well-structured are the ones getting cited.