What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your business more likely to be cited, quoted or recommended inside the answers that AI tools generate. When someone asks ChatGPT for "a good plumber in Poole", or types a question into Perplexity, Google's Gemini or a Google AI Overview, the tool writes a short answer and often names a handful of sources or businesses. GEO is the work of becoming one of those named sources.
Worth clearing up first: in a marketing context GEO means Generative Engine Optimisation, not geography or geotargeting. It sits alongside a growing family of acronyms — you'll see AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and AI SEO used to mean much the same thing. The label matters less than the shift behind it: search is moving from a list of ten blue links you click, to a written answer you read. If the answer never mentions you, the click never happens.
Two honest caveats up front. GEO is genuinely new and the ground moves month to month, so treat anyone promising guaranteed rankings in ChatGPT with caution. And it is not a replacement for good SEO — as we'll explain, the two overlap heavily.
Why it matters for local businesses now
The audience has arrived faster than most expected. OpenAI reported 900 million weekly ChatGPT users in February 2026. Closer to home, Ofcom’s Online Nation 2025 found that around 30% of searches now return an AI summary, and that more than half of UK adults say they see those summaries often. Google still handles the large majority of searches, but a written answer increasingly sits above the results people used to click. A meaningful slice of your future customers are already starting their research in a chatbot rather than a search box.
For a local business the stakes are sharper than for a big brand. AI answers to local questions are short — they typically name two or three businesses, not a page of ten. Being left out is more common than being included. But the flip side is real: a well-run local business with consistent listings and strong reviews is exactly the kind of source these tools like to lean on, so the opportunity is genuine and not yet crowded.
There's also a trust gap worth remembering. Ofcom’s Adults’ Media Use and Attitudes 2026 found that around two thirds of UK adults would trust an AI-written news story less than one written by a person, and that trust in AI has not risen since 2023 even as use of it has climbed. People still verify — they click through to your website, your Google Business Profile and your reviews. GEO gets you mentioned; your actual site and reputation still have to close the deal.
How AI engines decide who to cite
Most AI answer tools work in a similar way under the bonnet: they retrieve a set of relevant web pages and known facts, then write an answer drawing on them. That means citation is partly about being retrievable and partly about being the clearest, most trustworthy source once retrieved. Research from Princeton, Georgia Tech and IIT Delhi (Aggarwal et al., 2024) found that content which cites its sources, includes relevant statistics and uses direct quotations was noticeably more likely to be surfaced in AI answers — visibility lifts of up to 40% in their tests.
In practice, the signals that seem to matter most for a local business are:
- Entity consistency — your name, address and phone number (NAP) matching exactly across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps and directories
- Reviews — volume, recency, sentiment and whether you actually reply to them; these feed the "prominence" signals AI tools trust for local recommendations
- Clear, well-structured content — plain headings, direct answers to real questions, and specific facts rather than vague marketing copy
- Being present on sources the tools already trust — each engine has its own favourites, and being referenced across several raises your odds
- Freshness — a Google Business Profile that hasn't had a post or photo in over a month tends to fade
Each engine behaves differently
There is no single "AI search" to optimise for. The tools cite sources at very different rates and draw from very different places. Perplexity cites sources in the large majority of its answers; Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT cite far less often. ChatGPT leans heavily on established reference sources, with Wikipedia consistently among the most cited, while Perplexity draws far more from discussion sites such as Reddit. The overlap between what the two cite is smaller than you would expect, which tells you the same page rarely wins everywhere. You can watch this happen: ask both the same question and compare the source lists.
For local recommendations specifically, Google's Gemini has an advantage because it draws directly on Google Business Profile data, which tends to be accurate and complete. Its local business details tend to be more accurate than those of tools without that feed, for the straightforward reason that it is reading structured profile data rather than inferring your details from prose scattered around the web. The practical takeaway: a well-maintained Google Business Profile is one of the highest-leverage things a local business can do for AI visibility right now.
Engine by engine, at a glance
The same work does not pay off equally everywhere. This is how the main engines currently differ — treat it as a snapshot, since all of them change their behaviour regularly.
| Where it draws from | How openly it cites | Biggest lever for a local business | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | Google’s own search index | Cites sparingly, a few links per answer | Rank well organically — that is what puts you in the candidate pool |
| Google Gemini | Google’s index plus Google Business Profile data | Moderate | A complete, accurate Google Business Profile |
| ChatGPT | Bing’s index when searching live; training data otherwise | Cites when it searches, not always otherwise | Make sure Bing indexes you properly — most UK businesses never check |
| Perplexity | Live retrieval across the open web | Cites prominently on nearly every answer | Presence on the sources it already pulls from — watch its citations |
| Microsoft Copilot | Bing’s index | Cites regularly | The same Bing groundwork that helps with ChatGPT |
Two things follow from that table. First, Bing matters far more than its search-market share suggests, because it feeds two of the five. Second, there is no single ranking to chase — being cited in one place tells you very little about the others, which is why the baseline check below is worth doing properly.
How GEO overlaps with — and differs from — SEO
The overlap is large. Both reward clear content, a technically sound site, authoritative mentions from other websites, accurate structured data and a strong local presence. If you've done the fundamentals of local SEO well, you have a real head start on GEO. There is no separate secret playbook that ignores everything you already know.
The differences are about the target. SEO optimises for a click on a ranked link; GEO optimises for a mention inside a written answer, where there may be no click at all. And ranking well in Google no longer guarantees AI visibility, because a substantial share of AI citations point to pages that do not hold a top-ten organic position at all. Being answer-shaped matters: content that directly answers a specific question, in plain language, with facts an AI can lift and attribute, tends to travel further than a page written purely to rank.
So GEO is best understood as an extension of good SEO, not a rival to it. Neglect the fundamentals and no amount of GEO tactics will save you.
What a local business should actually do
You don't need a large budget to start — you need consistency and a bit of patience. The sensible order of work looks like this:
- Fix your Google Business Profile first: complete every field, keep NAP identical to your website, add photos, and post updates regularly so it stays fresh
- Make your listings consistent everywhere — Bing Places, Apple Maps, and the directories relevant to your trade — so AI tools resolve you to one clear entity
- Earn and reply to reviews steadily; recency and your responses both count, not just the star average
- Write genuinely useful pages that answer the real questions customers ask, in plain English, with specific local detail (areas served, prices where sensible, clear service descriptions)
- Add basic structured data (LocalBusiness schema) so machines can read your key facts unambiguously
- Get mentioned on trusted third-party sources — local press, trade bodies, reputable directories — since these carry weight with the tools
How to start, honestly
Begin by seeing where you stand. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the questions a customer would — "best [your trade] in [your town]" — and note whether you appear, whether the details are right, and who does get named. That baseline tells you far more than any generic checklist.
Then work the fundamentals above and check again every few weeks. Progress in GEO is slower and less predictable than a search ranking, and there are no guarantees while the field is this young — anyone who promises otherwise is overselling. But the underlying work is the same work that makes you easier to find and trust everywhere: accurate listings, real reviews, clear content.
If you'd rather not manage it in-house, this is the kind of ongoing, detail-heavy work GEO SEO does for local businesses across Poole, Dorset and the wider UK. Whether you do it yourself or bring in help, the goal is the same — be the clear, consistent, well-reviewed business an AI can confidently recommend.