If you have searched for anything recently and noticed a wall of AI-generated text at the top of Google before the regular results, you have already seen the shift. Increasingly, people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude a question, get a complete answer in plain English, and never click through to a website at all.
This is changing how businesses get found online, and it has produced a new acronym: GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization. There is a lot of noise around it, and a lot of agencies are already selling expensive GEO packages without much idea of what works. This is an honest explainer.
What is GEO?
GEO is the practice of making your website's content easy for large language models to read, understand, trust, and quote when they answer questions for their users.
The goal is no longer just to rank on a list of blue links. The goal is to be mentioned, by name, inside the answer the AI gives, ideally with a citation back to your website. If someone asks ChatGPT "who builds bespoke websites in Kent?", you want the answer to include "byMichael".
How is it different from SEO?
SEO and GEO overlap heavily. Both reward clean technical structure, factual content, original writing, useful pages and trustworthy sources. The difference is in the outcome.
- SEO sends a user from a search results page to your website as a clickable link.
- GEO aims for your business to appear inside the AI-generated answer itself, sometimes with a citation, sometimes without.
This matters for two reasons. First, plenty of those AI answers happen without the user ever clicking. Your name being in the answer can still influence the decision they make. Second, AI tools cite the sites they trust, and citation links are turning into a new form of backlink that signals authority to other tools.
Does my business need it right now?
For most UK small businesses in 2026, GEO is not yet driving meaningful traffic. ChatGPT and Perplexity send a fraction of what Google does. The honest answer is that you do not need to panic, and you definitely do not need to spend £2,000 on a "GEO audit".
But the underlying changes that improve your GEO position are also good SEO practice, take very little extra effort, and put you in a strong place for the next two to three years as AI search continues to grow. The cost is low, the upside compounds, and your competitors are mostly ignoring it.
Short version: do not pay anyone for a standalone GEO service yet. Do the basics yourself, or have them rolled into your existing SEO work. The bar is currently low.
What actually works?
None of this requires a black-box tool. The businesses AI tools cite tend to share the same traits:
- Clear service pages — what you do, who it is for, where you work, and what it costs (even a range).
- Structured data — schema markup that tells machines your business type, location, services and FAQs.
- Original writing — specific pages about your town, your process and your work. Not generic filler.
- Consistent facts — the same business name, phone number and location across your site, Google profile and directories.
- Citable resources — guides, case studies and an
llms.txtfile at your domain root summarising key pages.
What byMichael does in practice
Every site I build includes the foundations GEO depends on: semantic HTML, schema on service and location pages, fast performance, FAQ structure, and content written to answer real questions plainly. It is part of how the work is scoped, not a bolt-on upsell.
If you want the longer version, read the GEO service overview or SEO pricing for how ongoing search work is handled.