Emails offering “GEO services” or promising to get your business recommended by ChatGPT have become the new pitch, often from the same people who used to promise page one on Google.
Our view, after looking at the advice closely: most of what’s sold as generative engine optimisation is ordinary SEO with a new label. A small part of what’s left is new and useful. The rest ranges from pointless to harmful.
What GEO means
Generative engine optimisation is the practice of making your business and content more likely to be used and cited in AI generated answers, from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode. The term comes from a 2023 academic paper that tested how different content changes affected whether AI answers cited a source. You’ll also see AEO (answer engine optimisation) and LLMO (large language model optimisation). They mean roughly the same thing.
The underlying idea is reasonable. AI assistants run searches, read pages and write answers. Some pages get quoted and some don’t. It makes sense to ask why.
Where it goes wrong is the leap from “AI answers are a new format” to “you need an entirely new, separately priced discipline”.
What Google says
Google has been unusually direct. Its guide to optimising for generative AI features in Search, last updated in July 2026, says that from Google’s perspective, optimising for generative AI search “is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO”.
The same guide says you don’t need new machine readable files, AI text files or special markup. It says there’s no requirement to break content into tiny chunks for AI, no need to write in a special way for AI, and that structured data, while still worth having for rich results, isn’t required for AI features. It also warns that no third party tool has access to Google’s internal ranking or AI systems.
That covers Google’s products. ChatGPT, Perplexity and others work differently under the hood, but they still rely on searching the web and reading pages, so most of the same logic applies.
The advice that holds up
These are worth doing. You’ll notice most of them were good practice before anyone said “GEO”.
Be findable by the search engines AI tools use
AI assistants can only cite pages they can find. Your site needs to be indexed by Google and by Bing, since several AI tools draw on Bing results. Check your robots.txt isn’t blocking crawlers you want, and that your hosting or security plugin isn’t quietly blocking bots. We’ve seen security settings on client sites block legitimate crawlers more than once.
Say specific things plainly
Pages that state facts clearly get quoted. “We service Ballina, Lennox Head, Alstonville and Wollongbar” is quotable. “We proudly serve the greater region” isn’t. Prices, timeframes, licence numbers, qualifications, what’s included: if it’s true and customers want to know it, write it down in a sentence.
Answer the questions customers ask
A page that answers “How long does a bathroom renovation take?” with a real answer and the reasons it varies will be useful to people and to AI tools. This is the core of content work and always has been.
One page per service, and the areas you cover
AI tools match businesses to specific needs. If your plumbing website has one page saying “all plumbing services”, the AI has little to match against “hot water system replacement in Alstonville”. Dedicated service pages give it something to go on.
Build a reputation other sites confirm
AI tools tend to trust facts they can find in several places. Reviews on your Google Business Profile, a listing with your industry association, a mention in the local paper, a supplier’s stockist page. These are real signals because they’re hard to fake at scale.
Keep your details consistent
Boring, and it works. A phone number that differs between your website and Bing Places gives an AI tool a reason to hedge, or to get it wrong.
The hype
“We’ll get you ranked in ChatGPT”
Nobody can guarantee this. ChatGPT answers vary between users and between asks of the same question. There’s no ranking to buy. Anyone promising a position is making it up, in the same way SEO ranking guarantees always were.
“You need an llms.txt file”
llms.txt is a proposed file that lists your site’s content for AI tools. Google states plainly that Google Search doesn’t use it. Some other services might, and having one does no harm, but it isn’t going to change whether you’re recommended. We cover it in more detail in llms.txt: does your website need one?
“Rewrite your whole site for AI”
Some agencies sell a rewrite into short, keyword stuffed Q&A blocks “for AI”. Google says there’s no need. If your content is unclear, rewrite it for customers and it will be clearer for machines as a side effect. If it’s already clear, leave it alone.
Mass produced location and FAQ pages
Spinning up 200 near identical pages (“Plumber in Ballina”, “Plumber in Lennox Head”, and so on) to catch AI queries risks breaching Google’s scaled content abuse policy. A handful of location pages with real local differences can work. Hundreds of templated ones are a liability.
Seeding fake mentions
Paying for posts on forums, fake “best of” lists, or reviews you’ve written yourself is the AI era version of buying links. Google’s guide specifically says chasing inauthentic mentions isn’t as helpful as it might seem. It can also land you in trouble with the ACCC if it misleads consumers.
“AI visibility scores”
Tools that give you a single number for how visible you are in AI search are sampling answers to a set of prompts. That can be useful as a trend, but the number isn’t an official metric. You can do a decent version yourself, as we explain in how to check whether AI tools recommend your business.
Where real GEO work differs from SEO
There are a few genuine differences in emphasis.
Brand mentions matter more than links alone. Traditional SEO focused on links. AI tools read text, so an unlinked mention of your business in a credible local article still contributes to the picture.
Bing matters more. Several AI tools rely on Bing’s index. Plenty of small businesses have never claimed their Bing Places listing.
Being one of three is the new page one. An AI answer often names only two or three businesses. That makes the gap between “good” and “best known” wider, and rewards businesses that own a niche (“the Ballina electrician for solar battery installs”) rather than competing on the broadest terms.
You can see your sources. Tools like Perplexity and ChatGPT often show which pages they used. That’s a free window into what the AI trusts in your category.
How to judge a GEO offer
Before you pay anyone for GEO, ask:
- What specifically will you change on my site and off it?
- How is that different from the SEO work I’m already paying for (or should be)?
- How will you measure results, and is that measurement your own sampling or official data?
- Do you guarantee any placement? (The right answer is no.)
If the answers are vague, or the offer leans on secret techniques, treat it like any other questionable SEO pitch. Our guide on how to spot a dodgy SEO offer applies here too.
What we’d do
For a typical local service business: make sure the site is indexed in Google and Bing, write proper service pages with the areas you cover, get the Business Profile and Bing Places right, build reviews steadily, and earn a few mentions on real local sites. Then check every month or two what AI tools say about you, and fix what’s wrong at the source.
That’s not glamorous, and it isn’t new. It works for normal search and AI search alike, which is the point. If you’re a tradie starting from scratch, our tradie.agency Local SEO Build is set up this way from day one. For other businesses, this is how we run AI search work alongside SEO, without a separate GEO line on the invoice.