What Is GEO? How to Get Your Business Mentioned by AI

Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of getting your business named when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation. That is the whole idea in one sentence.

It matters now because a growing share of customers skip the list of ten blue links entirely. They type "good accountant in Utrecht" into ChatGPT, or they read the AI summary at the top of Google, or they ask Perplexity for "the best CRM for a small gym". The answer they get back is not a page of results. It is a short list of names. Three businesses, maybe five. If yours is one of them, you just got a warm introduction. If not, that customer may never know you exist.

The good news: you do not need to learn a new discipline or buy new software to start. Most of GEO is work you can already do.

How do AI assistants choose which businesses to mention?

AI assistants do not keep a secret directory of approved businesses. They build answers from what is published on the web. When someone asks for an accountant in Utrecht, the AI pulls from websites, review platforms, business listings, and articles that mention accountants in Utrecht, then names the businesses that show up clearly and consistently.

Four things make a business easy for AI to pick:

• A website that answers questions in plain words. If your site says "We do bookkeeping and tax returns for freelancers and small businesses in Utrecht, with fixed monthly pricing", an AI can quote that. If your homepage says "Passion for numbers, partner in growth", it cannot.
• Consistent business information. Your name, location, services, and contact details should match everywhere: your website, your Google Business Profile, industry directories. Mismatches make AI less confident about you, and unconfident usually means unmentioned.
• Reviews. AI assistants lean on review volume and review content as a trust signal. A business with 80 detailed Google reviews looks safer to recommend than one with 4.
• Mentions on other sites. Local news, industry blogs, "best of" lists, supplier pages. When other websites talk about you, AI treats that as evidence you are real and reputable.

Here is the concrete test. Open ChatGPT and ask it the question your customers would ask, like "Who is a good physiotherapist in Ghent for runners?" Read the answer. The businesses it names almost always have one thing in common: a website that states what they do, for whom, and where, in sentences a twelve-year-old could understand.

What can you do this month?

You do not need a six-month plan. Three moves cover most of the ground.

First, publish pages that answer real customer questions. Pick the three questions you get asked most often on the phone. "How much does a website cost?" "Do you work with startups?" "Can you fix this in a week?" Write one page per question, with the direct answer in the first paragraph. These pages do double duty: they rank in Google and they give AI assistants exact sentences to quote. This is the same content that drives getting more customers through normal search, so nothing here is wasted effort.

Second, tighten your wording. Go through your homepage and service pages and replace vague claims with checkable facts. "Affordable" becomes "from 95 euros per month". "Serving the region" becomes "serving Utrecht, Amersfoort, and Hilversum". AI systems quote specifics. They skip fog.

Third, complete your Google Business Profile. Every field: services, hours, photos, service area, business description. Then ask your five happiest recent customers for a review, and reply to the reviews you get. AI tools that recommend local businesses draw heavily on this data.

That is a few evenings of work, not a project. And every piece of it also helps your normal Google ranking, so there is no trade-off to agonize over.

What do GEO tools actually do?

A new category of generative engine optimization tools has appeared over the past two years, and it helps to know what they do before anyone tries to sell you one. They cluster around three jobs:

• Monitoring. They ask AI assistants thousands of questions on your behalf and track whether your business gets mentioned, how often, and next to which competitors. Useful, because you cannot manually test every phrasing of every question.
• Citation analysis. They look at which sources the AI quoted, so you can see what kind of pages earn mentions in your industry. Often it is review sites, comparison articles, and clear service pages.
• Content generation. Some promise to write AI-friendly content for you. Quality varies a lot.

Be honest with yourself about where this category stands: it is young. Pricing is unsettled, vendors come and go, and the AI platforms themselves change how they pick sources every few months. A monitoring report is interesting, but it cannot fix the underlying problem if your website has nothing worth quoting.

So here is the position worth taking: you do not need to buy a GEO tool first. You need content AI can quote. Tools measure the results of that work; they cannot substitute for it. Do the publishing first. Consider a monitoring tool later, once there is something to monitor.

GEO vs SEO: do you need both?

You need both outcomes, but they are mostly one effort. SEO, search engine optimization, is the work of ranking your pages in Google's results. GEO is the work of being named inside AI-generated answers. The inputs overlap almost completely: clear pages that answer questions, consistent business details, reviews, and mentions from other sites.

The difference is what is at stake. A Google results page has room for dozens of businesses. An AI answer typically names a handful. That makes the clarity bar higher. A page that ranks seventh in Google still gets some visits. A business that AI considers seventh does not get mentioned at all.

One practical difference: structure matters even more for GEO. Put the answer in the first two sentences of a section, not at the end of a 400-word warm-up. Use headings that match real questions. An AI scanning your page should be able to lift a complete, accurate sentence about your business without reading the whole thing.

So do not budget for two separate strategies. Budget for one: publish clear, expert answers to the questions your customers actually ask. Google rewards it today. AI assistants reward it today and will keep doing so, whatever else changes.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO just a new name for SEO?

Not quite, but they are close cousins. SEO targets ranked lists of links; GEO targets the written answers AI assistants produce. The work overlaps heavily, so most businesses should treat GEO as an extension of their existing content effort rather than a separate program.

How do I know if ChatGPT mentions my business?

Test it by hand. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google the questions your customers would ask, in a few different phrasings, and note who gets named. Monitoring tools can automate this at scale, but a manual check once a month costs nothing and tells you most of what you need.

Do I need to pay for a GEO tool?

Not at the start. Tools monitor and analyze; they do not create the clear, quotable content that earns mentions in the first place. Publish question-answering pages and complete your business profiles first, then decide whether paid monitoring adds anything.

How long does it take to show up in AI answers?

Expect months rather than days. AI systems need to find your content, and trust builds through reviews and mentions over time. Businesses with strong existing websites sometimes appear faster, because the groundwork is already done.

Fonzy exists for exactly this kind of work. It writes content for your business that is built to be quoted, by Google's results and by AI assistants alike, grounded in what your business actually does. You answer the questions once; Fonzy makes sure the internet hears it.