How GEO differs from SEO

SEO aims for high positions in the list of search results. GEO aims to be mentioned inside an AI answer: the user may never click a link, but your company name and website appear in the answer as a source.

They don’t conflict. AI search often relies on the same search indexes, so technical SEO remains the foundation of GEO.

1. Open the door to AI crawlers

Many sites block AI bots without knowing it, through a blanket rule in robots.txt or a CDN setting that blocks AI bots. Check that:

  • robots.txt doesn’t disallow GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot or Google-Extended.
  • Cloudflare or another CDN doesn’t return 403 to these bots — test with a request using the bot’s User-Agent.
  • The main text is in the HTML without JavaScript: many AI crawlers don’t execute JS.

2. Answer the question in the first paragraph

AI systems split a page into passages and take the one that answers the question most precisely. So every important page should start with a direct 2–4 sentence answer, followed by the details. The short answer block at the top of this article is there for exactly that reason.

3. Make facts precise and verifiable

Instead of “many years of experience”, write “since 2014”; instead of “many apps”, write “18 apps in the App Store and Google Play”. A fact with a number, date, name and link is easy to cite. Unverifiable promises get ignored.

4. Structured data and entity links

Use Schema.org JSON-LD to give machine-readable data about the company (Organization), services (Service), questions and answers (FAQPage), articles (Article) and the author (Person). Link the company and founder pages through @id — AI systems then recognize the brand as a distinct entity.

5. llms.txt

llms.txt is a plain text file at the site root: what the company does and a list of the most important pages. It isn’t an official standard yet and Google doesn’t use it, but some AI tools read it, and adding it takes an hour.

6. Get your brand mentioned on other websites

AI answers often cross-check several sources. When the company name, services and city are written the same way in directories, maps, social profiles and partner websites, AI trusts them more. Fill in your Google Business Profile, Yandex Business and 2GIS listings.

7. Keep it fresh and measure

Pages should show an update date, and lastmod in the sitemap should be real. To measure results, regularly ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the questions your customers ask and record who gets mentioned in the answers.

Frequently asked questions

When will GEO results show?

When AI search uses live web search, within a few weeks of the page being indexed. Getting into a model’s built-in knowledge takes much longer and depends on how often the brand is mentioned on other sites.

Do I need a separate website for GEO?

No. The technical state, text structure and structured data of your existing site are improved.