GEO: how to get your business cited by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity

A growing share of people no longer Google a question — they ask ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, Gemini or Perplexity. If those models do not know your business, you are invisible to a whole new front door. Getting cited by them has a name: GEO — Generative Engine Optimization.

1. Be machine-readable

Clean HTML, fast pages, crawlable links and accurate structured data help search systems understand who you are, what you do and where. An llms.txt file can provide a concise reference for systems that choose to read it, but Google explicitly says it is not a ranking signal.

2. Answer real questions, clearly

LLMs quote content that directly answers a question in plain language. A strong FAQ, with one clear question and one self-contained answer each, is the single highest-leverage thing you can add.

3. Be consistent everywhere

Same name, address, phone and description across your site, Google Business, and directories. Models trust entities that are coherent across the web.

4. Build citable, original content

Models favour specific, quotable statements: numbers, ranges, definitions, step lists. Vague marketing copy gets ignored; concrete facts get cited.

5. Let search crawlers in

Do not block the search crawlers you want to reach. For ChatGPT Search that means OAI-SearchBot; GPTBot is a separate control for potential model training. Allowing a crawler makes discovery possible, but does not guarantee a citation or ranking.

The bottom line

GEO is not a shortcut around SEO. Businesses improve their chances of appearing in AI answers by publishing useful first-hand information, keeping entity details consistent and making every important page easy to crawl, understand and cite.