For years, being found online meant ranking on Google. That still matters. But more people now type a question into an AI assistant, such as ‘which compressor service companies are near Ahmedabad?’ or ‘what should I look for in a school ERP?’, and read a written answer instead of a list of links.
Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of making your business easy for these AI tools to understand, trust and mention. It builds on good SEO rather than replacing it, and much of it is simply doing the basics properly.
How AI assistants choose what to say
Each AI product works differently and they change often, so treat this as a general picture rather than a rulebook. Broadly, assistants draw on two things: what they learned during training, and what they find by searching the web at the moment you ask. When they search, they tend to favour pages that answer the question directly, come from sources that look reliable, and agree with what other sources say.
That last point matters. If your website, Google Business Profile, directory listings and social pages all describe your business in the same way, an assistant can state facts about you with more confidence. If they contradict each other, you are less likely to be mentioned, or more likely to be described wrongly.
Make your key facts impossible to miss
AI tools work best with clear, specific statements. Vague marketing language gives them little to quote. Make sure your website states plainly:
- What you do, in one or two sentences, near the top of the home page
- Where you operate: city, state and the regions you serve
- Who you serve, such as industries, business sizes or types of customer
- Your main products or services, each with its own page
- How to contact you, with the same address and phone number everywhere
Use structured data (schema)
Schema markup is a small block of code on your pages that labels information for machines: this is the business name, this is the address, these are the opening hours, this is a product, this is a question and its answer. Search engines have used it for years, and it helps any system that reads your pages make sense of them.
Useful types for most businesses include Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, Product, FAQPage and Article. Your developer can add these without changing how the page looks to visitors.
Answer real questions with real pages
Think about the questions customers ask you on calls and WhatsApp, then answer them on your site. A good FAQ section, written in plain language, gives AI assistants ready-made answers they can draw on. Go further for your most important topics with a proper guide page that explains a process, compares options or sets out what affects price.
Authority comes from depth and accuracy. A single thorough, well-organised page on a subject you genuinely know usually does more than ten thin pages stuffed with keywords. Keep pages updated, and show the date they were last revised.
Keep your business information consistent
- Claim and complete your Google Business Profile, and keep hours and categories current
- Check listings on industry directories, marketplaces and maps apps for old addresses or numbers
- Use the same business name spelling everywhere, including on LinkedIn and social profiles
- Encourage genuine customer reviews on reputable platforms, and reply to them
- Fix outdated information on old pages or press mentions where you can
A note on llms.txt
Some websites now publish a file called llms.txt at their root, a short plain-text summary that points AI tools to the most important pages on the site. It is an emerging convention rather than an established standard, and support across AI products is uneven. It is quick to add and does no harm, but it will not make up for unclear content or inconsistent listings. Treat it as a small extra, not a strategy.
Where to start
Begin with an honest audit: ask a few AI assistants about your business and your category, and note what they get right, wrong or leave out. Then tighten your key facts, add schema, write pages that answer real questions and clean up your listings. Recheck every few months, because these tools keep changing.
TangentMind Labs offers SEO and GEO work for businesses that want to be described accurately wherever their customers are searching.