How to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers: GEO for small businesses in plain English
What GEO is and how a small business can appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers: crawler access, clear facts, structure, schema and mentions.
Short answer: to show up in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI answers, your website must be open to search crawlers, state the facts about your business plainly in text (services, starting prices, location, contacts), answer real customer questions in a clear structure — headings, lists, tables and FAQs — and your business needs to exist where AI looks for confirmation: Google Business Profile, directories, review platforms and industry media. That’s GEO. Nobody can guarantee a recommendation, but making you visible and understandable to AI is entirely doable.
Customers increasingly ask ChatGPT instead of Google: “which CRM for a small online store”, “who builds websites for dental clinics”, “who can set up Google Ads for a local business”. Owners keep asking us how to get into those answers. Here’s an honest guide with no “#1 in ChatGPT” promises: how AI answers work, what’s in your control and where to start.
How AI assistants choose their sources
| System | Where it gets information | What matters for you |
|---|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews and AI Mode | Google’s index and its regular ranking systems | Classic SEO: the page is indexed and eligible to show with a snippet |
| ChatGPT with search | OpenAI’s OAI-SearchBot crawler and other web sources | Access for OAI-SearchBot, clear facts, mentions on other sites |
| Perplexity | Its own search, with cited sources in every answer | Access for PerplexityBot, structured, up-to-date pages |
| Microsoft Copilot | The Bing index | Indexed in Bing, Bing Webmaster Tools connected |
| Claude with web search | Web search and Anthropic’s own crawlers | Access for Claude-SearchBot, readable pages |
Worth knowing: Google’s documentation “AI features and your website” says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode and no special schema.org markup is needed — the page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. For Google, the foundation of GEO is simply good SEO, and if your site is not indexed at all, that comes first: see website not showing up on Google: 10 reasons.
GEO vs SEO: what’s different
| Classic SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | A position in the results and a click | A mention or citation in an AI answer |
| Unit | A page | A passage: a paragraph, a table row, an FAQ answer |
| What works | Crawlability, relevance, links | The same, plus plain facts, structure and third-party mentions |
| How to measure | Rankings, impressions, clicks in Search Console | Regular manual answer checks and AI referrals in analytics |
GEO checklist for a small business
1. Crawler access
- Open yourdomain/robots.txt. AI search crawlers — OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT), PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot — must not be blocked.
- Separate search crawlers from training crawlers. At OpenAI, for example, GPTBot is for model training and OAI-SearchBot is for ChatGPT search. Opting out of training shouldn’t accidentally block search.
- Check whether your host, CDN or a security plugin blocks bots — it happens even with a correct robots.txt.
- Main page content should be in the HTML, not appear only after JavaScript runs: most crawlers read the raw HTML. Heavy JavaScript also slows the site down for people; see Core Web Vitals in plain English.
2. Plain facts in the text
- What you do, for whom, in which city or country — in one sentence on the homepage and the About page.
- Starting prices and timelines as text on each service page, not in a PDF or “ask our manager”.
- Contacts, address and opening hours identical on the site, in Google Business Profile and in directories.
- Who is behind the business: the founder or experts, experience, real case studies.
3. Structure that’s easy to quote
- A direct answer to the main question in the first two or three sentences.
- H2 headings phrased the way people ask: “How much does…”, “How to choose…”, “What’s the difference between…”.
- Comparisons as tables, processes as numbered lists, questions in an FAQ block.
- Each paragraph makes sense on its own: AI lifts passages, not whole pages.
- A visible publish or update date.
4. Markup and helper files
- schema.org: Organization or LocalBusiness, Service, Article or BlogPosting, FAQPage, BreadcrumbList — only with data visible on the page.
- An up-to-date sitemap.xml submitted to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Optionally, an llms.txt file with a short business description and links to key pages. It’s a voluntary format, not a requirement.
5. Presence beyond your website
- A complete Google Business Profile with categories, services, photos and replies to reviews.
- Profiles in the industry directories and review platforms people use in your niche.
- Mentions in local media, on partner sites and in expert roundups.
- The same description of your business everywhere: AI looks for consistent facts across sources.
Which pages to create or update first
AI assistants tend to cite pages where the answer is stated plainly and is easy to verify. For a small business these are usually:
| Page | Questions it answers | What it needs |
|---|---|---|
| A separate page per service | “Who does … in [city]”, “how much does … cost” | What’s included, who it’s for, starting price, timeline, area served, FAQ |
| About | “Who are they”, “can I trust them” | Who runs the business, experience, address, company details, contacts |
| Case studies or work examples | “Have they worked in my niche” | Task, solution, constraints, real results where the client allows publishing them |
| Comparison articles | “Which is better: … or …” | An honest criteria table and a verdict on who each option suits |
| Pricing and terms | “How much”, “how to pay”, “what’s the warranty” | Price ranges as text, payment, delivery and return terms |
Start with the two or three services that bring the most revenue and get their pages to the point where they could be cited as a source. That helps regular search and direct visitors just as much.
What doesn’t work and causes harm
- Hidden text or instructions for AI on the page. It’s manipulation, and search engines treat it as spam.
- Fake reviews and ratings in markup. They break Google’s guidelines and destroy trust.
- Mass-producing thin pages “for AI”. Google classes this as scaled content abuse.
- Keyword stuffing. In the GEO study by researchers from Princeton and other universities (Aggarwal et al., 2023) it didn’t help, while citing sources, adding quotations and concrete statistics improved visibility in generative answers.
- Services promising “guaranteed ChatGPT recommendations”. Organic AI answers aren’t for sale.
How to check whether AI sees you
- Write down 10–20 questions your customers ask: “who does … in [city]”, “how much does … cost”, “which is better, … or …”.
- Run each in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google (see whether an AI Overview appears) 3–5 times, because answers vary between runs.
- Log in a sheet: were you mentioned, which competitors were, which sites the AI cited.
- If an AI states something wrong about you, find the page where that fact is unclear and fix it first.
- The sites AI cites in your niche are your presence list: directories, media, review platforms.
- Repeat monthly and compare the mention rate, not individual answers. GA4 also shows referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and other AI services.
How long until you see results
Technical fixes — open crawler access, rendering, markup — are picked up within a few weeks as pages are recrawled. Third-party mentions and trust build over months. So GEO isn’t a one-off campaign but a habit: update key pages whenever prices or services change, and check monthly what AI assistants say about you.
From our work: how we apply it on our own site
We run this checklist on our own website, and you can verify it any time:
- robots.txt allows all crawlers with one general rule and blocks only the admin area.
- /llms.txt is generated from the same data as the pages: services with starting prices, the founder, city, markets and languages.
- Starting prices are published as text on every service page, not hidden behind a form.
- Blog posts carry BlogPosting and FAQPage markup, a table of contents and a direct answer at the top — like this one.
- Case studies describe the task, the solution and the constraints without invented numbers — for example, the Shopify tracking audit.
We don’t claim this guarantees AI mentions — we make the site easy for AI to read and hard to misquote.
When to bring us in
If you’re not showing up on Google, you’re very likely missing from AI answers too, so start with the basics. Our technical audit (from €300) checks AI crawler access, rendering and markup, and our technical and local SEO work (from €400) covers structure, schema.org, Google Business Profile and pages for the questions customers ask. If the site is too dated to fix, there’s a full redesign.
Send us your website and 3–5 questions you should be found for, and we’ll check what AI assistants see.
FAQ
What is GEO in plain English?
GEO (generative engine optimization) is making sure AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews can find your website, read the facts about your business correctly and cite you in their answers. It builds on regular SEO; it isn’t a separate trick.
Can I pay to get ChatGPT to recommend my business?
No. Organic AI answers aren’t for sale, and nobody can guarantee a recommendation. What you can do is make sure AI can find and understand your site; content quality and what others say about you decide the rest.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It’s a voluntary format: a short description of your business with links to key pages, aimed at AI systems. Google states that AI Overviews need no special files, so llms.txt is a useful extra, not a requirement.
Does blocking GPTBot hurt my visibility?
GPTBot collects data for training OpenAI models; appearing in ChatGPT search is handled by a different crawler, OAI-SearchBot. You can opt out of training and still allow search — just make sure you don’t block the search crawlers by accident.
How do I check whether AI mentions my business?
Write down 10–20 questions your customers ask and run each in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google several times. Record whether you’re mentioned, which competitors are, and which sources are cited. Answers vary between runs, so track the mention rate, not a single result.