How to show up in ChatGPT and Google's AI answers

When someone asks ChatGPT for a good coffee shop nearby, or reads the AI summary at the top of Google, the answer is written from a handful of pages found on the web. Below is how pages get there, and what a small business can do without expensive tools.

What GEO means

GEO (generative engine optimisation) is the work of getting a page cited in answers written by AI: ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity or Claude. The term comes from a study by researchers at Princeton and other institutions, presented at the KDD conference in 2024. In their tests, some changes to a page's text, such as adding quotations, statistics and sources, raised its visibility in generated answers by up to 40%.

GEO doesn't replace SEO. AI assistants search the web through search engines too, so a page Google or Bing can't find won't make it into AI answers either. What's new is that the page has to be easy to quote: a clear answer, placed where it's found quickly.

Why it matters for a small business

AI summaries change where people look. In 2025, Pew Research Center analysed the searches of 900 US adults: when Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. Pages cited in the summary stay in view; the rest are seen less often.

AI assistants are also becoming a way to choose a local business. In BrightLocal's 2026 survey of US consumers, 45% said they had used AI tools such as ChatGPT for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier. The work described below also helps in regular Google search, so none of it is wasted.

Where AI assistants get their information

Each assistant searches differently, but they all start from pages they've been able to read:

Google is the clearest about this. Its documentation for AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special structured data. The page only has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet.

OpenAI says that to be eligible for ChatGPT search, a site has to let OAI-SearchBot in, and the host or CDN has to accept traffic from its published IP addresses. Placement isn't guaranteed.

Step 1: let the search crawlers in

The crawlers that read sites for AI come in two kinds, and your robots.txt file treats them separately:

• Training crawlers: GPTBot (OpenAI) and ClaudeBot (Anthropic). For Google, the rule is written for Google-Extended. Block them and your text isn't used for training, but your business can still appear in answers.
• Search crawlers: Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Block them and the site disappears from those assistants' answers.

The example below blocks training at OpenAI and allows ChatGPT search. A site with no rules in robots.txt lets every crawler in.

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Allow: /

Step 2: write pages that can be quoted

An AI assistant usually takes a sentence or a paragraph, not a whole page. What makes quoting easy:

• The answer in the first sentence. "A men's haircut with us costs $35 and takes 30 minutes" can be quoted; "Welcome to our world" can't.
• One page per service, with the price or price range, the area you cover, how long it takes and what's included.
• Figures with sources and concrete examples. The GEO study found statistics, quotations and cited sources among the changes that helped most.
• Text as text. Prices, menus and opening hours inside images can't be read. Google explicitly recommends keeping important content in text form.
• The questions customers actually ask, with short answers on the right page.
• Structured data that matches the visible text. Google requires it to match what the page says. Which types a local business needs is in our schema markup guide.

The rest of the basics are in the checklist for what a small business website should include.

Step 3: the same business details everywhere

For questions like "where can I find…" or "who does… near me", assistants rely on business listings. Google says in the same documentation that your Business Profile should be kept current. OpenAI says ChatGPT may share a user's approximate location with trusted third-party providers, such as business listing services, to find nearby places.

In practice, your name, address, phone number, hours and website should match exactly on your Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and your own site. The Google Business Profile guide covers what to fill in.

Restaurants have one more thing to consider: ChatGPT can look up available tables and book them through OpenTable, and in the US also through Resy and Yelp. A restaurant listed on one of them can be booked straight from the conversation. The options are compared in the guide to restaurant reservation systems.

Step 4: reviews and mentions on other sites

When an assistant recommends a business, it also relies on what others say about it: reviews, local press, lists, forums. Pew found that Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit are the sources cited most often in Google's AI summaries. In BrightLocal's survey, 82% of consumers said they read AI-generated summaries of reviews.

What you can do:

• Ask for reviews from your customers, with a direct link to the review form. Google prohibits incentives for reviews and asking only happy customers.
• Reply to reviews, including negative ones, briefly and specifically.
• Get known where others write: trade associations, local press, events, partnerships.

What doesn't help

• An llms.txt file. It's a 2024 proposal for a site summary written for AI. In 2025, Google's Gary Illyes said Google doesn't use it, and Google's documentation says you don't need AI text files. It doesn't hurt, but it isn't a shortcut. What the data shows: What is llms.txt.
• Pages written for robots, with the same keywords repeated. An assistant is looking for a clear answer, not a list of keywords.
• Offers of "guaranteed placement in ChatGPT". OpenAI says placement isn't guaranteed, and Google says you can't pay for a better local ranking.

How to measure results

• Google Search Console. Visits from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the overall "Web" search type. Google doesn't report them separately.
• Bing Webmaster Tools. The AI Performance report, launched in February 2026, shows how often your site is cited in Copilot and in Bing's AI summaries, which pages are cited and for which queries.
• Your analytics. Visits from ChatGPT usually show chatgpt.com as the source, and visits from Perplexity show perplexity.ai.
• A monthly test. Ask the assistants five to ten questions your customers ask and note who gets cited. It's the simplest way to see whether your changes work.

First steps

1. Check robots.txt and the AI crawler settings in Cloudflare or at your host.
2. Add the site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools.
3. Complete your Google Business Profile and check the same details on Bing, Apple Maps and Yelp.
4. Rewrite the first sentence of every service page as an answer.
5. Add the questions you actually hear from customers.
6. Ask customers for reviews, without incentives.

The sites we build in web design start with content as text, structured data for the business and a sitemap, the foundation everything above builds on.