How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Gemini
· 8 min read
A search engine returns ten links and lets the person choose. An assistant returns an answer — typically naming one to three businesses. The difference matters enormously: on a results page, position four still gets clicks. In an answer, there is no position four.
The work of being in that answer has a name — Generative Engine Optimisation — and it overlaps with SEO without being the same thing.
What these systems can actually use
An assistant answering "who should I use for X in Y" is assembling from sources it can read, parse and attribute. Sites fail that test in mundane ways: the services are in an image, the coverage area is implied, the pricing model is a phone call, the expertise is asserted rather than demonstrated.
What helps, in rough order:
- Plain, parseable text. What you do, who for, where, in sentences — not baked into graphics or hidden behind interactions.
- Structured data that states the same things machine-readably: organisation, services, areas served, currencies.
- Questions answered in the shape they are asked. A visible question with a direct answer under it is the format these systems lift most readily.
- Specifics over adjectives. "Retainers start at a fixed base plus modules" is usable; "affordable pricing" is not.
- An llms.txt file describing the business and pointing at what matters — a small, growing convention for exactly this purpose.
Why vague copy fails badly here
Marketing language that survives on a website — "world-class", "trusted partner", "results-driven" — is close to useless to a system deciding whether to name you. It carries no distinguishing information. Worse, it displaces the text that would.
The businesses that get cited tend to have unglamorous, concrete pages: what they do, where, for whom, at roughly what cost, with the common questions answered directly.
Where geography comes in
A great deal of this is local. "Who should I use for X in Cape Town" is a different query from "who should I use for X", and the answer depends on whether a system can establish where you operate. Most sites state this nowhere a machine can find it — the address is in a footer image, or the coverage is "we work with clients everywhere", which resolves to nothing.
Naming markets specifically beats claiming all of them. "Worldwide" matches no query.
How to see where you stand
Ask the assistants directly. Take the five or six questions a buyer would realistically ask, put them to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, and record what comes back. You will usually find one of three things: you are absent, you are described inaccurately, or a competitor is named consistently.
Repeat it monthly. It is a crude measure and it is the one that matters — and unlike rankings, nobody sells you a dashboard for it yet.
What this does not replace
Traditional search is not going away, and the foundations overlap heavily: site health, clear structure, credible content. GEO is not a separate budget so much as a different bar for the same work. If a page is genuinely clear about what you do and who for, it tends to do better in both.
One honest caveat: this field is young. Anyone offering guaranteed placement in AI answers is selling something they cannot control, and the mechanics will keep changing.
Common questions
Quick answers.
What is Generative Engine Optimisation?
Work that makes a business readable, credible and attributable to AI assistants, so it can be named when someone asks for a recommendation. It shares foundations with SEO — structure, clarity, site health — but targets being the answer rather than a ranked link.
How is GEO different from SEO?
SEO competes for position on a page of links, where fourth place still earns clicks. GEO competes to be one of the one to three businesses named in an answer, where there is no fourth place.
How do I check whether AI assistants recommend my business?
Ask them. Put the five or six questions a buyer would realistically ask to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, and record the answers. Repeat monthly. It is crude, and it is the measure that counts.
Can anyone guarantee my business appears in AI answers?
No. Nobody controls those systems’ outputs, and any guarantee is a claim about something the seller cannot influence. What can be done is make the business as readable and attributable as possible, then measure.
Next step
Ready to put this into practice?
Book a consultation and we will map where this applies to your business — and you keep the findings either way.