23 October 2026
GEO in one sentence
GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimization, is the work of getting AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude to find, understand and recommend your business when someone asks them about it, or about what it does. You will also see it called AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) or “AI visibility”. It is the same thing.
The difference from SEO is on the side of the person asking. On Google, they get a list of results and pick one. From an AI, they get a written answer with two or three names, and most of the time they stop there. If you are not one of those names, you do not exist for that customer.
SEO and GEO: what changes
- The outcome. SEO: a position in a list. GEO: being in the answer, or not.
- The criterion. Google ranks pages. AI picks businesses, and justifies the pick with facts: “open seven days a week”, “4.8 from 210 reviews”, “prices on the website”.
- The sources. AI does not only read your website. It reads your Google Business Profile, directories, review sites and forums, and cross-checks them. When the details differ from place to place, it hesitates.
- The measurement. In SEO you look at a position. In GEO, the same question gives different answers each time, so it is only worth measuring with many questions, repeated, and with a margin of error.
They are not rivals. Almost everything that helps GEO helps SEO too; the reverse is not always true, because AI wants facts as text and is not swayed by repeated keywords.
What AI reads about a business
- The text on the website. Services, prices, opening hours and address written as text, not only in images or a PDF. If the site only shows its content through JavaScript, many assistants never see it.
- The machine-readable record. Structured data (schema.org) with the business type, address, phone number and opening hours, and an llms.txt, a summary written for AI.
- The Google Business Profile, with the right category, the services and recent photos.
- Reviews and what is said elsewhere: Google, Trustpilot, trade directories, forums. Almost every reason AI gives comes from here.
- Consistency. The same name, address and opening hours everywhere. One old phone number in a directory is enough for AI to give a customer the wrong number.
Why you cannot check it by hand
Asking ChatGPT once “what is the best gym in Porto?” tells you nothing reliable. Two reasons:
- AI does not answer the same way twice. The same question, asked twice, gives different names. A single answer is luck, good or bad.
- Customers do not ask one question; they ask dozens. Not “best gym”, but “gym open at 6am near Boavista”, “gym with swimming lessons for kids”, “how much is the monthly fee”. Each question has its own answer, and your business may be in some and not in others.
That is why GEO is measured like a survey: many questions, put to several AIs, repeated, and counted. The result is a score with a margin of error, not a “yes” or “no”. The Chatlisted methodology explains how we calculate it.
The three steps
- Measure. Ask the AIs the questions your customers ask and see how many answers you appear in, who appears instead of you, and why. Without this, you are working blind.
- Fix what AI cannot find. The reasons AI recommends your competitors are your to-do list: if it recommends them for their opening hours, reviews or prices, that is what is missing about you, as text, on your website and Google profile, and on the listings AI reads.
- Measure again next month. Fixes take weeks to reach the answers, and only the next measurement tells you whether they worked. A rise inside the margin of error is not a rise; a rise above it is.
How long it takes
Changes to the website and the Google profile start showing up in answers within two to six weeks; reviews and listings on other sites take longer, because they depend on when each AI reads them again. It is work measured in months, not days, which is why it is measured every month.
Where to start
With the first step, which is free. The Chatlisted check asks the AIs your customers’ questions, shows your score and who AI recommends instead of you, and checks whether your website is ready to be read. The paid plans repeat the measurement every month and hand you each fix ready to use. The guide How to show up in ChatGPT answers has the six technical steps in order of impact.