Guides · · 4 min read
How to appear in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity answers: a 2026 GEO guide
What GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is, how it differs from SEO, and the concrete steps to make AI assistants know, describe and recommend your brand.
More and more people ask an AI assistant before searching on Google: “which company would you recommend for…?”, “what’s the best option for…?”. The answer is no longer a list of ten links but a paragraph naming two or three brands. If yours isn’t in that paragraph, to that customer you don’t exist.
Preparing a brand for that scenario is called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), or AI visibility. This guide explains what it is, how it differs from SEO and what to do, step by step.
What GEO is
GEO is the set of actions that make generative AI models —ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot or Google AI Overviews— know your brand, describe it with the right facts and recommend it when someone asks about what you sell.
Assistants build their answers from two sources: what they learned during training and what they look up on the web in real time. GEO works on both.
GEO vs SEO: what they share and what they don’t
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page in a list of results | Get the AI to use your information to build its answer |
| Unit | The page | The brand as an entity (who you are, what you do, where, for whom) |
| Key signals | Links, content, technical performance | Data consistency, mentions in trusted sources, clear answers to specific questions |
| How it’s measured | Rankings and clicks | Presence and accuracy in assistants’ answers |
They don’t compete: GEO stands on solid technical SEO. A slow, poorly structured website with unclear data is hard to understand for Google and for an AI alike.
7 steps to make AI know you
1. Define your brand entity and keep it consistent
Name, activity, location, service area, founding year, contact details and services must be identical on your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, industry directories and social media. Contradictions (two addresses, two different descriptions) erode trust.
2. Add structured data to your website
schema.org markup tells machines what each thing is: Organization for the company, Service for each service, FAQPage for frequently asked questions, Article for articles and BreadcrumbList for navigation. It is the native language of search engines and assistants.
3. Write to answer questions, not to fill pages
Think of the exact questions customers ask before buying and answer them on your site in clear, self-contained sentences: what it is, roughly what it costs, how long it takes, who it’s for, how options differ. AI cites what it can extract without ambiguity.
4. Publish content with your own data
Cases with real numbers, guides with a concrete method, honest comparisons. Generic content —the kind any AI could write— adds nothing new to the model and is rarely cited. What only you know is what makes you citable.
5. Earn mentions in trusted sources
Trade press, associations, quality directories, interviews, partnerships. Assistants cross-check what your website says against what others say about you.
6. Look after reviews and your Google Business Profile
For local and service searches, reviews and the Google profile weigh heavily in what AI says about you. Reply, ask happy customers for reviews and keep the profile complete.
7. Make it easy for AI crawlers
Allow the major assistants’ crawlers in your robots.txt if you want to appear in them, publish a sitemap and consider an llms.txt file: a plain-text summary of who you are and where your important content lives.
How to measure AI visibility
There is no “Search Console” for AI, so we measure it directly:
- We define a fixed set of questions a real customer would ask (by service, by area, by need).
- Every month we put them to several assistants.
- We record whether you appear, in which position and whether the information is correct.
- We compare against your competitors and the previous month.
That turns GEO from a hunch into one more number in the monthly report.
Common mistakes
- Assuming classic SEO is enough. It helps, but it doesn’t cover entity consistency or external mentions.
- Generating hundreds of unchecked AI articles. It’s content indistinguishable from the rest and may contain errors about your own company.
- Blocking every crawler out of fear. A legitimate choice, but with a cost: AI won’t be able to speak well of you.
- Not measuring. Without a fixed question panel, you won’t know whether you’re moving forward.
Summary
AI visibility doesn’t replace SEO: it extends it. Brands that tidy up their data today, publish content with their own information and measure their presence in assistants’ answers will gain an edge that latecomers will find hard to close.
At Ekualia we work on it within Full Control plans and as a standalone project: AI visibility.
Shall we talk about your brand?
Tell us what you sell and where you want to go. Within 48 hours we send you an assessment and the plan we recommend.
