Generative engine optimisation: how to get your business named by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

Ask ChatGPT for "a good interior designer in Hyderabad for a full flat" or "a web studio that works with Dubai businesses" and you will get names. Not ten blue links: three or four businesses, a sentence on each, sometimes a reason. If your business is one of them, the buyer arrives already half-persuaded. If it is not, you never knew there was a conversation.

Generative engine optimisation is the work of being one of those names, described accurately.

01What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making a business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot to recognise, describe correctly and recommend. It focuses on how the business is represented across its own website and the wider web, because assistants build their answers from both.

GEO sits next to answer engine optimisation. AEO asks "is my page the source quoted for this question?" GEO asks "when someone asks for a recommendation, does the assistant know who we are, what we do and where, and does it name us?" Our guide to AEO covers the first question; this piece covers the second.

Fig. 01Comparison

AEO and GEO side by side

AEO:

• Goal: your page is quoted as a source
• Trigger: an informational question
• Depends on: ranking pages with direct answers
• Measured by: citations and search impressions

GEO:

• Goal: your business is named and described correctly
• Trigger: a recommendation or comparison request
• Depends on: consistent identity and genuine mentions
• Measured by: presence and accuracy in assistant answers

02How do AI assistants decide which businesses to name?

Assistants combine what they learned in training with what they retrieve live from search indexes and their own crawlers. They tend to name businesses that appear repeatedly, consistently and specifically in relevant sources, and whose own pages confirm the details. Vague or contradictory information makes a business a riskier name to give.

It helps to think about it from the assistant's side. When a buyer asks for a recommendation, the assistant needs to be confident about three things: that the business exists and is current, that it does what the buyer asked for, and that it serves the place the buyer mentioned. Each of those has to be supported by something it can read. A business whose website says "digital solutions for growth", whose directory listing shows a different phone number and whose only other mention is a three-year-old article is hard to vouch for. A business whose site says plainly "website and search studio in Hyderabad working with schools and clinics", whose Google Business Profile, LinkedIn page and directory entries say the same, and which is mentioned in a local article or two, is easy to name. GEO is mostly the patient work of becoming the second business.

03What should your own website do for GEO?

Your website should state, in plain sentences that a crawler can read in the HTML, exactly what you do, for whom, where, and with what proof. It should use one consistent business name, list real services on their own pages, name the cities and regions you serve, and show real work and real people.

A practical list:

1. A plain description on the home page. One sentence that would make sense quoted alone: what you are, who you serve, where.
2. One page per core service, each opening with what the service is and who it is for. Our own services page is structured this way.
3. Location clarity. If you serve Hyderabad, Dubai and London, say so, and give each market a page with genuinely different content, not the same text with the city swapped.
4. Proof that can be checked. Named projects, links to live sites, a process. Our work pages list real projects with links rather than claims.
5. Structured data that matches. Organization with sameAs links to your real profiles, and LocalBusiness or a more specific type where it applies. See schema markup for service businesses.
6. Crawler access. Server-rendered content, and a robots.txt that lets the search crawlers you want, such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot, read the site.

04Why do mentions elsewhere matter so much?

Because an assistant trusts a business more when independent sources say the same thing about it. Your own website is one voice; directories, maps listings, industry associations, local press, partner sites and genuine reviews are others. Agreement between them is what turns a claim into something an assistant will repeat.

Fig. 02Stack

What an assistant reads before naming you

From the bottom layer up:

1. Your website: Plain description, service pages, locations, proof
2. Your listings: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, LinkedIn
3. Directories and associations: Industry and regional listings with the same details
4. Independent mentions: Local press, partners, reviews, community discussion

Two cautions. First, Google's guidance on its AI features is explicit that chasing inauthentic mentions across blogs, forums and videos is not the way; it tends to produce noise, and assistants are built to discount it. Second, listings drift. Microsoft's Copilot draws on Bing, so a claimed and accurate Bing Places listing matters alongside your Google Business Profile.

05What does GEO look like in India, the UAE and the UK?

The principles hold everywhere, but the sources assistants find differ by market. Each region has its own directories, maps habits, languages and press, and an assistant answering a question about Pune or Dubai will look for sources that mention those places specifically.

• India. Keep Google Business Profile, Justdial, Sulekha and industry-specific directories consistent, and make sure the city and neighbourhood are stated on your site. For Hyderabad specifics, see local SEO in Hyderabad.
• UAE. Show whether you are mainland or free zone, list your emirate and area, and consider an Arabic description of the business alongside the English one. Business directories and chamber listings help confirm you are established locally.
• UK. Keep your registered company name consistent with what customers see, claim the maps listings, and get listed by relevant trade bodies. Buyers and assistants alike look for the same reassurance.

If you serve more than one of these markets, structure matters too. Our guide to international SEO for India, the UAE and the UK explains how.

06What mistakes keep a business out of AI recommendations?

The common mistakes are vagueness, inconsistency and invisibility. A home page that never says plainly what the business does, details that differ between the site and its listings, and content that only appears after JavaScript runs all make a business harder for an assistant to describe with confidence, so it names someone easier to describe.

Other patterns we see often:

• Brand language instead of plain language. "We craft digital experiences" tells an assistant nothing. "We build websites for schools and clinics in Hyderabad" tells it three useful things.
• Old pages left live. A service you stopped offering in 2022 is still a service as far as a crawler knows.
• Every location on one page. A footer list of twenty cities is not evidence you serve any of them.
• Proof hidden in PDFs and images. Case studies inside image carousels or downloadable brochures are hard for crawlers to read. Put the key facts in the page text.

07How do you measure GEO?

Write a fixed list of recommendation prompts, such as "best school website designers in Hyderabad", and run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot each month. Record whether you are named, how you are described and which sources are cited. Then fix the inaccuracies at their source.

Keep the prompts stable and the record honest. Answers vary between runs, so look for patterns over months rather than reacting to a single answer. Combine this with Search Console data and a "how did you find us" field on every enquiry. That last field is often the clearest sign: when buyers start writing "ChatGPT suggested you", the work is showing up where it counts.

Our own studio pages, from the studio to individual case studies such as LaEspace, are written so that each one states what was built, for whom and where, in sentences that make sense on their own.

08What to do next

Ask three AI assistants to recommend a business like yours in your city. Write down who they name and how they describe each one. Then search for your own business by name and note every place the details disagree: name, services, address, phone. Fix your website first, then your listings. If you want a structured version of this with a monthly record, book a call.