AI Overview and GEO: How to Get Your Business Into AI Answers (ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity)

Your potential customer no longer types "marketing agency Rybnik" into Google. They ask ChatGPT: "Which agency should I choose to run my online store?" and get a ready-made answer with specific recommendations - or they see an AI Overview right in Google's results, with no need to click on anything. If your business isn't in it, for a growing share of people it simply doesn't exist. That's exactly what GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, deals with - optimizing for answers generated by AI.

Want to know more? Watch our episodes on SEO in the age of AI

We cover GEO and AI-answer visibility in more depth across two episodes of our podcast, "Biznes w Internecie". In the first, we explain what has actually changed about SEO since AI Overview rolled out in Poland, and why the old approach to keywords is no longer enough. In the second, we go deeper - how to get AI to treat your business as an expert, how to write content built for citations, and where to start today.

SEO in the age of AI, part I - How does SEO work today? What's changing?

SEO in the age of AI, part II - How do you get AI to cite your business?

Something has changed in how customers find you

Since March 2025, AI Overview has been active by default in Poland for all Google users. On top of that, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini are used daily by millions of people in Poland. The result is simple: users are moving away from short phrases. Instead of "running shoes", they now ask: "What running shoes should I get for asphalt at 90 kg and a budget of up to 400 PLN?" - and get a ready-made, synthesized answer, often without needing to click any link at all.

The industry has coined a term for this: the "great decoupling". Page impressions in Google stay flat or grow, but clicks drop. The data is no longer linear. The problem mainly affects sites optimized "the old-school way" - through unnatural keyword stuffing with no real value for the reader. For those who have been creating genuinely useful content for years, the shift is much gentler.

What is GEO, and how does it differ from SEO?

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) means optimizing content for AI language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity - so they cite your page as a source in their answers. The term comes from a 2023 study by researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi, the first to measure which content traits increase the chance of being cited by generative models.

In classic SEO, you're fighting for a spot in Google's top 10. In GEO, you're fighting to get an AI model to treat your content as the most credible source of truth for a given question.

	SEO	GEO
Goal	A high ranking in Google results	Being cited by AI models
What the algorithm evaluates	Keywords, links, technical structure	Quality, data, credibility, context
Success metric	Ranking, clicks, traffic	Citations, mentions, visibility in answers
Foundation	Domain authority, backlinks	E-E-A-T, expertise, data, consistency with other sources

One sentence matters above all: GEO doesn't replace SEO - SEO is its foundation. AI crawlers favor pages with authority in Google. A strong link profile and a high organic ranking correlate with visibility in AI answers. Done right, one supports the other.

How does AI decide what to cite?

A language model doesn't count keywords - it analyzes the quality of the content, its credibility, and whether other independent sources confirm the same information.

Every major AI model has its own crawler: GPTBot (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot - all indexing the web independently of Google. Whether your page gets cited depends on domain authority, the quality and uniqueness of your content, the presence of specific data, and how consistent it is with what other sites in the same subject area are saying.

How to get AI to cite your business - practical steps

A few concrete actions that improve visibility in both SEO and GEO at once.

Write for people, not for the algorithm

Content written for keywords has a lower chance of being cited by AI than content written with real value for the reader in mind. What actually works:

Start every section with a direct answer. Give the reader (and the AI) the answer in the first two sentences - don't bury it in the fifth paragraph.

Use specific data instead of generalities. "A 24% increase" is far more useful to AI than "a big increase". Numbers, percentages, and statistics with a cited source - that's exactly what AI "cuts out" and pulls into its answers.

Cite external sources. Industry reports, studies, and data from respected institutions make an article read like a credible piece of research, not a marketing text. This is part of the E-E-A-T principle (experience, expertise, authority, trust) - the goal is to become the priority source for a given topic.

Update old content. AI favors fresh information. Review your most important articles and add an update with a date.

Take care of the technical details - the ones AI actually checks

Before AI can cite your page, it first has to index it. A few technical issues can effectively prevent that.

Step 1: Check your robots.txt file

Go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt in your browser. You'll see a text file that tells crawlers what they can and can't scan. Look for entries like Disallow: / next to AI bots.

Key AI crawlers you shouldn't block:

• GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot - ChatGPT (OpenAI)
• ClaudeBot and Claude-SearchBot - Claude (Anthropic)
• PerplexityBot - Perplexity
• Google-Extended - Gemini and AI Overview

If you see these names with Disallow: / in your robots.txt, you're blocking them. Studies show that more than 70% of sites blocking AI bots do so unintentionally, often as a leftover from test-environment settings or overly aggressive security plugins.

A correct entry looks something like this:

User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
Disallow: /checkout/

The rule is simple: let AI bots into your public content, and only block admin panels and checkout flows.

Step 2: Check whether your content loads in HTML

Customer reviews and product reviews loaded dynamically via JavaScript are invisible to AI crawlers - they scan the page before scripts get a chance to run. The most important content needs to be available directly in the HTML code.

Step 3: Take care of your heading hierarchy

One H1, H2 sections, H3 subsections - a correct hierarchy helps AI understand the structure of your content and what matters most.

Step 4: Fix broken links

Broken links (404 errors) are a dead end for AI crawlers. The free tool brokenlinkcheck.com lets you check an entire domain for broken links in just a few minutes - just enter your site's address and wait for the report. This matters especially for stores with a large product catalog.

Step 5: Implement Schema.org structured data

Structured data is code that lets crawlers and AI models clearly understand what your content is - an article, a set of instructions, a company page, or a list of questions. Especially valuable for GEO:

• FAQPage - a list of questions and answers. AI pulls Q&A content directly and inserts it into its answers. This is one of the most effective GEO elements.
• Article / BlogPosting - with an author field, datePublished, and dateModified.
• HowTo - step-by-step instructions. Cited very often for "how to..." questions.
• LocalBusiness - for local businesses: address, phone number, hours.

Every blog page is worth equipping with at least BlogPosting markup including an author and dates, plus an FAQPage with 2-4 questions at the end of the article.

Build authority beyond your own website

The more external sources mention your brand in the right topical context, the more credible you become to AI models.

Links from partners and suppliers - topical connections (manufacturer to distributor, supplier to customer) carry real value. AI understands industry context and treats these connections as confirmation of expertise.

Presence in industry reports and roundups - being mentioned in an industry ranking or report is a strong signal of authority. It's also worth creating this kind of material yourself - a roundup or original data that other sites end up citing builds your brand as a primary source of information.

Mentions in media and industry outlets - expert commentary, interviews, guest articles. Local and niche outlets count here just as much as national ones.

How do you know if AI is already citing you?

You can check this without any paid tools - all you need is Google Search Console and a few minutes.

Open GSC and browse the "Search results" tab. Look for queries that read like full sentences - phrases like "what tool should I choose for email marketing automation on a Shoper store" indicate that AI Overview generated an answer for that query. If your page shows up next to them, it's likely being cited.

It's also worth tracking the relationship between impressions and clicks. If impressions hold steady or grow while clicks drop, that's a signal that AI is using your content without redirecting the user to your page. The user sees your brand, but gets the answer directly in the results.

For manual testing, type a few questions from your industry into ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and check which pages get cited. Those are your direct competitors in GEO.

GEO vs. SEO - does one rule out the other?

No. Good SEO is the foundation of good GEO. Google itself confirms this! Pages with authority in Google have a much better chance of being cited by AI. Content written purely for keywords needs a refresh - AI treats it as weaker. Value for the user is the criterion both fields share.

Not every user relies on AI - some will always prefer organic results. SEO and GEO are two visibility channels worth building in parallel. If the topic of search intent is new to you, it's worth starting there - understanding what your customers are actually looking for.

Where do you start today?

Three steps you can take this week - no agency, no budget required.

1. Check your robots.txt - go to yourdomain.com/robots.txt and make sure you're not blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended. If you are blocking them, that's probably the single biggest change you can make for your AI visibility. Takes 15 minutes.

2. Review Google Search Console - find queries that read like full sentences and questions. That's your roadmap of topics for creating or optimizing content for GEO.

3. Rewrite the intro of one article - start with a direct answer, add one specific figure or a piece of sourced data, update the date. Multiply that change across a dozen or so articles, and it makes a real difference.

FAQ - frequently asked questions about GEO

Does GEO replace SEO? No. GEO is an extension of SEO, not a replacement. SEO provides the domain authority that AI models factor in when choosing sources. The best results come from combining both approaches - a page optimized for Google has a much better chance of being cited by AI than one that doesn't even show up in Google at all.

Do I need to rewrite my entire site to be visible in AI? No. Start by checking robots.txt and reviewing your most important articles for structure and the presence of specific data. Many sites lose AI visibility for purely technical reasons - a misconfigured robots.txt file, missing structured data - that can be fixed without rewriting any content.

How do I check if ChatGPT is citing my page? Type a few questions from your industry into ChatGPT (with search enabled), Perplexity, and Gemini. Check which pages get cited in the answers. As a supplement, review GSC for queries that read like full sentences.

How long does it take before GEO results show up? GEO is still a fast-moving field, and the tools for measuring it are young. Technical changes (robots.txt, structured data) can show results relatively quickly - within a few weeks. Building authority and content quality is a long-term process, similar to classic SEO.

Can small businesses and local companies benefit from GEO too? Yes. In GEO, the biggest player doesn't always win - the one with the best content in a given niche does. A local business that's first in its region to implement GEO can get ahead of much bigger competitors.

If you want to know how your site measures up in terms of readiness for GEO and AI Overview, book a free consultation and we'll check it together.

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