What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?

GEO in one sentence

GEO is optimising for the assistants people now ask instead of, or alongside, a search engine: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Google's AI Overviews. When someone asks one of these for the best plumber in their town or which accountant to trust, GEO is what decides whether your business is named.

The interface has changed, and that is why it matters. A search engine returns ten links and lets the user choose. An assistant returns one answer, sometimes with two or three named options. Being on page one is no longer the goal. Being the answer is.

How AI assistants decide who to cite

Assistants draw on two things: what they learned during training, and what they retrieve live from the web at the moment of the question.

From training data, the model has read a large slice of the public web. A business that is described clearly and consistently across many sources is easier for it to recall and to trust.

From live retrieval, many assistants also search the web in real time and quote what they find. Here, structured content that answers the exact question wins, because the assistant can lift a clean answer straight from the page.

The common threads are the same either way: a clear description of who you are and what you do, consistent business details everywhere they appear, content structured so a machine can parse it, and third-party mentions that corroborate you.

How GEO differs from SEO

GEO and SEO overlap heavily. Both reward clear content, a fast and crawlable site, and a credible reputation. Most good SEO is also good GEO.

The differences are in the target. SEO optimises for a ranked list of links and the clicks they earn. GEO optimises for being named inside a single generated answer, often with no click at all. SEO leans on keywords and backlinks; GEO leans on being an unambiguous, well-described entity that many independent sources agree on. And GEO spans more surfaces than one search engine: every major assistant, each with its own sources.

What makes a business easy for AI to cite

Describe your business plainly. Say what you do, where, and for whom, in the words a customer would use rather than industry jargon.

Keep your details consistent. The same business name, address, phone number, and services across your site, your Google Business Profile, and directories. Contradictions make an assistant hedge or skip you.

Structure your content. Use real headings, answer common questions directly, and add FAQ and organisation schema so machines can read the page, not just display it.

Earn third-party mentions. Reviews, local directories, and articles that name you give an assistant corroboration it trusts more than your own site alone.

Answer the question first. Assistants quote content that states the answer up front and then explains. Bury the answer three paragraphs down and it gets passed over.

Why local service businesses should care

People increasingly ask an assistant the questions they used to type into a search bar: who is good, who is nearby, who can be trusted. For a local service business, being the name an assistant returns is the modern equivalent of ranking first.

The businesses that win here are rarely the biggest. They are the ones that are clearly described, consistently listed, and easy for a machine to summarise. That is within reach of any business willing to tidy up how it presents itself.

How to measure your AI visibility

You cannot improve what you cannot see. The first step is to find out how ready your business is to be found and cited, and where the gaps are.

Bump helps you measure it. A free scan checks the signals that determine whether search engines and AI assistants can find, understand, and cite your business: your technical foundation, content, structured data, local readiness, and reputation. It scores them into a single Bump Score and lists the specific fixes, with no account needed. The live check of whether each assistant actually names you runs on the paid tiers.

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO the same as SEO?

No, but they overlap. SEO optimises for ranking in a list of search links; GEO optimises for being named inside an AI assistant's generated answer. Most good SEO helps your GEO, but GEO also depends on being a clearly described, consistently listed entity that assistants can summarise and trust.

Which AI assistants matter for GEO?

The ones people actually ask for recommendations: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Grok, and Google's AI Overviews. Each draws on its own mix of training data and live web results, so being clearly described and consistently listed helps across all of them.

How do I know if AI assistants can find my business?

Ask them. Put your business and a question a customer would ask into each assistant and see whether you are named and described correctly. A free Bump scan checks the readiness signals that make you easy to find and cite and scores them into a Bump Score with the gaps to fix. Checking whether each assistant actually names you, and how you compare with competitors, runs on the paid tiers.

Can I improve my GEO without a developer?

Much of it, yes. Clear descriptions, consistent business details across your site and directories, direct answers to common questions, and earning reviews are all non-technical. Schema markup is the one piece that usually needs a developer or a tool that adds it for you.

How is a Bump Score related to GEO?

A Bump Score measures how ready your business is to be found and cited, across the signals that search engines and AI assistants weigh, and turns it into a single number with the specific gaps behind it. GEO is the work of improving it; the Bump Score is how you measure whether that work is landing.