GEO vs SEO: what changes for a local business

For a local business, very little changes. GEO (short for “generative engine optimization”) is the name given to getting ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI summaries to mention your site. Almost everything it demands is what SEO, the work of helping Google find and understand your page, already demanded. What changes is a handful of technical details, mostly who crawls your site, and the expectation: nobody, not even Google, can guarantee that you will be cited.

What each one is, without extra acronyms

SEO is the set of things you do so that a search engine can read your page, understand what it is about and show it when someone searches for something related. GEO, and its cousin AEO (“answer engine optimization”), is the same idea applied to assistants that reply with a composed text instead of a list of links.

Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI is direct: from Google Search’s perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO, because its AI features are rooted in the same core ranking and quality systems. If you are considering third-party “AEO” or “GEO” advice or services, it tells you to review its guidance on evaluating third-party SEO advice. We mention it because “GEO packages” are now sold as if they were a separate discipline, and for a local business they almost never are.

What doesn’t change

Google’s documentation on its AI Overviews and AI Mode says three things worth keeping at hand:

• There are no additional requirements. No special optimization is needed to appear there.
• You don’t need new files or markup. No AI text files and no special markup. There is also no schema.org structured data made specifically for those features.
• Your page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Meeting that doesn’t guarantee you will appear.

That includes the file called llms.txt: Google says Google Search itself doesn’t use such files, so having one or not having one doesn’t change your visibility on Google. It adds that creating one for other services is fine and will neither harm nor help your visibility in Google Search. Other services may read it, but that is a different topic, which we cover in a separate article.

For a business with a physical location, the part of Google that weighs most is still the usual one. Google explains that local results are mainly based on three factors: relevance (how well your Business Profile matches what someone is searching for), distance, and prominence (how well-known you are; reviews and links from other websites count). And it makes clear that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking.

What does change

There are three real differences between thinking only about classic Google and also thinking about AI assistants.

1. Each service sends its own crawler

A crawler is the program that visits your site to read it. OpenAI uses one for ChatGPT search (OAI-SearchBot) and a different one to train its models (GPTBot). Its documentation says that disallowing GPTBot indicates your content should not be used for training, while sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers (at most, they can appear as a navigational link). Perplexity also separates its own: PerplexityBot is meant to surface and link websites in its results, and according to its documentation it is not used to crawl content for AI foundation models.

The practical consequence is that blocking “all AI bots” with a single rule can take you out of search answers without you noticing. If a plugin or a provider set up your robots.txt file (the note your site leaves for crawlers), it is worth opening it and reading it.

2. One question becomes several searches

Google documents that its AI features may use what it calls “query fan-out”: issuing multiple related searches across subtopics while building the response, which is why they show a wider set of links. Our reading, which is judgment and not a Google fact: a page that answers your customer’s concrete questions head-on (how much it costs, what time you open, how to get there, what is included) has more doors in than one that only says “quality and commitment”.

3. AI answers don’t always appear

According to Google, AI Overviews are only shown when its systems determine they are additive to classic Search, so many queries don’t show them. Your usual traffic still comes from the normal results. Planning only for AI would be betting on a door that sometimes doesn’t even open.

What to do for a local business, in this order

• Make sure Google can index your page. Search Console tells you whether it sees it and how many of your pages are indexed.
• Make sure your details match everywhere. Name, address, phone number and hours identical on your page and on your Google listing.
• Make sure the hidden profile is complete. It is the markup that tells machines what business you are. Google states that it guarantees no special feature, but it is clear information that you give away empty if you leave it out.
• Make sure your robots.txt doesn’t block the search crawlers. The training ones are a separate decision, and it is yours.
• Make sure the text answers real questions, written as text and not only inside images or PDFs.
• Make sure there are real reviews. They are part of the prominence that Google says it measures for local results.

What nobody can promise you

Google says it plainly: meeting the requirements doesn’t guarantee it will crawl, index or serve your page, and for local results there is no way to pay for a better position. So be wary of anyone who assures you that you will appear in ChatGPT if you hire a service. What is in your hands is not getting in your own way (blocked crawlers, contradictory details, text hidden in images) and giving clear, verifiable information.

In short

GEO is not a new discipline for your business: it is SEO with a few more crawlers to check. Get the basics right, don’t block the ones who need to read you and measure instead of assuming. If someone sells you a shortcut, ask for the source.