Generative Engine Optimisation is the difference between showing up when someone asks ChatGPT for a local business - and not. Here's what to do.
Five years ago, 'getting found online' meant ranking on Google. Today, a meaningful slice of your potential customers never see a search results page. They ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Claude, and they trust whatever short answer comes back.
GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation - is the discipline of making sure your business is one of the sources those engines reach for when a local question is asked. It's not a replacement for SEO. It's the next layer on top.
What actually changes
Traditional SEO rewards pages that match a query. GEO rewards information that an answer engine can confidently quote. That means clear, factual statements about who you are, where you are, what you do, who you do it for, and what it costs.
- Plain-English service descriptions, not marketing waffle.
- Real addresses, opening hours, suburbs served - in machine-readable schema.
- Pricing transparency wherever possible.
- Citations from sources the engines already trust (local press, directories, professional bodies).
What to do this quarter
Start by auditing the answers. Ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview the questions your customers ask: 'best vet in Newtown', 'emergency plumber Glenelg', 'pharmacy open late near me'. Note which businesses get named. If you're not one of them, that's your gap.
Then make your site genuinely useful to a machine reader. Short paragraphs. Real facts. Structured data. The same things that make it useful to a human - just done with discipline.
If a customer can't get a straight answer from your homepage in 10 seconds, neither can ChatGPT.
GEO isn't magic. It's the same boring fundamentals - clarity, accuracy, authority - applied to a new audience of readers who happen to be language models. Get the fundamentals right and you'll show up in both worlds.
