A growing share of the research that used to happen entirely on Google now happens, at least partly, in AI chat tools and AI-generated search summaries. Someone asks ChatGPT "who's a good family dentist near downtown," or Google's AI Overview synthesizes an answer to "best emergency electrician in [city]" before a single traditional search result even loads. If your business isn't part of the source material those systems draw from, you're invisible in a growing slice of how people find local services — regardless of how well you rank in traditional search.
That's what "AI SEO" or "GEO" (generative engine optimization) is about: making sure AI systems have accurate, citable, favorable information about your business to draw on when they generate an answer.
How this is different from traditional SEO
Traditional SEO optimizes for ranking algorithms that crawl and score individual pages. AI systems work differently — they synthesize an answer from multiple sources (your website, review platforms, directories, local news, forum mentions) and generate a response, sometimes citing sources and sometimes not. A few practical implications:
- You're not just optimizing your own site. What Google Business Profile, Yelp, industry directories, and third-party review sites say about you matters as much as your own website content, because AI systems draw from all of it.
- Being quotable matters more than being keyword-dense. AI systems tend to pull clear, factual, well-structured statements ("ABC Dental offers same-day emergency appointments and accepts most PPO insurance plans") rather than marketing copy that's vague or overly promotional.
- Recency and consistency matter. Conflicting information across sources (different hours listed on your website vs. Google profile, for example) makes it harder for an AI system to confidently cite you, and it may default to a competitor whose information is cleaner.
What actually helps
Structured, factual content on your own site. Clear service descriptions, FAQ sections written in a natural question-and-answer format, and specific details (accepted insurance, service area, credentials, years in business) give AI systems concrete material to draw from and cite.
Schema markup. Structured data (LocalBusiness, Service, FAQPage schema) explicitly tells both search engines and AI crawlers what your content means, rather than making them infer it from unstructured text.
A strong, consistent review presence. AI-generated recommendations lean heavily on review sentiment and volume as a trust signal, similar to how they influence traditional local pack rankings. Consistent, recent, detailed reviews (not just star ratings — actual text mentioning specifics) give AI systems more to work with.
Genuine topical authority. Publishing real, useful content about the problems your customers actually have (not just service pages, but guides and answers to common questions) signals to AI systems that you're a credible source to cite on the topic, not just a business that exists.
Consistency across every platform that mentions you. Since AI systems synthesize from multiple sources, mismatched business hours, addresses, or service details across your website, Google profile, and directories create the kind of ambiguity that makes systems less likely to confidently recommend you.
What doesn't help (yet)
There's no reliable way to directly "submit" your business to an AI model's training data or force a specific citation, the way you might request indexing in traditional search. GEO right now is less about gaming a specific system and more about making your business's information exceptionally clear, consistent, and well-documented everywhere it appears — which happens to be good practice regardless of whether AI search ever accounts for 5% or 50% of how people find you.
Where to start
If you're doing traditional local SEO well already (a complete Google Business Profile, consistent citations, real reviews, clear service pages), you have most of the foundation in place. The incremental work is making your content more explicitly factual and structured, adding schema markup, and auditing for consistency across every platform that mentions your business — not a wholesale change in strategy.