AI SEO for small businesses: how to get found in AI search

Before you start

For a small business, the aim might be to have its service mentioned, a useful page linked, or its details described correctly. Those are different things to check. A mention on its own does not tell you whether someone visited your website or contacted you.

You can start by checking what an AI answer says about your business and comparing it with your own pages. You do not need to change website settings to do that first check.

What is GEO, or generative engine optimisation?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It describes work to improve how content appears in answers written by generative AI, meaning AI that produces an answer from the information it uses. The term was introduced in the GEO research paper.

You may also see AEO, short for answer engine optimisation. People use this for work aimed at appearing in direct answers, including AI answers. The labels overlap. When buying help, ask which pages, checks and changes are included, rather than choosing a package because of its acronym.

In this guide, AI SEO means work on visibility in AI search. It does not mean using AI to write large numbers of articles.

AI SEO vs traditional SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimisation: work that helps search engines understand your pages and helps people find your website through search. Google's SEO starter guide explains the basics.

AI search adds another place to look for your business. Alongside checking whether a page appears in a list of results, you can check whether an answer mentions your business, links to your page or gets a fact right.

Google says its normal SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode, its features that produce answers within Google Search. Its AI search guidance does not prescribe a separate set of AI-only pages.

Keep your existing service pages useful. If Google cannot find one of them, start with the guide to a website not showing on Google.

How to get your business found on ChatGPT

OpenAI says a public website can be eligible for ChatGPT search when its search crawler can access it. A crawler is a program that visits web pages to read them. OpenAI's search crawler is called OAI-SearchBot. Access is a condition to check, rather than a promise that your page will appear. OpenAI's search guidance explains this.

Start with a question a customer might ask about your business, and use the tool's web-search option where available. Open any source links in the answer. A citation is a link identifying a source used for the answer. Check that the linked page supports what the answer says.

If your website appears to be blocked, ask your developer to check the search crawler's access. Two places they may need to inspect are robots.txt, a file containing crawler instructions, and the website's security settings. Do not switch off security protections as a general fix.

Search access and AI training are separate controls. Training means using material to help develop an AI model. OpenAI documents separate controls for its search crawler and its training crawler, GPTBot. You can discuss the purpose of each setting with your developer before changing anything. Read OpenAI's crawler documentation.

What to check for Google AI Overviews and Perplexity

For Google's AI search features, check that the page can be found and read, is in Google's searchable list, and is eligible to appear with a short search preview. Being in that list is called indexing. There is also a setting for inclusion in Google's AI search features. Your developer can check the relevant access and inclusion settings; meeting the requirements does not guarantee an appearance.

Perplexity has its own search crawler, PerplexityBot. Its official crawler guide describes access through robots.txt and website security settings. A setting checked for one service does not prove that every AI search tool can read your site.

For an owner, the useful question is: can the relevant search service reach the page that answers my customer's question? You can ask your developer for the page address, what they checked and what they found.

Improve the information a customer needs

Choose one service page and read it without relying on what you already know about the business. Can a new customer work out:

• What you do, and which jobs the service covers?
• Who it is for and where you provide it?
• What is included, what costs extra and how to get a price?
• Who does the work and what happens after an enquiry?
• What real work or evidence they can look at before deciding?

Use the service names your customers use. Keywords are the words and phrases people search for. Put the relevant words in a descriptive page title and heading, then answer the question. Repeating a phrase in every paragraph makes the page harder to read. Google's spam policies describe excessive, unnatural repetition as keyword stuffing.

Check prices, service areas and conditions across your site and the business profiles you manage. If you find conflicting information, correct it at the source. An AI answer may still be wrong or use older information, so correcting a page is not proof that every answer has changed.

Give readers something they can verify. That could be a project with the actual work explained, photographs you have permission to use, or research with its method and limits included. Google's helpful-content guidance encourages original information and clear evidence of who produced it.

On this site, the study of 30 plumbing and heating websites includes the sample, checks and limitations. It shows readers how the findings were reached. I am not presenting it as proof that those pages are cited in AI answers.

A small check you can repeat

Pick three questions you want a potential customer to get an accurate answer to. Use your real business name and service in place of the brackets:

These are suggested checks, not findings from a test of your business. Save the question, answer, source links, tool and date. Note whether web search was used. Try the same questions again later; one answer is a snapshot, not a reliable score for your whole website.

If an answer is wrong, open its sources before editing your site. The error may come from an old page, another website or an unsupported statement in the answer. Record what you can establish rather than guessing which change will fix it.

How to measure AI search visibility

Keep four outcomes separate: your business being mentioned, a page being cited, someone visiting the website, and someone making an enquiry. A citation can use information from your page without recommending your business.

Google Search Console is a free tool for checking how your website appears in Google. Its Generative AI performance report shows appearances of website links in supported AI search features; the report may not appear when there is too little activity. Bing Webmaster Tools, Microsoft's free website-owner tool, has an AI Performance report covering citations across its supported experiences. Neither is a complete report of every AI answer everywhere. Google report guidance, Bing report guidance.

Website visit reports can also help identify visits arriving from other sites, known as referrals, when that information is available. Check enquiries separately. Someone clicking an AI source link has not necessarily asked for a quote.

Questions about AI SEO

Do I need llms.txt or special AI code?

Google says you do not need new AI text files or separate versions of your pages for its search features. The llms.txt proposal describes a file pointing AI tools towards website information. It is not a guaranteed route into AI answers. Discuss any extra files as a specific task, with a clear purpose.

Does structured data make AI recommend my business?

Structured data is information in your website's code that labels details for search engines, such as an article's author. It can help explain a page, but it does not secure an AI recommendation. Any labels should match what visitors can read. Google's introduction to structured data explains its use in search.

Can someone guarantee an AI ranking?

Ask which tool, question and result they mean. A business mention, a source link and a recommendation are different outcomes. OpenAI explicitly says placement in ChatGPT search is not guaranteed. I do not promise a position or a number of AI citations.