How AI decides who to recommend
Mentions on other websites
Before anything can recommend you it needs to have seen you referred to somewhere other than your own website. Directory entries, local listicles, a mention in a community page. That's what puts you in the set it chooses from.
Details that match everywhere
These tools lean heavily on whether your details line up across the web. Same business name, same phone number, same address, recent reviews. Contradictions make you a risky answer.
Plain wording on your site
If your site says "solutions for the modern home" instead of "we fix hot water systems in Kingscliff", it has nothing solid to work with. Plain wording beats clever wording every time here.
Your own pages get quoted
Once you're in the shortlist, the description usually comes from your own pages. That's why the wording on your site matters twice: once to get considered, once to be described properly.
The honest limits
No guarantees
These systems are opaque and they don't give the same answer twice. Anyone promising you a fixed spot in ChatGPT is guessing or lying. What can be done is measured: change something specific, ask the question again a week later, see whether the answer moved.
Almost no one is competing here yet
I've looked at a lot of local businesses around here and almost none of them have done any of this. That won't last, but right now the bar is genuinely low, and the work overlaps with the Google side so nothing is wasted.
What it costs
Packages from $199 a week
The AI side is usually folded in with the local SEO work rather than billed separately, because it's largely the same jobs done with both in mind.
Read more about packages and pricingQuestions about AI search
How do I check whether ChatGPT mentions my business?
Ask it the way a customer would. Not "tell me about my business", which prompts it to search for you, but something like "who's a good electrician near Kingscliff?" If you're not in the answer, you're not in the set it draws from.
Is AI search different from ordinary SEO?
It overlaps but it isn't the same. Google ranks pages. The AI tools pick a handful of businesses they're confident exist, then read those businesses' own websites to describe them. So being mentioned in enough places to be considered matters as much as your own site.
Do reviews actually change what the AI says?
From what I've seen, yes, but indirectly. Reviews are one of the ways these tools confirm you're a real operating business rather than a dead listing. A business with 40 recent reviews is a safer recommendation than one with two from 2019.
What does GEO mean?
Generative engine optimisation. It's the term people have settled on for getting recommended inside AI answers rather than ranked in a list of links. Same underlying work, newer name.