Something has shifted in the last couple of years. Plenty of people now type a question into ChatGPT, or read Google’s AI summary at the top of the page, and never scroll to the results underneath. They ask for a recommendation and take the answer. If your business isn’t part of that answer, you’re invisible to those people, however well you rank in the traditional listings.
Generative engine optimisation is the work of giving your business a fair chance of being named. Here’s what that honestly involves.
First, the honest bit
Nobody can guarantee an AI tool will recommend you. There’s no dashboard, no submission form and no way to pay your way in. Anyone promising otherwise is either guessing or hoping you won’t check.
And it’s not really a separate discipline. Google’s own published guidance is blunt about this: optimising for AI search is still SEO, and the fashionable labels are largely new names for existing work. A lot of what’s sold as premium “GEO” is ordinary good practice with a bigger invoice attached.
So what’s left that’s actually real? Quite a lot, as it happens, it’s just less exciting than the marketing suggests.
What genuinely helps
Being readable to the machines. AI crawlers don’t run JavaScript the way a browser does. If your content only appears after scripts load, there’s a good chance those tools simply never see it. Sites built the way I build them, plain, fast, server-rendered pages, are readable by default. If yours was built on a heavy page-builder, that’s worth checking.
Letting them in at all. There’s a file on every website telling crawlers what they may look at. Plenty of sites quietly block the AI crawlers without ever deciding to. It takes minutes to check and fix.
Answering questions properly. These tools quote passages that stand on their own, a clear, specific answer to a real question, near the top of the page, that makes sense lifted out of context. Vague marketing waffle doesn’t get quoted. A straight answer to “how much does a boiler service cost in St Helens” might.
Structure it can follow. Sensible headings, short paragraphs, proper lists and tables, and a real FAQ section. All the things that make a page easier for a person also make it easier for a machine to pull an answer from.
Telling it who you are. Structured data, the invisible labelling that says “this is a business, here’s where it is, here’s what it charges, here’s who runs it”, helps these systems understand your business as a thing rather than a page of text. Every site I build has it as standard.
Being mentioned, not just linked. This is the genuine difference from classic SEO. Where traditional rankings lean heavily on links, AI tools appear to lean on being talked about, in reviews, on social platforms, in local press, on forums, anywhere real people mention you. Which means the unglamorous work of getting reviews and being present locally matters more here than link-chasing does.
Being current. Fresher content gets quoted more often than something last touched three years ago. Keeping key pages genuinely up to date is one of the more reliable things you can do.
What I’d actually do for you
I’d start by checking the boring things: whether AI crawlers can reach your site, whether your content is visible without JavaScript, whether your business details are consistent everywhere, and whether your structured data says what it should.
Then the content: taking the questions your customers really ask and answering them clearly and specifically, near the top of the page, in language a machine can lift. Not keyword stuffing, genuinely useful answers, which is the same thing that persuades a human.
Then the ongoing part: reviews, local mentions and keeping things current. This overlaps almost entirely with local SEO, which is why I don’t sell it as a separate product with a separate fee.
Who this is and isn’t for
If your Google Business Profile is half-finished and you’ve got a handful of reviews, don’t start here. Fixing your Google listing and getting more reviews will bring you more work, sooner, for less money. I’d rather tell you that than take the money.
Where this earns its place is when the basics are already solid and you want to stay ahead, or you’re in a field where people genuinely do ask an AI for advice before they ask a human. Consultants, clinics, trades with a research-heavy purchase, anyone whose customers Google things at length before they call.
How it fits with everything else
This isn’t a bolt-on. It’s part of the ongoing SEO work, on the same monthly options from £99/mo, because separating them would mean charging you twice for overlapping effort. If you’d like to know where you stand before committing to anything, an honest audit will tell you, including if the answer is “you don’t need this yet”.
That’s the whole pitch: no jargon, no promises nobody can keep, and a straight answer about whether it’s worth your money right now.