The question that matters now
Open ChatGPT or Perplexity and type: "best [your business type] in [your town]."
Is your business in the answer?
If it isn't, you're invisible to a growing share of your potential customers. We've covered what GEO is and why it matters in a previous article. This one is about what you can actually do about it.
Some of these steps are straightforward. Some take time. And some factors are honestly outside your control - we'll be upfront about those too.
What you can control
1. Make your website say what you do, clearly and specifically
AI assistants extract facts from your website. They're looking for concrete information they can cite in an answer: what you offer, where you are, what it costs, when you're open.
Compare these two descriptions:
"Experience our unique culinary journey in the heart of the winelands."
"A seasonal lunch menu using locally sourced produce, served Wednesday to Sunday from 12pm to 3pm. Main courses from R180. Vegetarian and children's options available."
The first one sounds nice to a human but gives an AI nothing to work with. The second gives it five citable facts. When someone asks "restaurants near Franschhoek open on Sundays with a kids' menu", the second description answers three of those criteria directly.
Go through your website's key pages and ask yourself: if an AI could only read this page, would it know what we do, where we are, and what makes us worth visiting? If the answer is no, rewrite until it does.
2. Add structured data to your website
Structured data (Schema.org markup) is code embedded in your website that tells search engines exactly what your business is. It's not visible to visitors - it's metadata that AI and search engines read behind the scenes.
For a restaurant, this includes your name, address, cuisine type, price range, opening hours, and reservation links. For a guesthouse, it's your star rating, room types, amenities, and check-in times. For a service business, it's your location, service offerings, and contact details.
This is a technical job - your developer adds it once and it doesn't need regular updating unless your details change. If you're not sure whether your site has structured data, ask your developer or use Google's Rich Results Test to check.
3. Claim and maintain your Google Business Profile
Your Google Business Profile is one of the most important signals for AI visibility, particularly for Google's own AI Overviews. Make sure it's claimed, verified, and accurate.
The basics that matter most:
- Correct business name, address, and phone number (matching your website exactly)
- Accurate opening hours, including public holidays
- The right primary category (Google offers hundreds - pick the most specific one)
- Recent photos (not stock images)
- A complete business description
Keep it current. An outdated profile with wrong hours or an old phone number doesn't just frustrate customers - it tells AI systems that your information might not be reliable.
4. Get mentioned on legitimate third-party sites
AI assistants cross-reference multiple sources before citing a business. If you're mentioned on your own website, a few review platforms, the local tourism board, and a food blog, the AI has more confidence recommending you than if your only presence is a single website.
The key word is "legitimate". These mentions need to be real:
- Tourism board listings (Wesgro, local tourism offices)
- Industry directories (Wine Routes, Eat Out, Accommodation.co.za)
- Review platforms (Google Reviews, TripAdvisor)
- Local media and blogs (if they've written about you)
- Supplier or partner websites that link to you
Don't manufacture mentions. Google's AI documentation specifically warns against inauthentic citations, and AI tools that crawl independently are getting better at spotting them too.
5. Add an llms.txt file
We covered this in detail last week. In short: an llms.txt file is a structured summary of your business placed at the root of your website. It tells AI assistants who you are, what you offer, and which pages matter - instead of making them figure it out from your navigation menu and footer.
It takes thirty minutes to write and your developer five minutes to deploy. For a small business competing for AI citations against larger competitors with more online presence, it's one of the most efficient things you can do.
6. Keep your content current and genuinely useful
AI tools are more likely to cite content that's recent and factual. A blog post from 2022 about your seasonal menu is worse than useless if the menu has changed three times since then.
This doesn't mean you need to blog constantly. It means:
- Your core pages (services, menu, pricing, hours) should reflect reality
- If you publish articles, they should contain information a visitor actually needs - not keyword-stuffed filler
- When something changes, update it. AI tools re-crawl sites periodically and stale information erodes your credibility
Google's own guidance emphasises "unique, non-commodity content" - information that an AI couldn't generate itself. First-hand expertise, real opinions, local knowledge, specific details. A restaurant owner writing honestly about which local suppliers they use and why is far more valuable than a generic article about "the benefits of eating out."
7. Don't block AI crawlers in your robots.txt
Some websites inadvertently block AI crawlers. Check your robots.txt file (at yourwebsite.com/robots.txt) for rules that disallow access to GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended, or ClaudeBot.
If these are blocked, AI tools can't read your website at all - which means they can't recommend you. Unless you have a specific reason to block them (and for most small businesses, there isn't one), remove those restrictions.
What you can partially influence
Reviews and reputation
AI assistants factor in your online reputation when deciding whether to recommend you. More positive reviews across multiple platforms generally help. But you can't control what people write, and you shouldn't fake it.
What you can do: ask satisfied customers to leave a review. Respond to negative reviews professionally. Make the experience worth reviewing in the first place.
Competitor landscape
If there are fifteen excellent restaurants in your town and an AI is asked for "the best three", not everyone can make the list. This isn't a failure on your part - it's a function of competition and the AI's judgment about what to surface.
You can improve your chances by being more specific in your positioning. "Fine dining restaurant" competes with everyone. "Farm-to-table restaurant with a children's play area and Sunday roast" competes with far fewer businesses and matches more specific queries.
What you honestly can't control
How the AI weighs its sources. Each AI system has its own ranking logic, and none of them publish exactly how it works. You can improve your inputs, but you can't guarantee the output.
Whether the AI gets it right. AI assistants sometimes present incorrect information - wrong hours, outdated menus, confused locations. You can reduce this by making your correct information clear and consistent, but you can't prevent it entirely.
Algorithm changes. Just like Google updates its search algorithm, AI tools update their models and search methods regularly. What works today might weight differently in six months.
This is worth saying plainly because the GEO industry is full of people promising guaranteed AI rankings. Nobody can guarantee that. What you can do is make it as easy as possible for AI to find, understand, and accurately cite your business. The rest is probability, not certainty.
Where to start
If you're overwhelmed by the list above, start with these three things:
- Rewrite your homepage to state facts clearly - what you do, where you are, why someone should visit
- Claim or update your Google Business Profile - accurate hours, categories, photos
- Add an llms.txt file - a thirty-minute task that gives AI a structured summary of your business
These three steps cost nothing (or close to it) and address the most common reasons businesses are invisible to AI search.
If you'd like to know where you stand right now - which AI assistants mention your business and which don't - get in touch. We can run a check and give you a clear picture of your AI visibility, with specific recommendations for what to fix first.