What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?

GEO vs SEO

SEO helps a page rank in a list of ten blue links. GEO helps a business get named inside a single AI answer. They overlap — both need a fast, clear website — but GEO adds one thing: the facts AI needs must be stated plainly and in a form a machine can read.

How AI chooses local businesses

AI assistants build their answers from what they can read and trust. For a local business that usually means:

• Consistent basics — the same name, address and phone on the website and across the web.
• Structured data — LocalBusiness or Organization markup, opening hours, FAQ.
• Services and prices in text — not only in a PDF or an image.
• Service area — which city and districts the business covers.
• Access for AI crawlers — a robots.txt that does not block them.

A GEO checklist for a local business website

1. Name, address and phone in the page text and in the footer.
2. LocalBusiness markup with the same details.
3. A services page with plain-text prices or price ranges.
4. Opening hours as text and in markup.
5. An FAQ answering real customer questions.
6. robots.txt and sitemap.xml present; AI crawlers not blocked.
7. A clear page title and meta description on the homepage.

How to check whether AI recommends a business

Ask an AI assistant the question your customers would ask — "List the best [category] in [city]" — and see where the business appears. One answer is a snapshot: AI answers change from day to day, so repeated checks say more than one.

EBS24 does this at scale. Our GEO Agent asks AI about 51 categories in 33 cities and records who is named and in which position.

What we see in real AI answers

We ask AI assistants "List the 20 best [category] in [city]" every day for cities in the US, UK and Australia, and audit the website of every business they name.

• AI names about 20 businesses per answer — and the order changes. The same question asked again often gives a different list. One answer is noise; a ratio across several checks is a signal ("named in 1 of 3 checks, competitor — 3 of 3").
• AI makes mistakes about websites. In ~3,000 website checks, 22% failed because the domain AI gave for the business didn't exist.

What sets low-ranked businesses apart most is the lack of a working website. On 28 October we compared ~10,000 businesses in 699 city × category pairs: those AI named in its top 5 and those below 10th place.

Markup, phone and address differ by only 5–6 percentage points: most businesses in both groups lack them. Markup and phone were counted among the websites we could read.

For freelancers

Most local business owners have never asked an AI about their own city. When you show them "AI names these three competitors in every answer, and you in one of three", the problem is concrete and the fix is a service you can sell — whether you live in Kyiv, Manila or Manchester.

EBS24 finds these businesses for you: every lead shows where the business stands in AI answers vs competitors, what's missing on its website, contacts from its own site and a ready first email. The first lead is free.