AI Search
People are starting to ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for a recommendation instead of typing a search and scrolling through links. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the practice of making sure your business is the one those systems actually mention.
Traditional SEO earns you a spot in a ranked list of links that a person clicks through themselves. GEO earns you a mention inside the answer itself, before a person ever sees a list of options. The two share the same foundation of local signals and site authority, but the content built around them is structured differently, aimed at being extracted and repeated accurately rather than just read top to bottom.
This is genuinely early. Almost nobody at the local business level is actively optimizing for it yet, which means there's an open lane that won't stay open forever. Being early here costs a lot less than trying to catch up once every competitor in your market has already done the work.
Clear, accurate, well structured content about your business, the same fundamentals of SEO you're probably already investing in, plus paying attention to what these AI tools currently say about you and your competitors when someone asks. There's no guaranteed formula, since none of these systems publish their exact criteria, but the businesses paying attention now will be ahead of the ones who wait.