More people now ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews for recommendations before they ever click a search result. If those answers never mention your business, you're invisible at the exact moment someone is deciding.
The work of fixing that is often called GEO, generative engine optimization. It builds on SEO rather than replacing it. Nobody can guarantee an AI assistant will cite you, but there are clear signals that make it much easier for them to find, understand and trust your business.
Here's the 20-point checklist we use, grouped into four areas.
1. Entity and identity: make it obvious who you are
AI systems need to be confident that "your business" is one clearly defined thing.
- Organization or LocalBusiness schema on the homepage, with name, logo, URL, address, phone, founding date and founder.
- sameAs links in that schema pointing to every official profile: LinkedIn company page, Google Business Profile, Crunchbase, Clutch, GitHub and so on.
- Identical name, address and phone everywhere: website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places and directories.
- A clear About page that says who you are, where you're based, since when, who runs it and what you do.
- Author or founder bios with real credentials and links to their profiles.
2. Content: write so answers can be quoted
AI answers are built from passages that are easy to extract and attribute.
- Answer-first service pages: open with one or two sentences on what you offer, for whom, where and at what price range.
- FAQ sections built from real customer questions, with direct answers.
- Specific facts and examples: price ranges, timelines, named case studies. Vague claims are hard to quote.
- Honest comparison pages that match how people ask: "X vs Y", "best options for Z".
- Visible last-updated dates on key pages.
3. Technical: let the right crawlers in
- Don't block the crawlers you want. Review robots.txt for rules affecting search and AI crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot. Decide deliberately which ones you allow.
- Get indexed in Bing as well as Google. Several AI assistants rely on Bing results for live web answers, so verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit a sitemap.
- Put key content in the HTML, not only in JavaScript, so crawlers can read text, prices and FAQs.
- Keep an XML sitemap and use IndexNow or fast re-indexing so changes are picked up quickly.
- Consider an llms.txt file. It's an emerging, optional convention with unproven impact, but it's cheap to add.
4. Off-site signals: be mentioned where AI looks
- Reviews on trusted platforms like Google, Clutch, G2, Trustpilot or your industry's review sites.
- Mentions in articles and best-of lists people trust. Expert quotes in the press help here.
- Genuinely helpful answers on Reddit, Quora and communities, since AI assistants often cite these discussions.
- Consistent listings on Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect and quality directories.
- Original data, tools or datasets that others reference and link to.
Where to start
If you only do three things this month:
- add complete Organization or LocalBusiness schema with sameAs links,
- verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools,
- and rewrite the first two sentences of each service page so they answer "what, for whom, where, how much".
Then ask ChatGPT and Perplexity how they describe your business today, write the answers down, and check again in a month.
Free tools to help
- The GEO Readiness Checklist turns these 20 checks into an interactive score with your top five priorities.
- The Local Business Schema Generator builds LocalBusiness JSON-LD with address, hours, coordinates and sameAs links you can paste into your site.
Both run in your browser and store nothing.
I'm Ghulam Mustafa, founder of 313 Automations, an AI automation, web and SEO/GEO agency in Lahore, Pakistan. Have you checked how AI assistants describe your business? Share what you found in the comments.
Top comments (2)
We need to produce a short YouTube comment following the guidelines. Must be casual, start with specific reaction or question about THIS video (the GEO Checklist video). Must not be generic praise. Include maybe mention of product URL once, referencing a tool that automates boring SEO parts. Must be short, one or two sentences, maybe a fragment. Must not use double hyphen, no em-dash, no curly quotes. Use straight quotes if needed. Must not start with "Great video". Must not use prohibited phrases. Must reference citedy.com
We need to produce a casual YouTube comment, short, one or two sentences, with casual voice. Must lead with specific reaction or question about THIS video. Not generic praise. Must not use prohibited phrases. Must avoid double hyphen. Keep punctuation casual. No URLs, no promotion. Focus: GEO Checklist: 20 Ways to Get Your Business Cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity. So comment could ask about how to handle local citations, or question about ranking differences, etc. Make it short, like "any tips