AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO (generative engine optimization) are two names for the same job: making your business easy for AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews to find, understand and name. There is no special code or submission form that guarantees a mention, so the work is making your site clear, crawlable and consistent with what the rest of the web says about you.
Google’s own guidance agrees: AI Overviews and AI Mode have no additional requirements or special optimizations, you do not need to add any particular schema.org markup, and a page only has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet. You can read it in Google’s AI features guide.
What AI assistants actually read
An AI answer is built from the same public pages search engines read, plus what other sites say about a business. That means three things decide whether you get named: whether the assistants’ crawlers are allowed to read your site, whether your pages say something specific enough to quote, and whether your name, phone number and service area match everywhere they appear.
What we did on our own site
KMC Spark LLC treated its own site as the test before changing anyone else’s. Our robots.txt explicitly allows the crawlers behind ChatGPT (GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User), Claude, Perplexity and Google-Extended. We publish a plain-text summary of the business at /llms.txt for assistants that read it, and we describe the business in one identical sentence across the site and our structured data.
What a NJ contractor can do first
- Check that nothing is blocking AI crawlers: look at yoursite.com/robots.txt and ask whoever hosts your site whether a firewall blocks bots.
- Put the trade, the towns you serve and your license details in plain sentences near the top of your pages, not only in images.
- Keep your business name, phone and service area identical on your site, your Google Business Profile and every directory.
- Answer the questions customers really ask (cost, timing, service area) on your own pages.
How to measure it
Assistants’ answers change from one run to the next, so track a fixed set of questions over weeks rather than judging by one check. With our Grow plan we run a weekly check on whether ChatGPT and other assistants recommend you.
Frequently asked questions
Is there markup that makes ChatGPT recommend my business?
No. Google says you do not need any particular schema.org markup to appear in its AI features, and nothing you add guarantees a mention anywhere. Clear, specific, consistent content is what gets quoted.
Do I need to allow AI crawlers in robots.txt?
If you want AI assistants to be able to read your site, yes. Blocking them in robots.txt or through a firewall can keep you out of their answers.
How long does it take to show up?
Nobody can promise a timeline. Google says that meeting its technical requirements does not guarantee a page will be crawled, indexed or served. We track a fixed set of questions over several weeks and judge the trend, not a single check.
See where your site stands
Our free site audit checks whether ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews can find and understand your business, along with four other checks. Get your free site audit.