Ask an AI assistant to recommend a company that provides your main service. Does your business appear? Does it describe what you do correctly? Does it recommend competitors you know—or companies you have never heard of?

Potential customers can now use ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity to research providers before visiting their websites. They can explain what they need, ask follow-up questions, and compare options in the same conversation.

For a business owner, that raises a practical question: how do you become one of the companies these tools find? That is the goal of improving your AI search visibility.

There is no setting that guarantees a recommendation. However, you can check how your business currently appears, improve the information available about it, and measure what changes. Much of that work also benefits your regular SEO and makes your website more useful to customers.

Seller’s Bay has been building websites and helping businesses market themselves online since 1998. My approach to this change is to start with what we can verify: what the tools say, which sources they use, and whether those sources explain the business accurately.

Being Recognized Is Different From Being Recommended

An AI assistant may describe your company correctly when you ask about it by name. That is a useful first check, but it tells you little about whether someone unfamiliar with your business will discover it.

Consider these two questions:

What services does Seller’s Bay provide?

What company can help maintain and promote a growing WooCommerce store?

The first supplies the company name. The second asks the tool to identify suitable providers.

Your business might appear in the first answer and be absent from the second. It could also appear as a source for an informational answer without being recommended as a provider. For example, an assistant might link to your article about website maintenance when someone asks how to prevent checkout problems.

These are different outcomes. When checking your visibility, pay attention to whether your business is mentioned, whether your website is linked, and whether the description is accurate.

A mention containing the wrong services or location needs attention just as much as a missing mention.

Start With a Small, Repeatable Test

You can learn a useful amount without purchasing software. Start with a few questions that reflect how customers actually find and evaluate your business.

If you provide website services, your initial test might include:

• A branded question: “What does [company name] do?”
• A service question: “Which companies provide ongoing WooCommerce maintenance?”
• A location question: “Find web design companies serving businesses in Waterford.”
• A buying question: “What should I look for when choosing a Shopify SEO agency?”

Use relevant questions for your own customers. A restaurant, manufacturer, and accounting firm will need very different tests.

Begin each test in a fresh conversation so earlier messages about your company do not influence the answer. Where the platform offers a web-search option, use it and record whether the response searched the web. Note the date, platform, question, companies mentioned, and links provided.

Then open the sources.

Does the linked page support the description? Is the tool using your current website or an old directory listing? Is a similarly named company being confused with yours?

Gemini explains that its responses do not always contain sources or related links. A response without links therefore gives you less evidence about where its information came from. It should not be treated as a definitive assessment of your online presence. Gemini’s source guidance

Repeat your tests periodically using the same questions. A monthly check is a manageable starting point, although it is simply a suggested routine—not a ranking requirement.

What Can These Tests Actually Tell You?

Manual tests are useful for finding inaccurate descriptions, discovering cited pages, and seeing which providers appear for particular questions. They cannot reliably explain why your business was omitted.

If you appear for branded questions but not service recommendations, review whether your pages clearly connect the company to those services. That is a reasonable next investigation, but a missing mention alone does not prove that you have an authority or SEO problem.

Keep the interpretation modest. You are observing a sample of responses, not measuring every answer a platform gives to every potential customer.

Make Your Services Easy to Understand

Before looking for advanced GEO tactics, read your homepage as someone who knows nothing about the company.

Can that person quickly understand what you offer, who you help, and where you work? Or do they have to piece it together from vague promises and scattered pages?

Consider the difference between these two descriptions:

We provide innovative solutions that help businesses reach their potential.

We design WordPress websites for service businesses and provide ongoing maintenance, SEO, and content support.

The second gives a prospective customer much more to work with. It names the services and explains how they fit together.

Your homepage can introduce the business, but important services usually need more detail elsewhere. A useful service page explains what is included, who it is suitable for, how the work is carried out, and what the customer needs to provide.

For example, our pages for WooCommerce website development and Shopify website design address different platforms and project requirements. Separate pages make sense because customers need different information to evaluate those services.

You do not need another page for every slight variation of a search phrase. Create a separate page when it serves a distinct need, and give readers a clear route between related topics.

This planning is one reason SEO should be built into web design from the beginning. The structure of your website affects how easily visitors find answers and how clearly your services are presented.

Publish the Information Customers Need to Decide

A service page can explain what you do. Supporting articles can help people understand whether they need it, what their options are, and which questions to ask before spending money.

That is where your experience becomes useful.

Suppose you maintain online stores. You could publish a general article saying that maintenance improves security and performance. But a reader considering a maintenance plan will probably need more specific answers.

Will updates be tested before going live? Who checks that checkout still works? What happens if a payment gateway stops working? Are content changes included, or does the plan only cover software updates?

An article that explains those distinctions helps someone make a decision. It also gives you a natural opportunity to explain your process.

For a worked example, imagine a store owner deciding between a low-cost update service and a more comprehensive support package. Explain which tasks each option covers, the responsibilities that remain with the owner, and when the broader service might be appropriate. Label hypothetical examples clearly and use actual project results only when you can substantiate them.

Google’s people-first guidance asks whether content adds original information or insight and whether readers leave having learned enough to achieve their goal. It also explicitly rejects the idea that Google has a preferred word count. Google’s helpful-content guidance

That is a useful editorial test. Could the reader act on your explanation, or would they need to search again because you skipped the difficult part?

A planned content marketing strategy can help connect these articles to your main services. Each piece should have a purpose and lead naturally to further information when the reader needs it.

Give People Something They Can Verify

Statements such as “experienced team” and “excellent results” become more useful when you support them.

If you discuss a successful project, describe the starting problem, what changed, and how the outcome was measured. If several activities happened at once, acknowledge that. A rise in leads after a redesign does not automatically prove the design alone caused the improvement.

The same care applies to reviews, qualifications, and business history. Make them accurate and easy to check. Show relevant work, identify the people responsible for advice, and explain the limits of any example.

Your About page helps establish that context. Our About Seller’s Bay page, for instance, explains the company’s history and services. It gives visitors information they can use when evaluating the business.

These details can improve clarity and credibility, but they should not be presented as a formula that guarantees AI recommendations.

Check What Other Websites Say About You

Your website may be accurate while older information remains elsewhere.

Perhaps a directory still lists a previous address. Your business profile might describe a service you stopped offering. A social account may link to an old domain.

Review the profiles that customers are likely to encounter and correct the important facts. Your location and service area do not have to be the same thing: a business can be based in Ireland and serve customers internationally. The descriptions simply need to explain that relationship clearly.

For local businesses, Google Business Profile deserves attention. Keep relevant details current and make sure the website supports what the profile says. Our guide to generating organic visits through your Google Business Profile covers this part of local visibility in more detail.

Microsoft also recommends maintaining accurate address, hours, and contact information through Bing Places for businesses seeking visibility in its local AI experiences. That is a platform-specific recommendation, rather than proof that every assistant uses the same business data. Microsoft’s publisher guidance

Check Access Before Rewriting Everything

Content improvements have limited value if the systems you want to reach cannot access your pages.

A page might have been accidentally marked noindex. A firewall could block a crawler. Important pages may be difficult to find through internal links, or essential information might fail to load correctly.

For Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, the eligibility rule is specific: a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Google Search with a snippet to qualify as a supporting link. Meeting those requirements does not guarantee inclusion. Google also says there are no additional technical requirements for these features. Google’s AI features documentation

ChatGPT search has its own guidance. OpenAI advises allowing OAI-SearchBot so content can be included in summaries and snippets. That access supports discovery but does not guarantee a recommendation. OpenAI’s publisher guidance

A technical review should check those settings alongside normal website operation. If you already have website management services, crawler access and indexation are useful subjects to raise with the team maintaining your site.

Gemini Is Separate From Google’s AI Search Features

This distinction is easy to miss.

The Gemini app is separate from AI Overviews and AI Mode in Google Search. Their sources, controls, and responses can differ, so appearing in one does not guarantee visibility in the others.

Googlebot manages crawling for Google Search. Google-Extended controls certain uses of crawled content for Gemini model training and grounding—the use of retrieved information to support an answer. Google states that Google-Extended does not affect inclusion or rankings in Google Search. Google’s crawler documentation

If you ask someone to review your crawler settings, specify which platforms and uses you want them to check. “Allow AI” is too broad an instruction.

How SEO and GEO Fit Together

SEO means search engine optimization. GEO means generative engine optimization and is commonly used to describe work intended to improve visibility in AI-generated answers.

There is substantial overlap. Both involve making information accessible, relevant, clear, and useful. GEO also brings attention to outcomes such as mentions and citations, which differ from ordinary search rankings and clicks.

For practical planning, I would treat GEO as an extension of your existing search strategy. Keep improving your service pages, technical setup, and supporting content, then add checks for how your business appears in AI answers.

Google’s guidance supports continuing established SEO work for its generative search features. It says there is no special AI schema requirement or need to rewrite pages in a particular style. Google also states that it ignores llms.txt for Search, so maintaining that file does not improve or harm Google Search visibility. That statement applies to Google; other systems may have different uses for such files. Google’s generative-search guidance

Useful formatting still matters to readers. Descriptive headings help them locate an answer. A numbered list suits a procedure. A table can clarify a comparison. Paragraphs provide the explanation that connects those pieces.

Choose the format that makes the information easier to use. There is no reason to turn every section into a checklist.

Where the Seller’s Bay App Helps

Creating content, improving product pages, tracking keywords, and reporting results can involve a considerable amount of repetitive work, particularly when you manage several stores.

Our Seller’s Bay app brings these tasks into a shared workspace for agencies and freelancers working with WooCommerce and Shopify.

It helps create and edit content for an SEO and GEO strategy, including product titles, descriptions, metadata, image alt text, and supporting WordPress articles. You can organize work by campaign, track keyword rankings, review Search Console information, and produce client reports.

The publishing process includes review. Catalog changes are approved before being synced to a connected store. WordPress articles are transferred as drafts, allowing your team to make the final edits and publish them.

The app also documents AI visibility checks on eligible agency plans. Google AI Overview snapshots are available on Agency Starter and higher, while ChatGPT and Perplexity checks are available on Agency Pro and Agency Scale when the required APIs are enabled. Availability depends on the plan and configuration. Seller’s Bay features and workflow

These features help organize the work and its measurement. The finished content still needs accurate details, useful explanations, and editorial judgment. Describing content as SEO/GEO optimized expresses its intended purpose; it does not promise a particular ranking or citation.

Measure What You Can Attribute

Keyword rankings tell you where pages appear for tracked searches. AI citations tell you when content is referenced in certain generated answers. Neither measurement, by itself, tells you whether the business gained a customer.

It helps to keep those distinctions clear:

OpenAI says ChatGPT search referral URLs include utm_source=chatgpt.com, providing a useful signal in analytics. Microsoft’s AI Performance report shows citation activity across supported experiences, including Copilot and AI-generated Bing summaries. Its citation figures are not a substitute for traffic or conversion data. OpenAI referral guidance, Microsoft’s AI Performance announcement

You can also ask new leads how they heard about you. Their answers may reveal a path that analytics missed, such as discovering the company in an AI answer and returning later through a branded search.

Treat increases in direct traffic or branded searches as context. Advertising, referrals, offline activity, and many other factors can produce similar changes.

What I Would Work on First

If you are starting from scratch, keep the first round manageable:

1. Run the initial visibility test. Save the questions, responses, and sources so you have something to compare later.
2. Review the pages closest to a purchase decision. Start with your homepage and main service or product pages.
3. Correct inaccurate information. Fix errors on your website and important business profiles.
4. Check technical access. Confirm that intended pages are accessible and review the relevant platform requirements.
5. Improve one useful resource. Answer a customer question thoroughly, using examples and evidence you can support.

Then review the results after the changes have had time to be discovered. There is no reliable universal timeline for improved AI visibility, so avoid judging the entire effort by a single response the following day.

You also do not need to publish constantly to make progress. Improving a weak service page or correcting an inaccurate business description may be a more useful next step than writing another general blog post.

Make the Next Step Clear for Your Customer

Being found is only part of the job. Once someone reaches your website, they still need to decide whether you can help.

Give them an understandable service description, useful evidence, and an easy way to take the next step. Apply the same standard to your articles: answer the question, explain the details that matter, and connect the reader with relevant information.

That gives you something valuable regardless of how an individual AI response changes.

If you need help reviewing your website’s content, structure, and search visibility, contact Seller’s Bay to discuss your SEO and GEO needs. We can help identify where information is unclear, which pages need attention, and how to build a practical plan for improving them.