How ChatGPT finds you: the GEO guide for Greek businesses

Your customer doesn’t search on Google anymore. They ask ChatGPT.

Until recently, a customer would type “aesthetic clinic Athens” into Google and open three of the ten results. Today, more and more people type something like “What’s the best clinic for laser hair removal in the northern suburbs?” into ChatGPT and get a ready-made answer with two or three names.

According to OpenAI, ChatGPT has passed 800 million weekly users, and since October 2025, Google’s AI Mode has also been available in Greek. The new question for a business is: “When someone asks an AI about my industry, does it mention my name?” If not, the customer may never find out you exist.

What are GEO and AEO, and how do they relate to SEO?

The term GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) refers to optimizing your online presence so that you get mentioned in the answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode. You’ll also see it called “SEO for ChatGPT” or “AI SEO.” Its close relative, AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), focuses on making your content give the clearest answer to a question.

How they differ from traditional SEO comes down to three points:

• Goal: SEO chases a spot in the list of results. GEO chases a mention inside the answer itself.
• Measurement: In SEO, you measure rankings and clicks. In GEO, you measure how often your brand is mentioned and in what context.
• Sources: In SEO, what matters most is your own site. In GEO, what others write about you matters just as much.

But GEO doesn’t replace SEO; it’s built on top of it. AI tools pull information from search engines, so if your site isn’t set up properly for Google and Bing, AI will have a hard time “seeing” it too.

How does ChatGPT decide which business to recommend?

An AI model knows about a business from two sources:

• Training data: Articles, directories, reviews, and forums the model has “read.” If your brand was mentioned often and consistently, it “remembers” it.
• Real-time search: For questions like “web agency for an e-shop,” ChatGPT searches the moment you ask, through third-party providers such as Bing and through its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot. Gemini and AI Mode rely on Google’s index.

AI doesn’t rank your site the way Google does. It reads many sources together and synthesizes a single answer. When list articles, directories, reviews, and your own site all say the same thing about you, it has reason to trust you. It doesn’t necessarily recommend the biggest business, but the clearest and most frequently mentioned one.

Take the test: does ChatGPT recommend you?

Before you change anything, see where you stand. The test takes about ten minutes:

• Write five questions the way one of your customers would ask them, for example “Which web agency should I choose for an e-shop?” Add one with your name too: “What do you know about [your business]?”
• Ask them in a new chat in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Mode, without logging in or in a temporary chat, so your history doesn’t affect the results.
• Note four things: whether you’re mentioned, which competitors it recommends, which sources it cites, and whether your details are correct.
• Repeat each question two or three times, because the answers change.

What the result means:

• You don’t show up anywhere: Start with the basics (sections 06 and 09).
• Competitors show up through lists and directories: That’s where you need to be too (section 09).
• You show up with wrong or outdated details: The problem is the consistency of your information (sections 10 and 11).
• You show up correctly: Measure regularly to stay there (section 13).

Seven steps to get AI to recommend you

Visibility in AI isn’t a matter of luck. These steps are based on what we know about the tools, and you can start this week:

• Let AI read your site.
• Write the way your customers ask.
• Give numbers, sources, and specifics.
• Make sure others talk about you too.
• Make your reviews “speak.”
• Add structured data (schema markup).
• Publish your own data.

Step 1: Let AI read your site

Ask your developer to check your robots.txt file. If it blocks OAI-SearchBot, your site can’t appear as a source in ChatGPT’s search answers. GPTBot, on the other hand, is about model training and is a separate decision. PerplexityBot needs the same check.

Also submit your site to Bing Webmaster Tools, not just Google Search Console, and put your services, prices, and location in text, not inside images or elements that only load with JavaScript.

Step 2: Write the way your customers ask

According to Google, users in AI Mode type questions nearly three times longer than in traditional search. Your content needs to answer them directly:

• Questions as subheadings: “How much does an e-shop cost?” instead of “Pricing.”
• The answer up front: The key point in the first two sentences, the details after.
• Frequently asked questions: On every service page, with the questions you actually hear from your customers on the phone.

Step 3: Give numbers, sources, and specifics

The academic study that coined the term GEO, by researchers from Princeton and other institutions, showed that adding statistics, source citations, and quotations increased a text’s visibility in AI answers by up to 40%. Keyword “stuffing,” on the other hand, didn’t help.

A dental practice, for example, instead of “we have extensive experience,” can write “12 years in business and over 3,000 implants,” and instead of “affordable prices,” a price range. AI tools prefer facts they can verify.

Step 4: Make sure others talk about you too

Since AI tools cross-check sources, your own site isn’t enough. You need mentions on pages they trust: list articles in your industry, Greek media outlets, business directories, and review platforms.

Start with the sources ChatGPT and Perplexity already cite for your industry, as you recorded them in the test. For an agency, that might be Clutch or Sortlist; for an e-shop, Skroutz; and for a hotel, TripAdvisor and Booking.

Step 5: Make your reviews “speak”

For local questions, like “dentist in Marousi,” AI tools rely on map and review data. Gemini and AI Mode, for example, pull information from Google Maps. A complete Google Business Profile is now a basic requirement.

What the reviews say matters too: “I got implants and the procedure was painless” tells AI much more than a plain “Great!” Encourage customers to describe what they did with you, and keep your name, address, and phone number the same everywhere.

Step 6: Add structured data (schema markup)

Structured data is code that tells search engines who you are: what kind of business, where, which services, and which frequently asked questions. The most useful types are Organization or LocalBusiness, Service or Product, and FAQPage.

Schema isn’t a magic button for ChatGPT. But it does help Google and Bing, which AI tools draw from, understand your business correctly. In the sameAs field, link all your official profiles.

Step 7: Publish your own data

Whatever an AI already “knows,” it has no reason to come to you for. What it can’t find anywhere else, it needs. A customer survey, an annual report, or a pricing guide with real numbers is content that other sites, journalists, and, eventually, the AI tools themselves cite.

You don’t need to be a big company. Your customers’ most common questions or the average cost of your projects don’t exist anywhere else. That’s how you become the source.

How will you know if AI recommends you?

GEO doesn’t have a tool like Search Console yet. But you can track it in three ways:

• A fixed set of questions: 10 to 20 of your customers’ questions, every month, in the main tools. Record whether you’re mentioned, in what position, and with which source.
• Google Analytics 4: Track traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, and copilot.microsoft.com. It’s still small, but its trend tells you a lot.
• Searches for your name: Many people don’t click on the AI’s recommendation but search for your name on Google later. An increase in searches for your brand in Search Console is a useful signal.

Frequently asked questions about GEO

Do I need GEO if I’m already doing SEO?

Yes, but you’re not starting from scratch. Good SEO is the foundation. GEO adds emphasis on third-party mentions, reviews, and content structure.

Can I pay to get ChatGPT to recommend me?

No. Mentions within answers aren’t bought; they’re earned. Even where there are ads in AI tools, they appear separately from the answer.

How soon will I see results?

In tools that search in real time, within a few weeks. In the models’ “memory,” more slowly, because it depends on when their next version is trained.

Should I block AI bots from my site?

For most businesses, no. If you block the search bots, you simply won’t appear as a source. The decision needs more thought only if your content is the product itself, as with a news site.