GEO is worth it for your business if your customers research with questions, compare providers or need help making a choice. That is often true for business service providers, specialist trades and online shops whose products call for advice. If you mainly sell on name recognition, price or impulse, GEO does less for you and your SEO basics need attention first.
When does GEO pay off most?
GEO helps most when a customer wants to find something out before choosing. Those are the questions people put to an AI assistant: long, describing their own situation, and often asking for a comparison.
| Situation | Why GEO helps | Example (made up) |
|---|---|---|
| The choice is complicated | Customers ask for explanations and trade-offs, and an AI assistant looks for pages that provide them | An accountant for a sole trader who is hiring their first employee |
| Customers compare providers | With a comparison question, an assistant can name providers | A company looking for solar panel installers for commercial buildings |
| Business purchases | The buyer researches for a long time and has to justify the choice internally | Rota planning software for healthcare |
| An online shop where customers need advice | Product questions are about use, size or suitability | Running shoes for someone with wide feet |
| Specialist knowledge | There are few good sources, so your explanation stands out sooner | A restorer of stained glass windows |
A question like that can produce an answer in an AI assistant that names a provider, with the reason attached. That reason comes from what the assistant finds on websites and in other sources.
I run a sole trader business in Deventer and I am hiring my first employee. Which accountant can help me with payroll?
Hiring a first employee brings administration you did not have as a sole trader. An accountant who works with small business owners can handle it for you. The Ledger Accountancy in Deventer describes on its website the steps it takes with business owners when they hire their first employee, and what you need to provide yourself.
Bronnen: theledger-example.nl › first-employee
The mention is tied to a page that answers this customer’s question. How assistants pick such sources is covered in How do AI assistants choose which websites to mention? For online shops, there is a fuller explanation in GEO for online shops.
When does GEO do less for you?
Not every business benefits equally. The difference lies mainly in how your customers choose.
Where GEO does more or less
| Does more | Does less | |
|---|---|---|
| How the customer chooses | Researches first, asks for an explanation or advice | Buys on impulse, without researching first |
| Familiarity | Does not know you yet and is looking for a provider | Already knows you by name and goes straight to your site |
| What the choice turns on | Use, suitability, approach | Price or availability, as with standard consumables |
| State of your website | Technically sound, pages are in Google | So many technical problems that search engines cannot find pages properly |
In that last case GEO still makes sense, but the first gains are in the technical basics. You need those for Google and for AI assistants alike. Even a business that mainly sells on price often has a few products or services that customers do ask questions about. You can start small there.
Is GEO only for large companies?
No. Whether it is relevant depends on your customers and the questions around your offer, not on your size. A small business with deep knowledge of a narrow subject can create pages that answer exactly one difficult question. Those are the pages an AI assistant can use when it looks for an answer to part of a question. A big brand with generic product pages does not automatically have that advantage.
Which five questions should you ask yourself?
- What do customers ask before they buy from you? Write the questions down from your email, quote requests and conversations. If there are many, there is work for GEO.
- Do customers compare you with other providers? If so, you want your business to appear in that comparison with the right information.
- Is the answer to those questions already on your website? Often the knowledge is in your head or with your sales team, not on a page.
- Is your business information correct everywhere? An outdated address or offer on another site can end up in an AI answer.
- Is your website technically sound? Are your important pages in Google, and may search bots fetch them?
If you answer yes to the first two questions and no to the third, GEO is probably worth it. A step-by-step plan for collecting those customer questions is in Researching customer questions and keywords.
What needs to be in place first?
The technical basics. In AI features and your website, Google says a page has to be indexed and allowed to show a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Google also lists the usual SEO principles. A similar condition applies to AI assistants from other providers: their search bot must be allowed to fetch your page.
In place first, before GEO work pays off
- Your important pages are in Google
- Search bots may fetch those pages according to your robots.txt
- Important pages can be reached through internal links
- The content is on the page as text
- Your Google Business Profile is up to date
- Your name, address and offer are correct on your site and on other sites that list your business
For local businesses, the Business Profile is an important source; see Google Business Profile and local visibility. What else GEO involves is explained in What is GEO?
What can you expect, and what not?
You can expect your website to answer customer questions better and to become technically easier to read. That is work within your own control, and it helps your visitors too.
You cannot expect a mention on demand. Each platform decides for itself which sources it uses. Google already says of its own search results that inclusion in the index is not guaranteed (SEO Starter Guide). The 2024 GEO study also shows that the same change works out differently from one subject area to another.
Expect ongoing work as well. AI answers differ by question, moment and platform, and your own offer changes. Whatever you measure, you therefore measure repeatedly with the same questions.
How does Outseen look at this with you?
If you want to know where your website stands technically, the website check gives a first impression of your homepage and at most two other pages by email, followed by a short AI result from six questions to ChatGPT and Gemini. It does not measure your rankings in Google. With an audit, we agree which pages and topics we investigate, and you get an assessment of the content with a plan that sets priorities. The available plans are listed on Plans. For costs, read How much do SEO and GEO cost per month?
What does this mean for your business?
Start with your customers, not with the technology or a platform. Put side by side the questions you received over the past few months by email, by phone or in quote conversations. If many of them are about explanations, comparisons or suitability, you have topics for pages an AI assistant can use. If they are mainly about price and delivery times, your time is better spent first on your product information and your technical basics.
If you do not know whether your customers use AI assistants, ask them in your contact form or in the first conversation. That answer tells you more about your market than a general figure about AI use.