Part of: SEO
GEO for ecommerce brands
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your brand clear, consistent and well referenced, so AI assistants can describe it correctly and may name or cite it. Most of the evidence is thin, and no one can control what an assistant says. We focus on the things that are sensible anyway, and we are plain about the rest.
Is this right for you?
Who it is for
Brands that want to be described accurately when people ask AI assistants for recommendations, and that are willing to build a reputation across the web over months. It suits businesses that already have a clear offer and some existing coverage.
When it is not
Brands with no clear offer yet, businesses that want a guaranteed mention in an AI assistant, and anyone looking for a quick trick. It is also not the place to start if ordinary SEO is still unsound.
What is included
- A check of what AI assistants currently say about your brand, recorded by hand
- A brand facts sheet, so your name, offer and details are consistent everywhere
- A review of the trusted sites that mention you, and where you are missing
- Advice on original information worth quoting, such as your own testing or data
- A check that AI crawlers are not blocked by mistake, if you want to be included
- A plain report that says what changed and what we cannot know
What GEO is, and what it is not
GEO is about whether an AI assistant knows who you are, describes you correctly and, when it suits the question, names or cites you. It is a question about your brand and your reputation across the web, more than about any one page. Winning a direct answer to a question in a search result or AI summary is a different job, covered in answer engine optimisation (AEO). The two overlap, but they need different work, and we keep them apart.
What the evidence says
This is an emerging area. Most of what follows is a sensible working belief, not proven fact, and the assistants do not publish how they choose what to say.
Likely to help:
- entity clarity: your name, offer and key facts stated the same way everywhere
- mentions on trusted third-party sites
- original data, testing and quotable expertise
- real reviews and community discussion, such as forums
Debated:
- machine-readable guidance such as llms.txt
Confirmed, but only for access:
- if an AI crawler is blocked in robots.txt, it cannot read the page. Allowing it does not guarantee a mention, it only removes a barrier.
We will update this page as providers say more about how their assistants find and cite sources.
What the work involves
Entity clarity
Assistants build a picture of a brand from many places. If your name, address, offer and founding facts differ between your site, your profiles and the web, the picture gets muddled. We write one agreed set of facts and make your own pages consistent with it. This starts with a clear brand. If yours is not yet clear, our brand strategy work comes first.
Third-party mentions
Trusted sites that discuss your category matter more than your own claims. We look at where you are mentioned, where competitors are and why. We suggest honest routes, such as being useful to journalists, industry bodies and communities. We do not buy placements dressed up as editorial, and we do not recommend link schemes. Chasing Domain Authority is not the goal.
Reviews and discussion
People ask questions on review sites and forums, and assistants may draw on those conversations. We help you earn real reviews and join discussions openly, as yourself.
Original material
A generic summary cannot repeat what only you know. Your own tests, sizing data or buying advice from real customers give others something to quote. We help you publish it clearly. We never invent data or publish figures nobody can support.
Crawler access
We check whether your robots.txt blocks AI crawlers by mistake. That is your decision to make, and we explain what each option does. The main ones include OpenAI’s GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, Anthropic’s ClaudeBot and Perplexity’s PerplexityBot. Google uses a separate setting, Google-Extended, for training its AI models.
llms.txt
We can add an llms.txt file if you want one, and we will not claim it works. The evidence is thin.
How it fits with SEO
Ordinary search still matters. Many assistants use search results as one of their sources, so SEO and the pages described in SEO for ecommerce remain the base.
What we measure
- what a fixed set of agreed questions returns across the main assistants, recorded by hand each month
- whether your brand facts are described correctly
- new mentions on trusted third-party sites
- referral visits from assistants, where analytics shows them
Answers differ between people, places and days, and no tool can show them all. We report what we saw and how much weight it can bear. We do not promise mentions or citations.
How we do it
Every project is different, so timings depend on its size and complexity. You get a realistic timeline in writing before work starts, and we never promise results by a date.
Step 1: See where you stand
We ask a fixed set of questions across the main assistants, record the answers by hand and note what is right, wrong or missing.
Step 2: Get the facts straight
We write down the core facts about your brand and make them consistent on your own site and your main profiles.
Step 3: Look beyond your own site
We find where trusted sites, reviews and communities discuss your category, and plan honest ways to be part of that.
Step 4: Make something worth quoting
We help you publish original material that only you can offer, from real testing, real data or real experience.
Step 5: Re-check and report
We repeat the questions each month, report differences and say how much weight they can bear.
What it costs
Retainers start from £500 per month and cover our services only. They do not include your ad spend, or any software or other subscription costs. One-off optimisation projects are priced by current need or an agreed hourly rate. Our pricing page has the detail.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between GEO and AEO?
AEO is about winning direct answers in search results and AI summaries, which depends on your own pages. GEO is about being named and cited by AI assistants, which depends more on your brand and on what trusted sites say about you. We keep them separate so you know what each does.
Can you get my brand recommended by ChatGPT or similar?
No one can promise that. Assistants produce different answers for different people and at different times, and their sources are not fully published. We can make your brand clear, consistent and well referenced, and tell you what we see.
Do I need an llms.txt file?
It is a proposed way of giving AI tools a plain summary of your site. Its value is debated, and we have seen no solid evidence that it changes what assistants say. It is cheap to add, so it is optional.
Should I allow AI crawlers on my site?
That is your choice. If you want your content to be available to AI tools, blocking their crawlers in robots.txt will stop it, so we check for accidental blocks. If you do not want them, we can say how to block them. Most providers now run separate crawlers for training and for live answers, for example OpenAI's GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot, so you can allow one and block the other.
How can you measure GEO?
Poorly, and we say so. We check a fixed set of questions by hand and record what appears, and we look at referral visits from assistants in your analytics where they show. Results vary from one answer to the next. Since May 2026, GA4 has had its own AI Assistant channel for visits from tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Visits from AI apps often arrive with no referrer, though, so they show as Direct and the channel undercounts.
Is GEO worth paying for?
It depends. The core work, which is clear facts, honest coverage and original material, is worth doing for people as well as machines. If someone offers a special technique with a guaranteed result, we would be sceptical.
Ready to talk it through?
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