A customer in Brookline asked ChatGPT: "What's a good HVAC company near me that does emergency service?" ChatGPT gave her a name. She called that company. Whether your business shows up in that kind of response or not depends on a set of factors that most local businesses have never heard of.
The Difference Between SEO and GEO
Traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimization) gets your website ranked in Google's list of blue links. When someone searches "HVAC repair Brookline MA" and clicks on a result, that's SEO at work.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) works differently. When someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overview a question and receives a paragraph-format answer that includes a business recommendation, GEO is what determines whether your business appears in that answer.
How AI Models Decide Who to Recommend
AI models build their understanding of local businesses from web content, structured data, third-party mentions, and entity signals — the accumulated digital footprint that tells an AI model that your business is real, established, and relevant to a specific category.
The businesses that appear in AI recommendations tend to have clear, authoritative content; consistent information across Google Business Profile and directories; genuine third-party mentions and citations; and structured data markup that helps AI models understand the business.
Do Local Businesses Actually Need GEO Right Now?
It depends on your customer demographics. For service businesses whose clients skew younger — fitness studios, therapists, newer restaurants — AI search adoption is real and growing now. For industries where customers tend to search traditionally, GEO is an investment in where search is heading.
What is almost always true: the same content structures and authority signals that help with GEO also help with traditional SEO. A well-structured FAQ section that answers the questions AI models extract is also a FAQ section that Google ranks. The investments compound rather than compete.
What to Do First
For South Shore businesses that have not yet invested in local SEO, that foundation comes first. GEO without a solid SEO base is building on sand. For businesses that have the fundamentals in place and want to capture the AI search channel, GEO is the next logical layer.