What is GEO (AI SEO)? A plain-English guide for Australian businesses

GEO, AEO and AI SEO: what the words mean.

• GEO (generative engine optimisation) comes from a 2023 research paper. Agencies now use it for any work aimed at AI answers. Microsoft uses the term too: it calls its AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools “an early step toward Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tooling”.
• AEO (answer engine optimisation) is an older term, first used for featured snippets and voice assistants, now applied to AI answers.
• AI SEO, LLM SEO and AIO are agency labels for the same thing.

The names differ by agency, not by what is done. Whatever a provider calls it, ask what they actually do each month. The questions below help.

How it differs from normal SEO (and how it doesn’t).

The overlap is large. Google and Microsoft both say their AI answers sit on top of the same search systems.

The differences that matter

• Fewer businesses get named. An answer is short, so it names fewer businesses than a page of results shows.
• Answers change. Microsoft says citation activity shifts with evolving models, competing content, freshness and demand.
• Clicks can fall even when you are still seen. Bing: “A decline in clicks does not always indicate a loss of visibility.”
• Specific questions matter. Google’s AI Mode uses “query fan-out”: it breaks a question into subtopics and runs several searches. Being the clearest answer to the specific questions your customers ask helps.

What Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Perplexity and Anthropic say.

Straight from each company’s own pages, checked 25 October 2026. Here is what each company says about its own AI search, in plain English.

Google (AI Overviews and AI Mode)

• AI Overviews began rolling out Australia-wide on 29 October 2024. AI Mode launched in Australia, in English, on 8 October 2025. AI Overviews ↗ AI Mode ↗
• “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.” A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Google: AI features and your website ↗
• Google’s guide to optimising for generative AI search (updated 10 July 2026) says normal SEO best practice still applies; unique, first-hand content matters; you don’t need llms.txt, special markup, content broken into small chunks or a special writing style; chasing inauthentic mentions “isn’t as helpful as it might seem”; and making many near-identical pages to manipulate AI answers breaks its scaled content abuse policy. Google’s guide ↗
• Its May 2025 advice: unique, valuable content; a good page experience; make sure Google can reach your pages; keep structured data matching what’s on the page; use images and video; keep your Business Profile and Merchant Center details current; and measure conversions, not just clicks. Google Search Central blog ↗
• Controls: Search Console’s Search generative AI control (rolled out to all websites worldwide by 31 August 2026; sites are included by default) can take a site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google-Extended only controls Gemini training and grounding; it does not affect Search inclusion or ranking. The control ↗ Google-Extended ↗

Microsoft (Bing and Copilot)

• The Bing Webmaster Guidelines now cover Bing search, Copilot and grounding results. Bing and Copilot “rely on the same core crawling, indexing, and ranking foundation as traditional search.”
• Recommends IndexNow, accurate sitemaps, clear headings, one topic per page, key facts early, consistent naming of your business, people, products and places, and keeping content current.
• NOARCHIVE keeps content out of Copilot answers; NOCACHE limits Copilot to your URL, title and snippet. Use them only if you want less AI use of your pages.
• Treats as abuse: keyword stuffing and “artificially engineered language” meant to trigger citations, mass auto-generated content, misleading structured data, and prompt injection or AI manipulation. These can reduce visibility or get a site removed.
• For local businesses, keep your Bing Places for Business details current.

Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗ Bing AI Performance post ↗

OpenAI (ChatGPT search)

• OAI-SearchBot is the crawler for ChatGPT search. Sites that block it “will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers”, though they can still appear as plain navigational links. OpenAI recommends allowing it in robots.txt and allowing its published IP addresses.
• GPTBot is a separate crawler for model training. Blocking GPTBot does not remove you from ChatGPT search. You can allow one and block the other.
• OpenAI’s crawler page gives no ranking tips and no guarantee of inclusion. OpenAI crawlers ↗

Perplexity

• PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in Perplexity results. It is not used to train AI models and it follows robots.txt. Perplexity-User fetches pages when a user asks and generally ignores robots.txt. Perplexity crawlers ↗
• Perplexity says “Each answer includes numbered citations linking to the original sources.” It does not explain how those sources are chosen. How Perplexity works ↗

Anthropic (Claude)

• Three bots: ClaudeBot (training), Claude-User (fetches pages when a user asks) and Claude-SearchBot (search indexing). Blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce your visibility in Claude’s search results. Anthropic advises against blocking its IP addresses, because that can stop its bots reading your robots.txt. Anthropic crawlers ↗

What the research says: the original GEO paper.

“GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” by Aggarwal, Murahari, Rajpurohit, Kalyan, Narasimhan and Deshpande was first posted in November 2023, revised in June 2024 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference. It is where the name comes from.

What they did

They built about 10,000 test questions (called GEO-bench), fed the top five Google results for each into GPT-3.5 to write an answer, then rewrote one source page in nine different ways and measured how much of that page made it into the answer. They also tested 200 questions on Perplexity.

What worked in their test

• Adding quotations, adding statistics and citing sources worked best. Keyword stuffing did little or nothing.
• The headline figure is up to 40% more “visibility” on their own measure. On Perplexity, the gains were 22% and 37% on their two measures.
• The gains went mostly to lower-ranked pages. Citing sources lifted the fifth-ranked source by about 115% but cut the top-ranked source by about 30%.

The limits

• It was a lab setup in 2023 with an older model (GPT-3.5).
• “Visibility” means the share of words in the AI answer, not customers or sales.
• Only two AI engines were tested, and the authors say methods may need to change as engines change.
• It does not prove that any agency’s method works today.

How it fits with Google’s advice: the edits that helped (real statistics, credible quotes, cited sources) are the same things that make content more trustworthy for people. Google says you don’t need to write specially for AI. Real evidence helps people and machines; fake statistics or quotes don’t. The paper on arXiv ↗

llms.txt: what it is and who uses it.

• llms.txt is a proposal by Jeremy Howard, first published in September 2024 and now on version 2: a Markdown file at your site’s root that lists your key pages for AI tools. It is a proposal, not a formal standard. llmstxt.org ↗
• Google says its Search doesn’t use llms.txt, so you don’t need one for Google Search. Google’s guide ↗
• OpenAI, Anthropic and Google publish llms.txt files for their own developer documentation. That is publishing one, not saying their search products read yours.
• None of the crawler pages we checked (OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Bing) say llms.txt affects whether you are cited.

In plain English: it is harmless and cheap to add, but don’t pay much for it or treat it as the main work. Some Australian agencies include it in their service; ask what else they do.

How to measure AI visibility honestly.

Free official reports

• Google Search Console, generative AI performance report: impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, by page, device and country. Available to all websites since 31 August 2026. It reports impressions, not clicks, and may not appear for sites with few AI impressions. Traffic from AI features is also counted inside the normal Performance report. Google’s help page ↗
• Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance: citations in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries, with sample questions and page-level activity. Microsoft says its Citation Share figure is “not a ranking system or a competitive scoreboard”. Launch post ↗ Citation Share ↗
• ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude: we found no official report for site owners.

A manual check you can do

Pick 10 to 20 real questions your customers ask. Each month, on the same date, ask them in each assistant while logged out and in a temporary or private chat. Record whether your business is named and what is said about it. Several agencies describe a similar method.

Paid tools and agency scores

“Share of AI voice”, “citation rate”, “generative appearance score”, “Recall@5” and similar are each provider’s own measures. They are not standard and can’t be compared between providers. One free checker labels its ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity results as projected estimates rather than measured. Ask how any score is calculated, and be wary of any single “AI ranking” number: answers vary with wording, location, account history and model updates.

AI search checklist: 10 things you can do yourself.

Ordered from least to most effort. Most of it costs nothing but time, and it is the same work an agency would start with.

1. Check you are not blocking AI search crawlers. Look at your robots.txt file and ask your web host or CDN whether bot protection blocks Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or Claude-SearchBot. Blocking GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended is a choice about AI training, not search. OpenAI and Perplexity say robots.txt changes can take about 24 hours to take effect. Source: OpenAI crawlers ↗, Perplexity crawlers ↗, Anthropic crawlers ↗
2. Make sure Google can index your key pages. Verify your site in Google Search Console and use URL Inspection on your main pages. They should load normally (HTTP 200) and must not be set to noindex or nosnippet. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Source: Google: AI features and your website ↗, Google: succeeding in AI search (2025) ↗
3. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile and Bing Places listing. Use your real business name with no extra keywords, an accurate address or service area, current hours and the fewest, most specific categories. Google and Microsoft both say to keep these details up to date. Source: Google Business Profile guidelines ↗, Bing AI Performance post ↗
4. Keep your business details the same everywhere. Your website, Business Profile, directory listings and social profiles should all describe the business the same way. Bing asks site owners to name businesses, people, products and places clearly and consistently. Source: Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗
5. Give each service one clear page, with the key facts near the top. Say what you do, where, for whom, a price guide if you can, and how to contact you. Answer the questions customers actually ask. Bing recommends one topic per page with key information early; Google says you do not need to chop content into tiny chunks or write in a special way for AI. Source: Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗, Google: optimising for generative AI search ↗
6. Show real proof. Genuine reviews, case studies you have permission to share, and qualifications. Ask every customer for a review the same way. Never pay for reviews, offer discounts for them, only ask happy customers, or write them yourself. Source: ACCC: online reviews ↗, Google review policy ↗
7. Get mentioned on trusted sites the honest way. Industry associations, local media, supplier and partner pages, and genuine directories. Google says chasing inauthentic mentions across the web “isn’t as helpful as it might seem”. Source: Google: optimising for generative AI search ↗
8. Add structured data where Google documents it. For example, LocalBusiness markup needs your name and address. It must match what is visible on the page. Google says structured data is not required for AI search; Bing says it “may support clearer grounding” but does not guarantee visibility. Source: Google: LocalBusiness markup ↗, Google: optimising for generative AI search ↗, Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗
9. Keep pages current and tell search engines when they change. Bing recommends IndexNow and an XML sitemap with accurate last-modified dates. Source: Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗
10. Set up the free reports, then check by hand each month. Turn on Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, then do the monthly manual check described above. Source: Google: generative AI performance report ↗, Bing AI Performance ↗

If the checklist is more than you have time for, that is where an agency or consultant can help. The rest of this guide covers what they do, what they charge and how to choose one.

What AI search agencies typically deliver.

From about 35 Australian provider pages we checked on 25 October 2026. This is what is commonly offered, not a recommendation.

• AI visibility audit: asking ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, and sometimes Claude, a set of buyer questions and recording who gets named. Often free; the paid ones we saw were $390 and $750.
• Technical checks: crawler access, indexing, structured data and site speed.
• Brand consistency: making sure the business is described the same way across its website, Business Profile and listings.
• Content work: answer-first service pages, FAQs, comparison and pricing content.
• Digital PR and mentions: getting the business named on news, industry and review sites.
• Monthly reporting: citation counts, “share of AI voice”, sentiment and visits from AI tools in website analytics such as GA4.

Most offer it inside an SEO retainer rather than as a separate product. A few sell one-off checks.

What it costs: published Australian prices.

Most of the Australian provider pages we checked don’t publish prices. These are the prices published by businesses listed in our directory, exactly as shown on their own sites, checked 25 October 2026. Prices change; confirm in writing.

Five other Australian agencies we checked publish monthly prices, from about $900 to $6,800 a month, often as part of an SEO retainer. Several call their prices indicative or starting points. One said its prices exclude GST; the others did not say. One software tool offers self-serve plans from A$99 a month, but that is software you run yourself, not an agency service.

In short: published prices ranged from a free or $390 one-off check to monthly retainers of about $900 to $6,800. That is not a market average. Always ask whether GST is included and what the minimum term is. For AI consulting prices more broadly, see our AI consulting costs guide and the State of AI consulting in Australia report.

Red flags.

• Guaranteed recommendations or citations in ChatGPT, Google AI or Copilot. Google: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Bing: GEO “does not guarantee grounding or citations”. The ACCC says claims about future results need reasonable grounds at the time they are made, and a business must be able to back up what it advertises. ACCC: false or misleading claims ↗
• “Secret” methods or a special relationship with Google or OpenAI. Google lists claimed special relationships and secretive behaviour as warning signs. Google: Do you need an SEO? ↗
• Fake or bought reviews, or only asking happy customers. ACCC: “It’s against the law for a business to create fake or misleading reviews or to arrange for others to do so.” HealthEngine was ordered to pay $2.9 million, including over misleading patient reviews. Google bans incentivised reviews and selectively asking for positive ones. ACCC: online reviews ↗ Google review policy ↗
• Mass-produced pages: hundreds of suburb or question pages with the same text. Google calls this scaled content abuse; Bing lists auto-generated content at scale as abuse.
• Hidden text or instructions aimed at AI (“prompt injection”). Bing lists this as abuse that can get a site removed.
• Paying mainly for an llms.txt file or “AI schema”. Google says Search doesn’t use llms.txt and needs no special schema.
• A single AI ranking score with no explanation of how it is measured.
• Asking for full (write) access to your Search Console for an audit. Google lists this as a warning sign; read access is enough.

Questions to ask an AI search agency.

Adapted from Google’s “Do you need an SEO?” page, plus questions specific to AI search. Send the same questions to two or three providers and compare the written answers.

1. Which AI tools will you track (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, Copilot, Perplexity, Claude), and how exactly do you measure whether we appear?
2. Can we see the actual questions you will test, and the raw answers each month, not just a score?
3. What will you change on our site, and what will you do off-site? Will you explain each change and why?
4. Do you follow Google Search Essentials and the Bing Webmaster Guidelines?
5. What results do you expect, over what timeframe, and how will we know if it is not working?
6. Is this a separate service or part of an SEO retainer? What is included each month, in hours or deliverables?
7. Can you show past work for a business like ours, with the client’s permission?
8. How do you get mentions or reviews? (Listen for anything paid, incentivised or fake.)
9. Do your prices include GST? What is the minimum term, and how do we exit?
10. Who owns the content, accounts and data if we leave?

For a ready-to-send version, use our free AI tender template, and see the wider guide to choosing an AI consultant.

Who can help.

These businesses in our directory publish an AI search service on their own sites (checked 25 October 2026). A to Z, not ranked. The notes show the service is offered, not that it works, and a listing is not an endorsement.

• Automatrix (Albury NSW) offers a free AI Visibility Checker covering crawler access, structured data and a live Claude test. It labels its ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity results as estimates. Paid fixes are offered through a call, with no published prices.
• Coastie AI (Central Coast NSW) says it helps businesses get found on Google and in AI answers. It publishes a $390 + GST AI Visibility Check and monthly plans, and states “AI recommendations cannot be guaranteed.”
• Connect Your Way (Canberra ACT) offers SEO for Google Search, Google Maps and AI answers, billed at $100 an hour with monthly Search Console reporting. It is mainly an AI integration business.
• Saltwater AI (Sydney NSW) offers a GEO & AI Visibility Audit across four AI platforms for $750 one-time.

Browse every listed business that offers this in our Get found in AI search category, or tell us what you need and we will suggest businesses that fit.

Get matched with the right help

Common questions.

What is GEO?

Generative engine optimisation: making your business easier for AI tools like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode and Copilot to find, understand and cite.

Is GEO different from SEO?

Mostly not. Google calls it “still SEO” and Bing says the same foundations apply. The differences are in what you can measure and how few businesses get named in an answer.

What is the difference between GEO, AEO and AI SEO?

Different labels for the same goal. Ask what work is actually done.

Can an agency guarantee my business will be recommended by ChatGPT?

No. Bing’s guidelines say GEO doesn’t guarantee citations, and Google says no one can guarantee rankings.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Not for Google Search, which doesn’t use it. It is a proposal, not a standard.

Do I need special schema for AI?

No. Google says no special schema.org markup is needed. Normal structured data, such as LocalBusiness, can still help with rich results and must match the page.

Should I block GPTBot?

That is a choice about AI training. Blocking GPTBot doesn’t remove you from ChatGPT search; blocking OAI-SearchBot does.

How do I see if AI is mentioning my business?

Use Search Console’s generative AI report for Google, Bing Webmaster Tools’ AI Performance report for Copilot, and a monthly manual check of real customer questions.

How much does AI SEO cost in Australia?

Most agencies don’t publish prices. Those that did (checked 25 October 2026) ranged from a free or $390 one-off check to roughly $900 to $6,800 a month, usually bundled with SEO. See the prices.

How long does it take?

No official source sets a timeframe. Agency pages we checked mentioned 2 to 3 months and 3 to 6 months as expectations, not promises. Treat any fixed date with caution.

What is an AI SEO checklist?

A list of basic checks to make your business easier for AI tools to find and describe accurately. Use our 10-step checklist.

Is Google AI Mode available in Australia?

Yes, in English since 8 October 2025. AI Overviews have been available since 29 October 2024.

Sources and limits

Find AI Consultants prepared this AI-assisted guide from the pages below, checked 25 October 2026. Platforms change these features often. Provider claims and prices are their own, as published. A listing is not an endorsement. This is not legal advice.

• Google: AI features and your website ↗, optimising for generative AI search ↗, May 2025 blog post ↗, Search generative AI control ↗, generative AI performance report ↗, Google-Extended ↗, Do you need an SEO? ↗, structured data ↗, LocalBusiness markup ↗, Business Profile guidelines ↗ and review policy ↗
• Google Australia: AI Overviews launch ↗ and AI Mode launch ↗
• Microsoft: Bing Webmaster Guidelines ↗, AI Performance ↗ and Citation Share ↗
• OpenAI: overview of OpenAI crawlers ↗
• Perplexity: crawlers ↗ and how Perplexity works ↗
• Anthropic: crawlers and how to block them ↗
• ACCC: false or misleading claims ↗ and online reviews ↗
• llmstxt.org ↗
• Aggarwal and others, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (arXiv) ↗ and full text ↗
• Listed providers’ own pages: Automatrix ↗, Coastie AI ↗, Connect Your Way ↗ and Saltwater AI ↗

Prices from agencies not listed in our directory are summarised as a range without names. We could not open one OpenAI help page directly, so nothing in this guide relies on it.