Guide
What AI search means for your small business
AI is the buzzword of the year, everything from your interactions with a company’s customer service to news reports and posts you see on social media platforms are all touched by AI. For your small business this means that your potential customers aren’t only using Google to find recommendations for the service they need – and even Google tries to answer the users query directly on the page, before offering up the more traditional blue links from relevant businesses.
You may have heard this called GEO
Or AI SEO, or some other combination of these letters. If you’ve been researching any kind of SEO, there’s a decent chance one of these terms appeared in it. GEO stands for generative engine optimisation, and it’s being talked about as though it’s a completely new discipline sitting separate from SEO, with its own specialists and pricing.
At its heart SEO is about matching a users query with the most useful and relevant answer, regardless of the tools being used. AI tools are drawing on largely the same signals search engines have always used: what a website says about itself, how clearly it says it, whether other sources corroborate it, and whether real customers vouch for it through reviews. The tools are new, but the underlying reasons a business gets recommended are not.
What actually makes AI tools recommend a business
These will no doubt sound familiar
Be clear about what you do and where if you operate in a specific region, make it clear. Explain your services as though you are talking to someone who has never heard of them, don’t use jargon or assume people will know what you mean. A website that’s vague on any of this is easy to skip past in favour of a competitor who spells it out.
Consistency across the web. If your business name, address and phone number are slightly different on your website, your Google Business Profile and any directory listings, that’s a trust problem for a customer and a bigger one for a tool trying to confirm you’re a reliable business that’s currently trading.
Genuine reviews, and recent ones too. Reviews are one of the clearest trust signals available, for search engines and AI tools alike. A business with a healthy number of honest, recent reviews has a real advantage, and there’s no shortcut that replaces actually being good at what you do and asking happy customers to say so.
Content that answers real questions and concerns. AI tools are very good at finding and summarising answers to questions. If your website has useful answers to your customers most common questions, like “how much does a boiler service cost” or “what’s included in a full car service” it gives these tools something concrete to draw from and your customers feel reassured too. A website that only talks about itself in vague terms gives very little to work with.
What this means for you
If you’re already doing this properly as part of your current SEO work, you’re already in reasonable shape for AI search. Your SEO Roadmap should include making sure your website clearly describes your services and area, your listings are consistent, you’re gathering reviews and your content answers questions customers actually ask, you’re doing the substance of what AI visibility requires.
Where it’s worth paying deliberate attention is that your service pages genuinely answer the questions customers ask rather than just describing what you offer in general terms, and that your Google Business Profile and directory listings say exactly the same thing about your business everywhere they appear. Those two things, done properly, do more for AI visibility than many of the other GEO-specific tactics you might see being promoted online.
one last word of caution
Nobody can promise placement in an AI-generated answer, in the same way no one can guarantee the top spot on Google search results.
WHAT NEXT
Where to go from here
Try using your AI tool of choice to ask questions about the services you offer – it’s a good way to get ideas!
Whether you keep working with an SEO consultant on this, or manage it yourself, the priorities remain the same for SEO, GEO and AI Overviews.