How are GEO, AEO and SEO different?
SEO wins positions in Google's list of links. AEO wins the quoted answer inside Google's own results, and is mostly done on your pages. GEO wins a recommendation inside a conversation with a chat assistant, which blends what the model learned in training with live web searches. Because that answer is assembled from many sources, the work shifts outward: what other sites say about you, how consistent your facts are, and whether assistants can read your site at all.
Why do brand mentions and citations matter so much?
An assistant recommending a contractor or clinic is summarizing what the web broadly agrees on. A business mentioned in a local news story, an industry association directory, a supplier's project page, a "best of" roundup and a community forum looks established. One that only appears on its own website looks unverified. GEO outreach means earning genuine mentions on sources assistants are likely to trust, with your name, city and specialty stated the same way each time. It is closer to PR than to traditional link building.
What is llms.txt and does my site need one?
llms.txt is a proposed convention: a plain markdown file at the root of your site that gives language models a short summary of who you are and links to your most important pages. It is not an official standard, and major assistant providers have not confirmed they rely on it. It is cheap to create and keep accurate, so we add one as a low-cost hedge, but we never sell it as the thing that gets you recommended.
Can AI crawlers actually read your website?
Many cannot read sites that build their content in the browser with JavaScript, so a page that looks fine to you may look empty to them. Server-rendered HTML solves that. The other common problem is robots.txt: some sites block crawlers such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot or ClaudeBot by accident, often through a security plugin or hosting default. We audit both, then make a deliberate choice with you about which crawlers to allow for search and which to restrict for training.
How do reviews influence AI recommendations?
When someone asks for a well-reviewed provider, assistants look for review evidence they can find and summarize. Google reviews matter, but so do reviews on industry platforms, home renovation directories for trades, health directories for clinics and legal directories for law firms. The words in reviews matter too: if customers keep mentioning "on time" or "great with anxious patients", those phrases tend to appear in the summary of your business. Spreading genuine reviews across a few relevant platforms beats piling them all in one place.
Why must your business facts be identical everywhere?
Assistants combine information from many sources into one description. If your old address is still on three directories, your hours differ between your site and your profile, or a former business name lingers on an association page, the model may repeat the wrong version, or hedge and leave you out. Consistent name, address and phone, along with consistent service descriptions and founding details, let every source reinforce the same picture. This is the base layer of GEO, and it is checked again after any move or rebrand.
