How Do ChatGPT and Gemini Recommend a Business? A Practical Guide to GEO

When a customer asks ChatGPT or Gemini for "the best AC maintenance company in Dubai" or "a laundry that delivers near me", the assistant builds its answer from what it already knows and from sources it finds on the web. Your job is to make sure your business information in those sources is clear, consistent and trustworthy. This guide explains how these answers are formed, what GEO means and which practical steps you can start on today.

How do AI assistants build their answers?

There are two main sources of information:

• Training data: the model learned from a huge volume of text published on the web up to a certain date. If your business is described clearly and repeatedly in public sources, the model may know about it without searching at all.
• Live retrieval: some tools, such as ChatGPT with search enabled, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews, search the web at the moment of the question, summarise what they find and show links to the sources they cited.

Either way, an assistant doesn't recommend a business because it was paid to. It does so because it found enough clear, matching information from more than one source. The vaguer or more contradictory your business description is across the web, the less likely it is to mention you with confidence.

What is GEO, and how does it relate to SEO?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: improving your visibility in engines that generate answers rather than just returning a list of links. SEO focuses on how your pages rank in traditional search results.

The two work together. Many AI tools lean on search results when they retrieve information live, so a fast, well-indexed site with genuinely useful content is still the foundation. GEO adds extra weight on a clear business identity, direct answers and brand mentions on trusted external sites. If your SEO basics aren't in place yet, start there with our SEO service.

Practical steps to improve your visibility

1. Make your business details consistent everywhere

Your business name, address, phone number, list of services and opening hours should match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile, business directories and social media accounts. A slightly different name or an old phone number in one directory is enough to leave engines unsure whether two listings are the same business.

2. Add structured data (Schema)

Structured data is code that visitors don't see but that tells engines who you are and what you offer. The most useful types for most businesses are:

• Organization: name, logo and links to official profiles.
• LocalBusiness or ProfessionalService: address, phone, opening hours and service area.
• Service: a description of each service on its own page.
• FAQPage: frequently asked questions and their answers.
• Article: for blog posts, with author, publish date and last update.

3. Write answer-first content

Open every page and article with a direct answer in two or three sentences, then go into detail. Assistants find it far easier to quote a short, clear paragraph than to extract meaning from long, generic copy. Build FAQ pages around the real questions customers ask you on the phone and on WhatsApp: rough prices, timelines, the areas you cover and what sets you apart.

4. One clear page per service

Give every service its own page that opens with a one-line definition, such as "We provide home AC maintenance in Dubai and Sharjah within 24 hours of booking", provided that is actually true. A specific sentence helps the engine match your business to the right question. Phrases like "integrated solutions" tell it nothing.

5. An llms.txt file

This is a plain-text file at the root of your site that summarises your key pages for language models in a simple format. Be aware that it is an emerging proposal, not a standard that every engine follows, but it is easy to add and does no harm. comedia.ae itself publishes an llms.txt file at /llms.txt, as part of practising what we recommend to clients.

6. Decide whether to allow AI crawlers

Your robots.txt file controls which bots may visit your site. Well-known AI-related crawlers and tokens include GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot from OpenAI, ClaudeBot from Anthropic, PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended, which controls whether your content is used for Gemini models without affecting how you appear in Google Search. Some of these collect training data; others power live search and answers. Allowing or blocking them is a business decision, but if your goal is to be mentioned, blocking them reduces your chances. Check your file: plenty of sites block these bots without their owners realising it.

7. Reviews and mentions on trusted sites

Customer reviews on your Google profile and mentions of your business in news sites, specialist directories and comparison articles are all signals engines use to judge trust. Ask happy customers for reviews regularly, and reply to reviews professionally.

8. Arabic and English content

Customers in the UAE ask in both languages. Having equivalent Arabic and English pages, rather than weak machine translation, improves your chances of appearing whichever language the question is asked in.

Common mistakes that hurt your visibility

• Text locked inside images: engines read text, so if your services and service areas only appear inside images and designs, they won't understand them easily.
• One page for everything: putting every service on a single general page makes it hard to connect your business to the specific question a customer asks.
• Outdated information: an old address or a discontinued service still listed in a directory or on a social account you no longer use.
• Copied or unreviewed AI-written content: it adds nothing new and gives the engine no reason to quote or cite it.
• A slow site that isn't mobile-friendly: it weakens you in traditional search, and therefore in the tools that rely on it. If your site needs rebuilding, see our web design service.

How do you measure visibility?

There is no single tool yet that measures all of this precisely, but this approach works in practice:

1. Write down 10 to 20 questions your customers genuinely ask, in Arabic and English.
2. Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity every month, and record whether your business is mentioned, whether the details are correct and which competitors appear.
3. Watch your website analytics for visits from these platforms, as some of them show up as referral sources.
4. Fix any wrong information at its source: your website, your Google profile or the directory that published it.

Answers vary between users and from one day to the next, so look at the trend over several months rather than any single answer.

Realistic expectations

Nobody can guarantee that ChatGPT or Gemini will recommend you, and anyone who promises it is overselling. The field is new and the way these engines work changes quickly. What you can do is make your business easy to understand, credible and consistent everywhere, and every one of these steps also helps you on Google and with customers themselves.

Next step

Start with a quick check: ask the assistants about your service in your city, and review your business details and your robots.txt file. If you want a complete plan covering structured data, content, llms.txt and ongoing monitoring, see our AI search optimization service and book your free first consultation through our contact page.