What is GEO, and does a Lothian business need it?

Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the work of making your business easy for an AI assistant to find, understand and quote when somebody asks it a question. Where search engine optimisation (SEO) aims to get a page higher in Google's list of links, generative engine optimisation aims to have your business named inside the answer itself, by tools like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews (the AI summaries shown above the ordinary results) and AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot.

That is the whole definition. The rest of this article is about whether it matters for a small business in Edinburgh or the Lothians, what you can do about it this month for nothing, and when it honestly does not matter yet.

How is GEO different from SEO?

They overlap more than either camp admits, but the difference is real and it is about what winning looks like.

SEO competes for a position. Ten links, a map with a few businesses pinned on it, and the prize is a click on yours. GEO competes for a mention. Somebody asks an assistant "who does emergency boiler repair near Musselburgh", and the assistant writes a paragraph naming two or three businesses. You are either in that paragraph or you do not exist for that question. There is no page two to be on.

The second difference is the shape of the question. People type three words into Google and whole sentences into a chatbot. "Plumber Dalkeith" becomes "my boiler is leaking and I need someone in Dalkeith who can come out today. Who should I call and roughly what will it cost". Those long questions contain the answer's requirements, which is why pages that plainly state hours, areas covered, call-out policy and price ranges get quoted and vague ones do not.

The third difference is that the work is largely the same work. Fast, well-structured pages with clear facts and honest answers have always been what search rewarded. GEO raises the price of being vague.

Is this actually happening or is it hype?

Both, which is the annoying answer. The measured parts:

• Gartner predicted traditional search volume would fall by 25% by the end of 2026 as people put questions to assistants instead.
• Visitors sent to small business websites by AI tools rose 123% over a short window in 2025, an enormous percentage increase on a small base, which is the honest way to read it.
• Roughly 47% of brands have no GEO strategy at all, which is the gap.
• More than half of UK firms now report using AI in the business, up from 35% in 2025 and 25% in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics. Your customers are using these tools whether or not you are.

What is hype is the idea that this has replaced Google for local trade. It has not, and a business that abandons its Google Business Profile to chase mentions in chatbots has swapped a certainty for a possibility. The sensible position in 2026 is that this is a second front, not a replacement.

How do AI answers choose which businesses to name?

Nobody outside those companies knows the whole mechanism, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. What is observable, and consistent across the tools, is six things.

Clear, checkable facts. An assistant will quote a sentence that says "open 8am to 6pm Monday to Friday, covering Edinburgh, Musselburgh and Dalkeith, call-out from £60" far more readily than a paragraph about passion and quality. Write the facts as sentences, not as a graphic.

Structured data. Hidden labels in your pages that tell Google and the assistants this is a business, this is its address, this is a service, this is a question and this is its answer. Content carrying those labels alongside statistics and a plain FAQ structure shows measurably higher visibility in AI answers. The figures being quoted are 30 to 40%.

A question-and-answer shape. Headings phrased as the question a person asks, answered immediately underneath in a couple of sentences. Assistants lift those paragraphs nearly word for word.

Named places. This is where a local business has a structural advantage. Geographic questions have far fewer credible sources than general ones, so naming your actual towns, not "central Scotland" but Haddington, Livingston and Penicuik, makes you the specific answer rather than a generic one.

Freshness and consistency. A page updated this year beats one last touched in 2019. And your name, address and phone number saying exactly the same thing on your site, your Google Business Profile and every directory is what lets a machine be confident it is describing one business rather than three.

Being cited elsewhere. Local press, a supplier's stockist page, a trade body listing, a chamber of commerce directory. Assistants weight what other sources say about you, not only what you say about yourself.

What can a local business do this month for free?

In rough order of return on the hour spent:

1. Fix your Google Business Profile. It underpins both local search and a lot of what assistants know about you. Half an hour, free, and there is a step-by-step guide to it here.
2. Write the facts down on your own site. Opening hours. The towns you cover, named. What you charge or a realistic range. How quickly you respond. Whether you do emergency call-outs. Most small business sites are missing at least three of those.
3. Add a short FAQ to your main pages. Six questions you actually get asked on the phone, each answered in two or three sentences directly underneath. Make sure what is in the hidden labels is exactly what a visitor sees. An answer hidden from people and shown only to machines is the kind of shortcut that gets a site penalised.
4. Ask the assistants about yourself. Genuinely: ask ChatGPT and Perplexity who they would recommend for your trade in your town. It takes ten minutes, it is free, and you will learn quickly whether you are invisible, named correctly, or described wrongly. Being described wrongly is fixable and worth knowing about.
5. Keep the site current. A price list updated this quarter is worth more than a redesign nobody maintains.

None of that requires a supplier. It requires an afternoon.

What should you ignore?

Anyone selling guaranteed placement in AI answers. There is no submission form, no paid slot in an AI Overview, no back channel. The mechanism is the same public web everyone else is reading. An agency that promises to have ChatGPT recommend you is either describing ordinary content work in expensive language, or is about to build you a network of thin, near-empty pages that will age badly.

Also ignore, for now, the tools that charge monthly to tell you how often an assistant mentions your brand. For a national brand that is a genuine measure. For a two-van plumbing firm in Tranent, asking the question yourself once a month costs nothing and tells you the same thing.

When does GEO honestly not matter yet?

If your work comes entirely from referral and repeat custom. The same answer as the one in does my small business actually need SEO, and for the same reason: you cannot optimise for a search nobody is performing.

If you do not have a website. An assistant needs something of yours to read. A Google Business Profile alone gets you some of the way, and it is the right first step, but the facts an AI answer quotes generally come from a page. Build the basics before worrying about who is citing them.

If you are already at capacity. More enquiries are a cost when you cannot service them.

If it would come at the expense of the fundamentals. A fast site, correct listings and pages that answer real questions are still the bulk of the value in 2026. The good news is that doing those well is most of GEO anyway, which is why the sensible version of this work is not a separate product but part of the SEO and Google Business Profile work any decent site should have had regardless.

If you want somebody to ask the assistants about your business with you and say plainly whether there is a gap worth closing, that is what the consultation (opens in a new tab) is for. If the specific thing you have been sold is an llms.txt file (a short text file written for AI assistants to read), there is a post on whether it does anything.