Get Found by ChatGPT: The GEO Session From the AI Business Retreat

Here is how to get found by ChatGPT, in short: make every place it reads about local businesses say the same true things about you, and answer your buyers' questions near the top of your own pages. In practice that means a complete Google Business Profile, accurate Yelp and directory listings, a steady flow of recent reviews, and a website that AI search crawlers are allowed to read. This work is called generative engine optimization, or GEO. It was the subject of Aaron Libner's session at the AI Business Retreat in Spooner, Wisconsin, on September 15, 2026. Below is what the session covered, the published research behind it, and a 30-day plan you can run yourself.

What the GEO session covered#

"Get Found by ChatGPT: SEO Is Now GEO" opened the Sales and Marketing track at 9:00 a.m., right after the all-attendee welcome. It was taught by Aaron Libner, president of Coulee Tech's Eau Claire market and a Certified AIBMM Executive Coach. It was built for whoever owns marketing and growth: a GM, a sales and marketing leader, or the owner wearing that hat.

The Get Found by ChatGPT session page lists four parts:

1. How ChatGPT, Claude and Grok decide which businesses to recommend
2. GEO versus SEO: what still matters and what is brand new
3. The citations and content moves that shift AI answers
4. A 30-day get-found plan

The idea behind it: more buyers now ask an AI assistant who to hire. The assistant answers with a few names, not a page of links, and a business that is not named may never hear from that buyer. The sections below follow those four parts, with the published research behind each.

Why is SEO now GEO?#

BrightLocal's Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (opens in a new tab), a panel of 1,002 US adults, found that use of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools for local recommendations rose from 6% in the previous year's survey to 45%. That made AI the third most popular source of business recommendations in the survey.

The term GEO comes from a 2023 research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (opens in a new tab), published at the KDD 2024 conference. Its authors tested content changes against a benchmark of 10,000 queries and report that GEO "can boost visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses."

GEO does not replace SEO. Google says there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary" (opens in a new tab) beyond normal search best practices. What GEO changes is the emphasis: more weight on what other websites say about you, and on whether your pages answer questions in a form an assistant can quote. For the fundamentals, start with our guide to AI search marketing and getting found by AI answer engines.

How do ChatGPT, Claude and Grok decide which businesses to recommend?#

None of them publishes a formula. What the vendors' own documentation and the measured studies do show is where the answers come from. (Choosing which assistant your own team should use is a separate question, covered in our ChatGPT, Claude, or Grok buyer's guide.)

They read the live web, if you let them#

ChatGPT and Claude use their own crawlers to find and read pages for search. OpenAI's crawler documentation (opens in a new tab) says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot "will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers," and that a robots.txt change can take about 24 hours to reach its search systems. Anthropic's crawler help page (opens in a new tab) says blocking Claude-SearchBot may reduce your site's visibility and accuracy in Claude's search results.

These settings go wrong quietly. When we pointed an AI agent at our own website for a weekend, it found our robots.txt inviting crawlers into private paths, and the file we had written for AI crawlers left out our services entirely. Nothing looked broken until something checked.

They lean on listings and review sites#

BrightLocal's August 2026 study of the sources behind local AI answers (opens in a new tab) ran 60,970 checks across 1,355 business locations in the US, UK and Australia, in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. Among its findings:

• Yelp was ChatGPT's most common local source, appearing in 80% of its answers.
• Google Business Profile was the source of choice for Google's own AI Overviews and AI Mode.
• The researchers identified 415 directories used as sources, including long-standing ones like the Better Business Bureau, Angi's List and MapQuest, plus industry-specific sites.
• Around 93% of the domains cited were individual business websites.

The takeaway: assistants build their picture of you from what other sites say about you and from what your own site says. BrightLocal did not test Claude or Grok, so read those numbers as ChatGPT and Google only.

GEO vs SEO: what still matters, what is new#

The GEO paper also measured what does not work. In the full paper (opens in a new tab), keyword stuffing, a classic SEO habit, offered "little to no improvement" in generative engine responses. The top performers were adding citations to credible sources, quotations and statistics, with a relative improvement of 30 to 40% on one of the paper's visibility measures. Lower-ranked websites gained the most: citing sources lifted visibility 115.1% for sites ranked fifth in search results. That was a research benchmark, not a study of local recommendations, so treat it as direction rather than a promise.

Why reviews and listings matter for AI answers#

Look again at BrightLocal's top two sources: Google Business Profile and Yelp. Both carry customer reviews. The work that helps you in Google's local results is largely the same work that feeds AI answers.

Google's own guidance on local ranking (opens in a new tab) says prominence is based partly on how many reviews you have, and that "more reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." It also says businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to show up in local results. Google's AI features guidance (opens in a new tab) makes the same point for AI answers: it tells site owners to check that their Business Profile information is up to date.

Buyers read the same signals. In BrightLocal's 2026 consumer survey (opens in a new tab), 47% of consumers said they won't use a business with fewer than 20 reviews, 74% only care about reviews written in the last three months, and 80% said they are likely to use a business that responds to all of its reviews.

What to do:

• Claim and verify your Google Business Profile. Fill in every field and keep hours current.
• Claim your Yelp page, even if you are not a restaurant or a shop.
• Check the BBB, your chamber of commerce and two or three directories specific to your industry.
• Make your name, address, phone and hours match exactly everywhere. Close duplicates and listings under old names.
• Ask for a review after every finished job, and reply to every review, good or bad.

When we built our own Q4 SEO and GEO plan, we found our listings disagree about our address in several directories. Fixing them is part of that plan.

Answer the question at the top of the page#

A page that answers a buyer's question in its first two sentences is easy for an assistant to quote. Google's AI features guidance points the same way: make sure important content is available as text, and make sure your structured data matches the visible text on the page.

1. List the questions. Write down 10 questions buyers ask on the phone before they hire you. "Do you service boilers in Menomonie?" "How fast can you come out?"
2. Answer first. Give each question a page or a clear section, and answer it in the first two sentences, with specifics: what you do, where, how fast and for whom.
3. Back it up. Support claims with a source or a number you can stand behind. That is the paper's "cite sources" and "statistics" finding, applied honestly.
4. Name real places. Our Eau Claire IT services page names Eau Claire, Chippewa Falls, Menomonie and Rice Lake because those are the Chippewa Valley communities that office serves.
5. Add LocalBusiness structured data. Google's LocalBusiness documentation (opens in a new tab) requires your name and address and recommends hours, phone number and URL. Keep it identical to what visitors see.

A 30-day plan to get found by ChatGPT#

The session's fourth part was a 30-day get-found plan. Here is a version you can run on your own.

Week 1: Find out what AI says about you now#

• Write about 10 questions a buyer would ask, such as "Who is a good commercial electrician in La Crosse?" Add "What can you tell me about [your company]?"
• Ask ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini with web search turned on. Record whether you were named, where on the list, which pages were cited, and who was named instead.
• Save the exact wording. Answers vary from run to run, so read across all your questions rather than judging one answer.
• Open your robots.txt file and make sure it does not block OAI-SearchBot or Claude-SearchBot.

Week 2: Fix your listings#

• Work through the listing checklist above: Google Business Profile, Yelp, the BBB, your chamber and your industry directories.
• One name, one address, one phone number, one set of hours everywhere.

Week 3: Rewrite your top pages answer-first#

• Start with your homepage, your top three service pages and each location page.
• Add a short FAQ built from real buyer questions, plus LocalBusiness structured data.

Week 4: Start the review habit and measure again#

• Make the review request part of closing every job, and reply to every review.
• Re-run your Week 1 questions word for word and compare the answers.
• Put a monthly reminder on the calendar. Listings drift, reviews age, and assistants change how they search, so this is a habit, not a project.

Frequently asked questions#

Free AI training on the first Friday#

If you want to keep learning practical AI with other business owners, join our free AIBMM monthly training. It is an online session on the first Friday of every month at 8 a.m. Central, with time set aside for questions. Register for the free first-Friday AI training and bring your Week 1 results.