How to Get Your Business Found in ChatGPT and AI Search (2026)

More Australians are asking ChatGPT and AI search for recommendations instead of scrolling ten blue links. Here is how to be the business the AI names.

By ECTD Editorial · Published 2026-07-17

More Australians are asking ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot for recommendations instead of scrolling through ten blue links. When someone types “best bookkeeper in Geelong” or “how much does a website cost in Australia” into an AI assistant, it writes them an answer — and names a few businesses. If yours isn’t one of them, you’re invisible to a fast-growing slice of buyers.

Getting found inside those AI answers has a name: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO. The good news is it isn’t a whole new discipline you have to learn from scratch — it builds directly on the SEO fundamentals many businesses already have in place, plus a few habits that make your information easy for an AI to trust and repeat.

What GEO is (and how it differs from SEO)

Traditional SEO optimises your pages to rank in a list of links. GEO optimises so that when an AI writes an answer, your business is the one it cites, quotes or recommends. The mechanics are different: instead of ranking a single page, the AI reads dozens of sources, synthesises an answer in its own words, and — increasingly — names businesses and links out to a handful of sources it considers reliable.

So the goal shifts from “rank number one” to “be one of the trusted sources the model draws on.” That means being clear, factual, consistent and easy to quote — not stuffing keywords.

Why this matters now for Australian businesses

AI assistants are moving from novelty to default for a lot of commercial questions — “best X near me”, “how much does Y cost”, “who should I use for Z”. Google’s AI Overviews now sit above the normal results for many searches, and tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini answer directly. A growing share of these are “zero-click”: the person gets their answer without visiting a website at all.

That cuts both ways. If the AI never mentions you, you lose the customer silently. But if it does name you — “you could try [your business], which specialises in…” — you get something better than a link: a recommendation, delivered with the AI’s implied endorsement, often with a link to your site attached.

How AI engines decide who to mention

No one has the exact recipe, but the patterns are consistent across the major models. They favour:

Content that answers the question directly and specifically — real prices, real steps, real Australian context — rather than vague marketing copy.
A clearly identifiable entity: the same business name, ABN, location and categories everywhere the model looks (your site, Google Business Profile, directories).
Corroboration across multiple independent sources — reviews, citations and mentions on reputable Australian sites — not just claims on your own website.
Clean structure and structured data (FAQ, Product, Organization and LocalBusiness schema) that make your facts easy to extract.
Freshness and internal consistency — models are wary of contradictory or out-of-date information.

A practical GEO checklist

Answer the real questions your customers ask, in plain language, with specifics — including prices and the Australian angle.
Add and validate structured data: FAQ schema on question pages, Organization and LocalBusiness schema sitewide, Product schema on service pages.
Make your entity consistent: identical business name, ABN, address, phone and categories across your website, Google Business Profile and any directory listings.
Earn corroboration: genuine reviews from real customers, and mentions or citations on reputable Australian websites and industry directories.
Keep a clear, factual “about”, pricing and service-area section so the essentials are trivial for an AI to lift.
Publish helpful, answer-shaped content regularly, and keep facts current — stale or contradictory pages get passed over.

GEO doesn’t replace SEO: The same fundamentals — clear content, structured data, a consistent entity and genuine authority — feed both. Do the basics well and you show up in the blue links and in the AI answers. Treat GEO as an extension of good SEO, not a replacement for it.

Where to start

If you already do solid SEO, you’re most of the way there — tighten your structured data, make your key facts unambiguous, and shore up your reviews and citations. If you’re starting cold, get the technical foundation and content structure right first, because a site an AI can’t parse won’t be quoted no matter how good the business is.

If you’d rather have it checked and done for you, ECTD offers an AI Search (GEO) Readiness Audit that assesses exactly these signals, an SEO Article Pack that produces the answer-shaped content AI engines favour, and a Website Audit that covers the technical and structured-data foundation underneath it all.

General information only — not personal financial, tax, legal or medical advice. Consider your own situation and consult a licensed professional before acting. Figures are current as at the date shown above.