Guides

You can’t submit your business to ChatGPT.

Usually because your competitor is named on more of the pages ChatGPT reads: directories, “best of” lists, review sites and articles.

Generative engine optimization, also called GEO or AEO, means making your business easy for AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini to find, read, describe correctly and recommend.

It helps AI tools and search engines read your facts correctly, but it won’t get you recommended on its own, and Google says no special markup is needed for its AI features.

Meta says shopping is the most common use of Muse, its AI agent: over 25% of weekly users shop with it, and the average purchase is over $200, travel included.

From two places: what a model learned in training, and what its web search finds when someone asks.

AI usually repeats an outdated source: an old directory listing, a duplicate map listing, holiday hours never removed, or hours shown only in an image on your site.

Google says a page needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear as a link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, with no separate sign-up.

It depends on what you want to block.

Make sure your robots.txt doesn’t disallow the AI crawlers you want, and that no bot check turns them away.

It might be.

llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at yoursite.com/llms.txt that summarizes your business and links your key pages for AI tools.

Check two things: your robots.txt, which tells each AI crawler whether it may read your pages, and whether your site shows automated visitors a bot challenge.

AI recommends practices it can find and confirm: ones whose sites list services, insurance accepted, hours, emergency availability and location in plain text, with consistent listings and reviews on the sites AI reads.

AI names firms it can match to the exact legal problem and place.

AI recommends restaurants it can match to a cuisine, a neighborhood, a price and a time.

AI names contractors it can match to the job, the area and the urgency.

We checked 3,693 small and local business websites in 26 US cities and metro areas.

The best audit is one that asks AI the questions your customers actually ask, without naming you, and shows the full answers.

Preferly’s full report ends in a fix plan: every fix in priority order, the points it can win, the steps, and code you can paste.

Preferly shows every competitor that 10 leading AI models recommend for your customers’ questions: by name, how many models picked each one, and the sources AI cited for them.

Ask AI the questions a new customer would ask, without naming your business, and see who it recommends.

Start free, and pay once if you want the full report.