Generative engine optimization for a local business: what to do first

Is GEO different from local SEO?

Mostly no: the foundations are the same, and a business that has done its local SEO is halfway there. Three things change. What the assistant reads is wider than the map pack: in our October 2026 Gemini study it cited 7.6 web pages per answer, and in our September scans ChatGPT opened 2.4 pages and Gemini 3.8. Either way it is a handful of pages, so being on those pages matters more than ranking first. What you measure changes from a position to a yes or no, named or not. And that yes or no moves: ask again and the list changes. The assistant also never searches the customer's exact words; what is answer engine optimization shows what it searches for instead.

The table maps the usual local SEO jobs to what changes for GEO, with what we measured.

What should a local business do first? A GEO checklist in order

In order: find your trade's platform, complete your profile there, complete your Google Business Profile, publish a prices page and a page per problem, let the crawlers in, and make your details identical everywhere. Work from the change that reaches the most answers for the least effort; where we have a number for a step, it is in the step.

• Find your trade's platform. Look up your trade in the table in the next section, or ask an assistant your customers' question and note which sites it cites. In French cities one platform often carries most answers; in English-speaking cities it is spread over three or four.
• Get listed there, with a complete profile. Where the platform shows reviews, as Zocdoc, Treatwell or Fresha do, collect recent ones. Gemini often reads these pages, so a missing or half-empty profile is the gap most worth closing first. We measured which sites Gemini cites, not whether a profile there gets a business named.
• Complete your Google Business Profile. It is free and quick, so do it in the first week. It matters most for Google's own AI: AI Mode and Gemini in Maps lean on it, even though Gemini with Google Search rarely quotes it as a page.
• Publish the two pages AI cannot find elsewhere: one with your prices or price ranges, and one for each problem you fix ("leaking boiler", "cracked tooth"). In the study, value-for-money and specific-problem questions were the ones Gemini most often answered without naming anyone.
• Let the crawlers in. Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt for ChatGPT search, and make sure Google and Bing index your service pages; how to get into ChatGPT search has the details.
• Make your details identical everywhere. Asked for the phone numbers of 40 established businesses with search switched off, Gemini got the number wrong 59 times out of 80. With search on, it was right 71 times out of 80, taking the number from the pages it read. Every mismatch on those pages is a risk (wrong information guide).

Does GEO work differently for a restaurant, a dentist or a plumber?

Yes. Which sites Gemini reads, and how often it names anyone, depends on the trade and the country. The table comes from our October 2026 study of Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite with Google Search, run through Google's developer platform rather than the Gemini app: 8 customer questions per trade, each asked 3 times, in six English-speaking cities and in Paris, Lyon and Marseille. The Gemini app may behave differently.

Two patterns stand out. Health trades in France are the hardest: Gemini often names no practice and sends people to Doctolib, so for a French dentist or physiotherapist the Doctolib profile is the first thing to get right. Restaurants are the opposite: Gemini almost always names places but spreads its picks across dozens of them, so press, guides and community posts matter more than any single listing; our Reddit analysis shows which threads it reads. The full study has every trade and city.

How do you measure GEO for one location?

Your GEO score is a rate: the share of answers that name you, over a handful of real questions asked more than once, per assistant. One screenshot is not a measurement: in our study, a business Gemini named once had a 56% chance of being named again for the identical question, and only a quarter of the businesses named for a question came back in all three asks.

• Pick five to eight questions your customers really ask, including a price question and a problem question. Ask each one three times on each assistant, with web search on and the city named in the question. Your score is the share of answers that name you; an answer written without search shows what the model remembers, not what a customer sees.
• Check ChatGPT and Gemini separately. In our September scans they shared at least one recommended business in only 51% of trade-and-city pairs, so a good result on one says little about the other.
• Note the sources cited when you are not named: they are your to-do list.
• Watch the visits too. Since May 2026, Google Analytics 4 has an AI Assistant channel for visits from ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and other assistants; visits from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode still count as organic search. Search Console now has a generative AI report with impressions, not clicks, from AI Overviews and AI Mode (both read on 15 October 2026).
• Repeat monthly with the same questions. Our guide to AI visibility metrics explains how to read the trend, and the free AI visibility checker runs the questions for you.

Should you hire a GEO agency or do it yourself?

For a small business with one location, most of the checklist is owner work: claiming and completing two or three profiles, asking customers for reviews, checking robots.txt and writing a prices page need no specialist. Where help earns its fee is the slower work: writing pages for each service and problem, and getting covered by local press and guides, which is what moves the needle for restaurants and aesthetic clinics.

Published agency retainers for AI search ranged from $150 to more than $3,000 a month when we read them on 5 October 2026. Our guide to AI search optimization services lists who charges what and the red flags; if you want a one-off diagnosis first, an AI visibility audit (or GEO audit) shows where you stand before you pay for anything monthly.