Generative engine optimisation (GEO) for firms

GEO is the work of getting your firm cited in AI answers from Google, ChatGPT and Copilot. Google says it is still SEO. Here is what to change, what to block and how to measure it.

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of getting your firm's pages found and cited when someone asks an AI system a question: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search or Microsoft Copilot. It also goes by LLM SEO, AI search optimisation and answer engine optimisation (AEO). As of September 2026, Google's published position is that there is no separate trick: to be cited in its AI features, a page has to be crawlable, indexed and eligible to show in Google Search. What changes for a law firm, accountancy practice or letting agent is how service pages answer questions, a few robots.txt decisions, and how you measure.

What GEO means, and whether it differs from SEO

The term comes from a research paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors, first posted to arXiv in November 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024 (arXiv). It studied how website owners could make their content more visible inside answers written by AI search systems.

Google now addresses the labels directly. Its guide to optimising for generative AI features, added on 15 May 2026 and last updated on 10 July 2026, says "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" (Google Search Central).

I agree, as far as Google goes. What a partner will notice is the answer sitting between the client and the website. It may name two or three firms, summarise their fees and link to them, or answer well enough that nobody clicks. The aim shifts from ranking a page to being the source the answer is built on, and to being described correctly.

How AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT search choose sources

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's guide describes two mechanisms. Grounding (retrieval-augmented generation) means the model relies on Google's core ranking systems to fetch relevant, current pages and links to them as sources. Query fan-out means the model runs several related searches at once to gather more material (Google Search Central).

Google's AI features page (last updated 10 December 2025) says there are no additional requirements to appear: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet (Google Search Central). AI Mode began rolling out in the UK on 28 July 2025 (Google UK blog), and on 19 May 2026 Google said it had passed one billion monthly users (Google blog).

Fan-out matters for firms. A question about contesting a will can trigger separate searches on time limits, costs, who can bring a claim and what evidence helps. A page that answers one of those clearly can be cited even if it ranks modestly for the main phrase. An Ahrefs study published on 2 March 2026, covering 863,000 keyword results pages, found 37.9% of URLs cited in AI Overviews also appeared in the top 10 results, down from about 76% in its July 2025 study, and suggested fan-out may be playing a bigger part (Ahrefs). That is one company's dataset, not UK-specific, and AI Overviews vary between searches, so treat it as a direction, not a rule.

ChatGPT search

OpenAI says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search if it allows OpenAI's search crawler, OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI Help Center). It also says placement is not guaranteed, that ChatGPT typically rewrites a question into one or more search queries, and that it sometimes partners with other search providers; its help page names Microsoft among them (OpenAI Help Center).

Microsoft Copilot and Bing

On 10 February 2026 Microsoft launched an AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools, in public preview. It shows how often your pages are cited across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and some partner integrations, and the grounding queries behind those citations (Bing Webmaster Blog). Microsoft also recommends IndexNow, so changes are picked up quickly, and Bing Places for Business. If your firm has never verified its site in Bing Webmaster Tools, it is a short job worth doing now.

What the 2023 GEO study found, and its limits

The Aggarwal paper built a benchmark of 10,000 queries across 25 domains and tested nine ways of rewriting source content. Its engine was GPT-3.5-turbo writing answers from the top five Google results, with a second check on Perplexity. Adding statistics, adding quotations and citing sources did best: the top methods beat the baseline by 41% on one visibility measure and 28% on another. Keyword stuffing gave little or no improvement. The authors found "Law & Government" queries benefited significantly from added statistics, and that citing sources raised visibility for fifth-ranked pages by 115.1% (arXiv).

The limits matter:

Visibility meant how much, and how prominently, a source was cited in the generated answer, not clicks, enquiries or instructions.
The engine was a research setup built on a 2023 model, not Google's AI Mode or today's ChatGPT.
The authors say methods may need to change as engines evolve, queries shift over time, and they did not test effects on search rankings.

My takeaway: specific, sourced, checkable content gets used. It is not a licence to scatter numbers through a page. An invented or stale figure on a regulated firm's website costs more than a missed citation.

What Google says you do not need to do

As of September 2026, Google's guide lists things you do not need to do for its AI features:

Create llms.txt files, other AI text files or Markdown copies of pages. Google Search does not use them, and its changelog for 15 June 2026 adds that they will not help or harm visibility or rankings (Google Search Central updates).
Break content into tiny chunks. Google says there is no ideal page length.
Write in a special style for AI or repeat every keyword variation.
Chase inauthentic mentions around the web.
Add special schema.org markup.

The guide also warns against third-party tools that promise ranking success or claim to use internal Google metrics. On 15 May 2026 Google clarified that its spam policies apply to generative AI responses too. I would treat self-published "best solicitors in Doncaster" lists that put your own firm first as a risk, not a tactic.

An llms.txt reality check

llms.txt was proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024: a Markdown file on a website giving AI tools a short, LLM-friendly guide to its content. The specification site, revised in August 2026, still calls it a proposal (llmstxt.org). Chrome's Lighthouse now checks for one in its agentic browsing audits, which concern AI agents using a site (Chrome for Developers). That is not Google Search using it, and Google's guide says creating one for other services is fine. For a firm, I would add one last, if at all.

What a law firm, accountant or letting agent should change

Answer the client's question at the top of the service page

Put the direct answer in the first two or three sentences, then the detail. Then cover the follow-ups fan-out is likely to search: cost, timescale, what the client needs to provide, what happens next, and who does the work.

Solicitors: a probate page that says plainly what happens in the first month, what the fee covers and when it changes.
Accountants: a landlord accounts page that answers what records to send and what the fixed fee includes.
Letting agents: a full management page that states the fee, what the landlord gets for it, and how repairs are handled.

The same advice works for Google, ChatGPT and Copilot, which is why I treat GEO as good SEO rather than a separate project. It is where I start with SEO for solicitors too.

Publish the facts you want repeated

AI answers repeat what they can find. If prices, services, offices and hours are vague or buried in a PDF, the answer will skip you or fill the gap from a directory. Put the facts in plain text.

For solicitors, some of this is already required. The SRA Transparency Rules (current version in force from 11 April 2025) require price information for services including residential conveyancing, uncontested probate where the assets are in the UK and certain employment tribunal claims to be clear, accessible and prominent on the firm's website. Firms must also publish their complaints procedure and display the SRA digital badge (SRA). A clear price page serves the rule and the AI answer at once. This is marketing guidance, not legal advice; your COLP has the final say.

Accountants and letting agents should do the same with fixed-fee packages and fee pages, and keep them current.

Write what only your firm can say

Google's guide asks for non-commodity content, which it describes as expert or experienced takes that go beyond common knowledge. A generic "what is a lasting power of attorney" page gives an AI system nothing new. A page by a named fee earner on where families actually get stuck, and what the firm does about it, is harder to replace. Put a real name, role and qualifications on it.

Keep business listings consistent

Google's guide says Business Profiles can help services appear in AI responses, and Microsoft says registering with Bing Places helps keep address, hours and contact details current and eligible for AI answers. Check every office's details match your website. A closed branch still showing on a listing is a likely source of a wrong answer.

Make sure crawlers can reach real text

Google's AI features page lists the basics: crawling allowed in robots.txt and by any CDN or hosting infrastructure, pages linked internally, and important content in text form. OpenAI also asks sites to confirm their host or CDN allows its published search crawler IP addresses. Bot-protection settings can block crawlers you meant to allow, so check them.

Structured data, briefly

Google says structured data is not required for its AI features, but still helps pages qualify for rich results and should match the visible text. Mark up your offices, services and authors correctly and move on; our schema generator covers the common types.

Check what AI says about you

Google's AI Overviews help page says they can and will make mistakes, and offers a way to report a problem (Google Search Help). Ask each assistant what your firm charges, where you are and what you do. If an answer is wrong, find the page it cites. Usually the fix is an old page of your own or a directory listing.

Robots.txt choices: cited, trained on, or neither

Separate crawlers that fetch pages for search answers from crawlers that collect content for model training. As of September 2026, the documentation says:

Google. AI Overviews and AI Mode use pages Googlebot crawls and indexes, so blocking Googlebot is not an option for a firm that wants search enquiries. The Google-Extended token controls use of your content to train Gemini models and for grounding in Gemini Apps and Vertex AI; it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search (Google Search Central).
Google's new opt-out. Search Console now has a Search generative AI setting that can exclude a site from AI Overviews, AI Mode and generative AI features in Discover. Google began rolling it out to some UK sites on 3 June 2026 and said it had reached all sites worldwide as of 31 August 2026. Opted-out sites get no traffic or impressions from those features, the setting is not a ranking signal elsewhere in Search, and exclusion takes 1 to 2 days, sometimes longer (Google blog, Search Console Help). Page-level limits still work through nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex (Google Search Central).
OpenAI. OAI-SearchBot serves ChatGPT search; blocked sites are not shown in search answers but can still appear as navigational links, and changes take about 24 hours. Disallowing GPTBot tells OpenAI your content should not be used to train its models, and OpenAI says the two settings are independent. ChatGPT-User visits pages on a user's behalf, and OpenAI says robots.txt may not apply to it (OpenAI).
Anthropic. Claude-SearchBot improves search results for Claude users, ClaudeBot collects content that may be used for training, and Claude-User fetches pages when users ask questions. Anthropic says all three respect robots.txt (page updated 7 April 2026) (Anthropic).

For most firms I recommend allowing search crawlers (Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot) and treating training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) as a separate business decision. To refuse OpenAI training but stay in ChatGPT search, add a GPTBot group with "Disallow: /" and leave OAI-SearchBot allowed. Opting out of Google's AI features is now possible, but it means giving up all visibility and traffic from those answers.

Robots.txt is a public request, not a lock. Client documents and portals must sit behind a login whatever it says.

How to measure AI search visibility

Search Console's Generative AI performance report. It counts impressions: how many times links to your site appeared in AI Overviews or AI Mode, by page, country, device and date. Two links from your site in one answer count as one impression in the chart total, and sites with too few AI impressions see no data. Google says it reached all websites worldwide as of 31 August 2026 (Search Console Help). Traffic from these features is included in your overall Web search figures.
Bing Webmaster Tools AI Performance. Citations, cited pages and grounding queries for Copilot and Bing. On 16 June 2026 Microsoft began adding intents, topics, citation share and period comparisons in preview (Bing Search Blog). Citation counts show how often a page is cited, not its ranking.
Google Analytics. ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to referral links, so those visits appear under that source. Check your referrals for other AI assistants too.
A fixed question panel. Take 20 to 30 questions from real enquiry forms and first calls. Monthly, ask them in AI Mode, ChatGPT and Copilot and record if you were cited, which page, if the answer was accurate and who else appeared. ChatGPT may estimate location from your IP address and answers vary between runs, so watch the trend, not single answers.
Enquiries. Add "ChatGPT or another AI assistant" to "how did you hear about us" on forms and intake calls. It is imperfect, but it is the only measure tied to instructions.

For a quick first look, our website audit tool scores a page out of 100 for SEO and AI visibility and names the first thing to fix. If you want a person to go through the results with you, ask for a free audit on the contact page.

Common questions

Is GEO the same as LLM SEO, AEO or AI search optimisation?

In practice, yes. They are different names for making content easy for AI search systems to find and cite. Google's 2026 guide treats all of it as SEO.

Do I need an llms.txt file?

Not for Google. Google says Search does not use llms.txt and it will not help or harm your visibility. Some AI tools and agents may read one, so it is optional and low priority.

Will blocking AI crawlers protect client confidentiality?

No. Robots.txt asks well-behaved crawlers to stay away but stops nobody. Confidential material should never be publicly reachable. Blocking search crawlers mainly removes you from AI answers.

Can anyone guarantee my firm is cited by ChatGPT or Google's AI?

No. OpenAI says placement in ChatGPT search is not guaranteed, and Google warns against tools that promise ranking success.

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) for professional firms