GEO for small businesses: what works and what you're being sold

Does GEO work for a small business, or is it the latest trend someone wants to push on you? It works, but quite a bit less than some people promise, and in a more boring way than it sounds: correct business details everywhere, content that can be crawled and understood, clear answers to real questions and patient measurement. Miracle shortcuts, for now, have nothing backing them.

Even people who sell these services say so. In a piece published October 14 in PuroMarketing, in a channel sponsored by Adentity, Adentity's CEO, Francisco Castro, separates what is known from what is being sold. His most concrete warning: according to Google's documentation, llms.txt files (a text file placed on a website for AI systems to read) neither improve nor hurt visibility in its search engine, including its generative AI features.

What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. The goal is for your brand to show up, and be described accurately, in answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google's AI summaries (AI Overviews).

It shares foundations with SEO (search engine optimization). If a search engine can't crawl or index your site, its AI features can't use it either. The difference is that each assistant works its own way: some answer from what the model learned during training, others check sources in real time, and others combine both.

That's why there's no single recipe. What earns you visibility on one engine may count for little on another.

What works in GEO, based on what we know today?

Strip away the sales packaging and these are the practices with a reasonable basis that the article lays out:

• Technical basics in order. Crawling, indexing and accessible pages. As the piece notes, technical groundwork lets your content be discovered, but on its own it doesn't guarantee your brand is relevant to a query.
• Consistent details where you have control. Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), Apple Maps and Bing Places let you update your hours, address, phone number and category. If they don't match your website, you sow doubt.
• Fix it at the source. If a directory or a media outlet publishes wrong information about you, the correction starts there. On your own channels, you change it yourself; on other people's, you request the update and provide verifiable information.
• Public proof. Case studies with context and verifiable results, your own data with a clear methodology, complete product pages and contributions from real specialists.
• Measurement with a method. A stable sample of queries, with and without your brand name, where you log the engine, date, language and market, and repeat it over time.

What you're being sold: promises to watch out for

This table sums up the most common offers and what to ask for before you pay:

Why do we buy hype even when we're suspicious?

Many small-business owners have already paid an agency that delivered pretty reports and few sales. The logical move would be to distrust anything new. And yet the line “you're going to be left out of ChatGPT” still opens wallets.

Behavioral economics calls this loss aversion: the pain of losing something weighs more than the satisfaction of gaining something of equal value. A salesperson who talks about the visibility you're about to lose triggers that fear, and fear cuts thinking short.

The answer isn't to reject everything new, but to turn skepticism into judgment. Doubting well means asking for specific queries, specific sources and a way of measuring that you can understand. That way, distrust stops holding you back and starts protecting you.

Six questions to ask before hiring a GEO service

The first five reflect the criteria proposed in the PuroMarketing article itself; the sixth is common sense.

1. Which queries will you measure? Get the list in writing, with questions both with and without your brand name, and the engines you'll test.
2. What problems have you already found? A serious proposal starts from a diagnosis: where you don't show up, what information about you is wrong and in which sources.
3. Which sources will you work on? Your website, your listings, industry directories, media. If the answer is vague, that's a bad sign.
4. How will I see progress? Same set of queries, same frequency, same engines. No one-off screenshots.
5. What don't you know? A provider who admits their uncertainties is usually more trustworthy than one who has everything figured out.
6. What happens to the content if we stop working together? The pages and copy that were published should remain yours.

Where do I start this week if I have no budget?

Before you pay anyone, spend a morning on these three tasks:

• Review your Google Business Profile. Name, primary category, hours, phone and website, identical to what's on your site. The article counts it among the foundations of local visibility.
• Write a real FAQ page. The ten questions people ask you over the phone or on WhatsApp, answered in plain language, with ballpark prices and service areas.
• Run your first measurement. Fifteen questions a customer would ask, tested in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google, noting whether you show up and which sources appear.

That will tell you whether you have a problem and how big it is. If you sell in the United States and want to automate the audit and the fixes, you can see how GEO Autopilot works. Just one thing: hold ToucHigh to the same six answers.