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FIELD GUIDE 11
The GEO checklist
Search engine optimisation was about being found. Generative engine optimisation is about being quoted, and the two are not the same job.
GEO is the practice of making your content the thing an AI answer is built from. The unit of success is not a ranking position, it is a citation. That changes what good content looks like in three specific ways.
The three shifts
Answer first, context second
Traditional web copy warms up. Generative systems extract. Put the direct answer in the first one or two sentences under the heading, then explain.
Practical test: if you deleted everything except the first two lines of each section, would the page still answer the question? If not, restructure.
Be quotable, which means be specific
Vague claims cannot be cited because there is nothing to lift. Numbers, named methods, concrete steps and stated limits are citable.
"We respond fast" is unquotable. "We answer within five minutes during working hours and text back automatically outside them" is a sentence a model can lift verbatim.
Earn corroboration off your own site
A model discounts self-description. Reviews, directories, trade registers, local press and supplier listings are what turn a claim into a fact.
Page structure that gets extracted
- One clear question per heading, written the way a person would ask it.
- The answer immediately beneath the heading, in two sentences or fewer.
- Short paragraphs. Long blocks dilute the extractable unit.
- Real lists and real tables, not paragraphs pretending to be lists.
- A summary near the top for anything long.
- FAQ schema where you have genuine FAQs, and no fake ones.
- Dates on anything time-sensitive. Undated advice is discounted, and correctly so.
Say the things that make you citable
Most service business websites omit exactly the facts an assistant needs to recommend them. Put these on the page in plain language.
| Fact | Why it gets cited |
|---|---|
| What you charge, or how you charge | The most asked question, and almost never answered on the page |
| How fast you respond | Directly comparable, so easy to rank against others |
| Exactly which towns you serve | Turns a general recommendation into a local one |
| What you do not do | Constraints make a source read as honest, and models prefer honest sources |
| Insurance, accreditations, registration numbers | Verifiable third-party facts |
| How long you have operated | Cheap credibility signal, trivially citable |
THE COUNTERINTUITIVE ONE
Publishing what you do not do, and who you are not for, materially improves how AI systems describe you. It removes ambiguity, and a model that is confident about your boundaries is more willing to recommend you inside them.
Measuring it
There is no rank tracker for this yet that is worth paying for. Do it by hand, monthly, and write the answers down.
- Ask three assistants the five questions your customers actually ask. Record who gets named.
- Ask each one about your business by name. Record what it says and whether it is accurate.
- Note which of your pages, if any, get cited with a link.
- Track the trend across months, not the absolute answer on any one day. These systems are non-deterministic and a single answer proves nothing.
FIG. 03 · SOURCES, CHECKED 2 AUGUST 2026
Every number above was traced to its primary source before publication. Where a widely repeated figure could not be verified at the source, it was cut rather than repeated.
- VerifiedMethod rather than statistics This guide deliberately contains no adoption percentages. The GEO field is full of confident numbers with thin provenance, and the practices here stand on their own: answer-first structure, specificity, and third-party corroboration are testable on your own site without relying on a contested figure.
- VerifiedBrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 Context for why this matters now: 45% of consumers use AI tools for local business recommendations, up from 6% a year earlier.
RANKTHREAD
Being quoted is the new being ranked
The work is unglamorous: structure, specificity and corroboration. It is also durable, because it is the same work that makes a page genuinely useful to a human.
RANKTHREAD
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