Getting found in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews: AI search optimisation for businesses

When someone asks ChatGPT "Which AI consultancy in Vienna can help with automation?" or "Where can I buy handmade nightwear in Austria?", they no longer get a list of ten blue links. They get an answer — and a handful of companies named in it. Being one of those names is the goal of AI search optimisation, sometimes called GEO (generative engine optimisation).

How AI assistants decide what to mention

AI answer engines combine what their models learned during training with live web searches. They tend to cite sources that are:

• Clear about facts: who you are, what you offer, where, for whom, at what price
• Consistent: the same facts on your website, your Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles
• Easy to read for machines: clean HTML, structured data, no key information hidden in images
• Trusted: mentioned and linked by other sites, with reviews and real case studies

Classic SEO still matters — AI tools often rely on search indexes — but the emphasis shifts from keywords to clear, verifiable facts.

Seven things you can do today

1. 1
   Write a plain, factual description of your business — one paragraph that states what you do, where and for whom. Use it everywhere.
2. 2
   Add structured data (schema.org) for your organisation, products, offers, FAQs and articles.
3. 3
   Answer real questions on your site. An FAQ in the words customers actually use is ideal source material.
4. 4
   Make key pages available in German if your customers search in German — with proper language tags so search engines can tell the versions apart.
5. 5
   Keep business details consistent across your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
6. 6
   Publish real case studies with concrete, verifiable results.
7. 7
   Consider an llms.txt file — a short, machine-readable summary of your site. It is a proposed convention, not an official standard, and not every AI tool uses it yet, but it costs little to add.

Example: a Vienna nightwear label

For Luisa Hill, a Vienna label for handmade nightwear, we audited the shop and rewrote all 41 products with German SEO titles, meta descriptions and Offer schema, corrected the business profile and expanded the brand description that feeds the site's llms.txt — all through the Wix API, with a backup before every change and every edit verified on the live site. The fragile layout was never touched.

What not to do

• Do not stuff pages with keywords or hide text — AI tools and search engines both penalise it.
• Do not invent numbers or reviews. Inaccurate claims get repeated, and they come back to you.
• Do not expect instant results: AI tools update their knowledge at different speeds.

Want to know how AI assistants currently describe your business? Book a free 30-minute call and we will check it together.