What Is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)? A Guide for NZ Businesses

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your website and your brand easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and cite. If you run a New Zealand business, it matters because more of your customers now put “who is the best plumber in Hamilton?” to ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI Overviews and read one written answer, instead of scrolling through ten blue links.

This guide explains what GEO is, how it differs from the SEO you may already be doing, and a practical checklist you can work through. It also covers where measurement still falls short, because nobody can honestly promise you a citation.

What is generative engine optimisation in NZ?

Generative engine optimisation is the work of structuring your content, facts and online presence so that AI tools that write answers, such as ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity, can retrieve your pages and quote or recommend your business. Where SEO aims to rank a page in a list of results, GEO aims to have your information used inside the answer itself.

The idea is not new magic. These tools still depend on web pages that are crawlable, clear and trustworthy. GEO is mostly about making that content easier to lift a passage from, and about making sure the wider web says the same things about you that your own site does.

GEO vs AEO vs AI SEO: how the terms overlap

You will see several labels for roughly the same work. They are used loosely, and different agencies draw the lines in different places, so treat the table below as a practical reading rather than an official standard.

If you want the answer-box side in more depth, our explainer on what answer engine optimisation is covers it. In practice, the same page improvements serve all three.

GEO vs traditional SEO: what changes and what doesn’t

The foundations are shared. An AI engine can only cite a page it can reach, and it prefers pages that are accurate, well organised and backed by a reputable site. What shifts is what you are trying to win and how you check whether it worked.

Notice how much stays the same: crawlability, quality and authority. That is why GEO works best on top of solid SEO rather than instead of it. Our piece on whether SEO is still relevant goes into that argument.

How AI engines choose what to cite

Most AI answer tools do not answer purely from memory when the question needs current or local information. They run a search behind the scenes, pull back a handful of pages, and then write an answer that quotes or paraphrases passages from them. Which index they search depends on the product. Google’s AI Overviews and Gemini draw on Google’s index. ChatGPT search and Microsoft Copilot lean on Bing’s index, among other sources, according to the providers’ own descriptions. The practical lesson is to make sure you are properly indexed in both Google and Bing.

Once pages are retrieved, passages that state something plainly are easier to quote than passages buried in marketing language. A heading phrased as a question, followed by a direct two- or three-sentence answer, gives an engine something to lift. Named entities help too: your business name, your city, your service and your people, written the same way every time.

Our guide to Google’s AI search experience (SGE) explains how Google’s side of this works.

Why blocking AI crawlers removes you from the answer

AI companies run different crawlers for different jobs. Some collect training data, some fetch pages to power a search answer, and some fetch a page when a user asks about it directly. Their names include GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot and ChatGPT-User (OpenAI), ClaudeBot (Anthropic), PerplexityBot, and Google-Extended, which is a control for how Google’s Gemini products use your content and does not decide whether you appear in Google Search or AI Overviews.

If your robots.txt file, or a firewall rule at your host or CDN, blocks the crawlers that power search answers, those engines cannot read your pages and will not cite them. Whether to block training crawlers is a separate business decision, and it is worth making deliberately rather than by accident. A security setting installed years ago is a common cause of this problem, so ask whoever manages your hosting to check.

How to do GEO: a practical NZ checklist

Here is a working order of operations. Each step is useful for ordinary SEO too, so none of it is wasted if AI search moves more slowly than expected.

1. Allow the right crawlers. Check robots.txt and any firewall or bot-protection rules so search-related AI crawlers (for example OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot) and Bingbot can fetch your pages.
2. Answer the question first. Under each question-style heading, give the answer in the first 40 to 60 words, then expand.
3. Add structured data. Use FAQ, Organization and LocalBusiness schema where it truthfully describes the page, and keep it consistent with the visible content.
4. Make your facts consistent. Business name, address, phone, services, opening hours and any NZD pricing should match across your site, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles.
5. Show real expertise. Add named authors, dates, original examples and your own data. Generic text that repeats every other site gives an engine no reason to pick yours.
6. Earn mentions beyond your own site. NZ industry directories, local news, supplier pages and genuine customer reviews all reinforce who you are and what you do.
7. Tell the search engines when you publish. Keep your XML sitemap current and use IndexNow, which Bing supports, so new and updated pages are picked up promptly.
8. Track results monthly. Test a fixed set of prompts and record whether your business is mentioned or cited (more on this below).

If your business is local, the Google Business Profile step is especially important. We cover it in our Google Business Profile optimisation checklist.

Do you need an llms.txt file?

Probably not yet. llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file that summarises your site for AI tools, but none of the major engines has said it uses the file to decide what to cite. Allow the crawlers, fix your content and keep your facts consistent first. If you add one later, treat it as a minor extra.

Will AI replace SEO?

No. AI answers are built from pages that search engines have already crawled, indexed and judged reliable, so SEO remains the foundation and GEO builds on it. What AI changes is the shape of the work: more emphasis on direct answers, clear entities and reputation across the web, and less on ranking a single page for a single phrase.

The related question, “can AI do SEO?”, has a similar answer. AI tools can speed up research and drafting, but they cannot check your site’s technical health, earn you NZ mentions or know your business’s real facts. Content that is generated in bulk without that human input tends to be the generic material engines have least reason to cite.

How to measure GEO results

Measurement is still immature, and anyone who promises a precise citation count is overselling. A workable approach has three parts.

First, build a fixed list of around ten prompts that your customers would genuinely ask, for example “best physio in Hamilton” or “who installs heat pumps in Tauranga”. Run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google once a month and record whether your business is named, cited or absent. Answers vary from run to run, so look at trends, not single results.

Second, check Google Search Console for impressions on question-style queries. Third, in Google Analytics 4, look at referral traffic from AI sources such as chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. Expect small numbers at first, since many AI answers produce no click at all.

Brand-tracking tools can automate part of this. Ahrefs Brand Radar, for instance, reports brand mentions and share of voice across AI engines.

Our own starting point

We try to practise what we explain. When we measured First Page NZ in Ahrefs Brand Radar for the New Zealand market on 10 November 2026, our brand had zero mentions and a 0% share of voice, while several competing NZ agencies were already being named. That is our “before” snapshot. We will re-measure once this guide has been live for a while and report what changed, whether the answer is flattering or not.

GEO services for NZ businesses

If you would rather have specialists handle this, our AI SEO services cover the technical access, content and reputation work described above. We also have engine-specific pages if you are focused on one platform: ChatGPT SEO, Claude SEO, Gemini SEO and Perplexity SEO. No agency can guarantee that an AI engine will cite you, but we can show you what is blocking you and what to fix first. See how we work as an AI agency in New Zealand.

Frequently asked questions