How to Get ChatGPT & Google AI Overviews to Recommend Your Business: 7 GEO Fixes
Published Oct 11, 2026 · 10:25 · Michael Hermon
How do ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity decide which businesses to recommend? Learn what AI visibility (GEO/AEO) is, why Google rankings don't guarantee AI mentions, and a 7-step AI SEO checklist for small businesses.
You'll learn how AI assistants rewrite customer questions into web searches (and why they add the current year), why only 3 to 5 brands usually get named, and how to fix crawler access, listings, reviews, FAQ pages, readability, schema markup and your presence on LinkedIn and YouTube.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Intro: what you'll get from this episode
- 00:30 Why AI recommendations matter now (ChatGPT, AI Overviews, local search stats)
- 01:05 What AI visibility, GEO and AEO mean
- 01:59 Why ranking on Google isn't enough (and what AI Overviews do to clicks)
- 03:07 How ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity search the web for you
- 04:37 Fix 1: Make sure AI crawlers can read your site
- 05:16 Fix 2: Complete, consistent business listings
- 05:33 Fix 3: Reviews in more than one place
- 06:08 Fix 4: Pages that answer real customer questions
- 06:38 Fix 5: Plain-language writing
- 07:46 Fix 7: LinkedIn, YouTube, and why not to rely on Reddit
- 08:28 Bonus: Measure your AI visibility monthly
- 10:03 Send us your questions
Sources
- BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (AI recommendations, 45% vs 6%, 97% double-check, "walled garden" quote)
- Google I/O 2026 keynote, AI Overviews 2.5B+ monthly users
- OpenAI, 900M+ weekly ChatGPT users (Feb 2026), as reported by Search Engine Land
- Ahrefs study via RocketBlue, AI Overviews cut clicks 34.5%
- Pew Research Center, clicks with vs. without Google AI summaries (8% vs 15%)
- 193,410 AI web searches (keywords, added year, Perplexity exact wording)
- What is AI visibility (3 to 5 brands, 88% AI Mode citations outside the top 10)
- Listings and reviews checklist
- AI crawler access (44.9% of sites block an AI crawler)
- Readability and AI citations (31% lift at Flesch 60-75)
- Content types LLMs cite (images, lists, author credentials)
- Schema types on AI-cited sites
- LinkedIn citations up 4.2x
- ChatGPT stopped citing Reddit (12.6% to 0.1%)
- YouTube content AI cites
Ask a question
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