What is GEO and why does it matter for trades?

2 min read

GEO means getting your business quoted by AI assistants when someone asks one to recommend a tradesperson. It is to assistants what SEO is to Google. It matters because a customer who asks an assistant first never sees a results page at all.

Keeping every detail consistent everywhere is ongoing work, done every month rather than once. See search and AI visibility.

What changed

Someone who needed a plumber used to type it into Google and pick from a list of links. A growing number now ask an assistant instead, in a full sentence, and get back two or three names with a reason attached. There is no page of ten blue links in that conversation. You are either one of the names or you are not in it.

The same question, asked the old way and the new Two panels, stacked. Top: typing a plumber search into Google returns a page of ten links, numbered one to ten. A dividing line notes that a growing number now ask an assistant instead. Bottom: asking an assistant the same question in a full sentence returns two or three names with a reason attached, shown as three short rows, one of them highlighted as you. The diagram ends on the guide’s point: you are either one of the names or you are not in it. The same question, twice What changed for someone who needs a plumber Types it into Google A page of ten links 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 A growing number ask an assistant instead Asks an assistant In a full sentence Who’s a good plumber near me? Two or three names, with a reason attached A name, with a reason A name, with a reason You, with a reason You’re one of the names, or you’re not in it.

What an assistant needs from your site

An assistant is trying to answer a question, so it favours pages that answer questions. Plain sentences that state facts. Your trade, your towns, your prices if you publish them, your hours, how to reach you. Written so a single sentence can be lifted out and still be true on its own.

It also has to work out whether you are one business or three with similar names. The same name, phone number and address on your site, your Google profile and every directory you appear in. That consistency is boring and it is most of the job. The specific things an assistant looks for on the site itself are the same list in what a tradesperson's website needs.

What helps, in order

  • Pages that answer a real question in the first line
  • The same business details everywhere, character for character
  • A Google Business Profile that is verified, filled in and active
  • Schema markup, which is the machine-readable version of what your page already says
  • Reviews, which an assistant reads as evidence

What does not help

Stuffing your trade and every town within thirty miles into a paragraph. Assistants are markedly worse than Google was at rewarding that, because summarising punishes filler in a way that keyword matching never did. A page of it gets summarised as nothing.

Nobody can promise you a place in an assistant's answer, and anyone who does is guessing. What can be done is making sure that when one goes looking, everything it finds about you agrees with everything else.

Why it is worth the trouble now

Search results for anything with money in them are held by companies who have spent a decade and a lot of money getting there. Assistant answers are not, yet. The gap will close. Right now a small firm with clear, well-marked-up pages can be quoted alongside a national one, which has not been true of Google for a long time.

The monthly version of that work, done for you, is search and AI visibility.

While you are here

Is GEO different from SEO?

It overlaps heavily and the foundations are the same: a fast, clear site with correct details. The difference is what you are optimising for. SEO wants a click from a results page. GEO wants your facts quoted correctly inside an answer where there may be no results page at all.

Should I block AI crawlers from my website?

Not if you want to be recommended by one. Blocking them keeps you out of the answers. It is a reasonable choice for a publisher whose words are the product, and the wrong one for a tradesperson who wants the phone to ring.

Want this done for you?

Ring and describe the job. We’ll tell you what’s involved and what it would cost, in plain English, with no obligation.

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