Get your business cited inside AI answers.

Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of getting a website cited as a source inside answers from AI engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and Google AI Overviews. SEO ranks a page in the ten blue links. GEO gets a page cited inside an AI-generated answer that replaces those links for a growing share of queries. The technical foundation overlaps (index coverage, schema, internal links, content depth) but GEO additionally rewards self-contained answer passages, named-entity clarity, and a third-party entity presence that AI engines use to verify who the author is. In 2026, with AI Mode and AI Overviews appearing on more than 30% of queries, GEO is not optional for any B2B business whose buyers research before they purchase.

A GEO engagement starts with a two-week paid audit: citation share check across your 20 most important queries, bot access audit to verify GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, and ClaudeBot are not blocked, and a schema gap analysis. The audit produces a prioritized action list with estimated citation impact for each item. Implementation then runs over 4 to 8 weeks depending on scope: schema stack deployment (Article, FAQPage, Person, Organization), passage rewrites on priority pages, entity graph work on LinkedIn and Wikidata, and GA4 AI channel group setup to surface ChatGPT and Perplexity referral traffic. Monthly reporting tracks citation share across your query set. Most clients see meaningful citation shift within 60 to 90 days on focused query sets.

The engagement covers the five engines that generate measurable referral traffic and cited sources in 2026: Google AI Overviews and AI Mode (Gemini-grounded, highest volume for most SMBs in Canada and the US), ChatGPT Search (Bing-grounded, OAI-SearchBot retrieval), Perplexity (independent crawler, PerplexityBot retrieval, heavy B2B usage), Microsoft Copilot (Bing-grounded, IndexNow-accelerated), and Claude (Anthropic, ClaudeBot retrieval). Each engine weights different signals differently. The engagement addresses the signal set that moves all five — schema depth, passage quality, entity verification, and bot access — rather than optimizing for one engine and leaving the others uncovered.

Yes, and the local angle is an advantage, not a limitation. Local entities — a named consultant in a specific city, a firm that has operated in a neighbourhood for years — are easier to verify through third-party citations (local news, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile) than generic national brands. For a Vancouver B2B service company, local entity signals (city name in schema address, LocalBusiness markup, Vancouver business directory listings) contribute to the citation evidence AI engines use to confirm the entity is real and trustworthy. José's own site is the working proof-of-concept: josecabal.com is cited in AI answers for 'Vancouver fractional CMO' and 'AI marketing consultant Vancouver BC' queries across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

The GEO for SMBs hub at josecabal.com/geo-for-smbs is a free educational guide written for founders and marketers who want to understand GEO and implement it themselves. It covers every technical concept this service addresses — schema, passage writing, entity graphs, bot access — so you can read it and know what good GEO looks like. This service page describes the done-for-you engagement: José runs the citation audit, deploys the schema stack, rewrites priority passages, builds the entity graph, and sends monthly tracking reports. The hub gives you the knowledge. The service does the work.

The initial audit is $1,500 USD and covers citation share analysis across 20 target queries, bot access check across the five main AI crawlers, and a schema gap report for your site. Implementation after the audit runs $2,500 to $5,000 USD depending on scope — the number of pages requiring passage rewrites, entity graph complexity, and whether GA4 AI channel group setup is included. Monthly ongoing tracking retainers run $800 to $1,500 USD per month. The Online Visibility System productized service at $1,400 USD per month includes GEO maintenance and citation monitoring as part of a broader AI marketing system, which is the lower-cost entry point for most SMBs.

Citation share is tracked by running the same 20 target queries against ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode, and Copilot on a monthly cadence and recording which sources each engine names. ChatGPT and Perplexity display their sources directly; Google AI Overviews shows cited URLs inline. GA4's AI channel group setup adds a second, independent signal — actual referral traffic arriving from these engines — so the citation checks and the traffic data can be cross-checked against each other rather than relying on either alone.

No, and any engagement that promises this is overselling. Schema is one input among several AI engines weigh — passage self-containment, fact density, entity verification through independent sources, and crawl access all matter as much or more. What schema reliably does is make a page's content and entity relationships machine-readable, which removes a common blocker to citation. It raises the odds; it does not force the outcome.