AI Search Optimisation for UK Businesses: How to Get Found in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews
AI search optimisation — often called generative engine optimisation, or GEO — is the practice of making your website easy for AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity to understand, trust and quote. The winning tactics are not exotic: answer real customer questions clearly, back your claims with statistics and sources, earn mentions on sites the AI already trusts, and keep your business details consistent everywhere. Do that and you can appear in AI answers even when you are not the number-one blue link.
Why AI search suddenly matters
The way people find businesses is changing fast. Google’s AI Overviews — the AI-written summaries at the top of results — passed two billion users a month in mid-2025, and chief executive Sundar Pichai told investors they were driving roughly a 10% increase in searches for the query types where they appear. ChatGPT, for its part, crossed 800 million weekly users in October 2025.
More of your potential customers now ask a machine “what’s the best plumber near me?” or “which CRM suits a small UK agency?” and get back a short, conversational answer that names just a few businesses. If you are not in that shortlist, you are effectively invisible — however polished your website is.
How AI decides who to name
A generative engine does not rank ten links and leave you to click. It reads many sources, writes one answer, and cites a handful. It favours content that answers the question directly, is easy to parse, and looks trustworthy — clear structure, real evidence, and agreement across the wider web.
A 2024 study from Princeton and IIT Delhi, titled “Generative Engine Optimization”, tested what actually moves the needle. Adding citations, statistics and quotations to a page lifted its visibility in AI answers by up to 40%. Tellingly, old-school keyword stuffing did the opposite and reduced visibility. AI rewards substance, not repetition.
Write the answer first, then the article
Lead every important page with a crisp, self-contained answer to the exact question a customer would type or speak, then expand underneath. Turn the question into a heading — “How much does X cost in the UK?” — and answer it in the first two sentences.
Break content into short sections with descriptive sub-headings, keep sentences plain, and structure steps and comparisons as lists. AI models lift passages that stand on their own, so a paragraph that only makes sense after three others above it rarely gets quoted.
Give the machine reasons to trust you
Prove your claims. Add a real statistic with its source, quote a named expert, and say where your figures come from. Show who you are with a clear About page, named authors and their credentials, a real address, and genuine customer reviews.
Google formalises these signals as E-E-A-T — experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust — and AI systems lean on them heavily. For local businesses, consistency matters most: make sure your name, address and phone number match exactly across your website, your Google Business Profile and every directory, because contradictory details make an AI less confident about recommending you.
Get mentioned where AI is already reading
Generative engines read what others say about you, not just your own site. A mention or link from a respected UK publication, a trade body, a local news outlet or a well-known directory can raise your odds of being cited more than anything on your own page.
Being visible where these tools gather information — industry roundups, review sites, relevant Reddit threads and YouTube — puts your brand in their line of sight. Ask yourself where a journalist, or an AI, would look to verify a claim about your sector, and make sure your business is named there.
The technical basics still count
None of this works if the machines cannot read your pages. Make sure your site is crawlable, loads quickly and works well on mobile. Add structured data (schema markup) for your organisation, products, FAQs and reviews so AI can parse them without guessing.
Check that your robots.txt is not blocking the AI crawlers you actually want — GPTBot, Google-Extended and PerplexityBot — if being cited matters more to you than restricting AI training. And keep publishing: fresh, regularly updated content signals an active, reliable source.
Your five-step AI search checklist
1. Test first. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Google and Perplexity the questions your customers ask, and note whether you appear.
2. Answer clearly. Give each key page a plain, self-contained answer to one real question, right at the top.
3. Prove it. Add sources, statistics and expert quotes so your claims stand up to scrutiny.
4. Get named elsewhere. Earn mentions on trusted sites, directories and review platforms.
5. Fix the plumbing. Confirm your site is crawlable, mobile-friendly and marked up with schema.
Quick FAQ
What is the difference between SEO and AI search optimisation (GEO)?
Traditional SEO aims to rank your page in the list of blue links. AI search optimisation, or GEO, aims to get your business quoted inside the AI-written answer. They overlap — clear, authoritative, well-structured content helps both — but GEO puts extra weight on being a source the AI trusts enough to cite.
Should I allow or block AI bots like GPTBot?
If appearing in AI answers matters to you, allow the main AI crawlers — GPTBot, Google-Extended and PerplexityBot — in your robots.txt. Block them only if you have a strong reason to keep your content out of AI systems, because blocking usually means you will not be cited.
How do I check whether my business appears in AI search?
Ask the assistants directly. Type the questions your customers would ask — “best [your service] in [your town]” — into ChatGPT, Gemini, Google’s AI Overviews and Perplexity, and see whether you are named. Repeat monthly and track how the answers change.
Is AI search optimisation worth it for a small business?
Yes — often more so than for big brands. Most small firms have not adjusted for AI search yet, so there is an unusual window to get named in answers before your competitors do, usually just by improving content you already have.
A year ago, “optimising for ChatGPT” sounded like science fiction. Today it is simply good marketing hygiene. The businesses winning in AI search are not the ones with the biggest budgets — they are the ones giving clear, honest, well-evidenced answers to the questions their customers are already asking a machine. — Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing
The takeaway: AI search rewards clarity, evidence and trust, not tricks. Answer real questions plainly, prove what you claim, and make sure the wider web knows who you are — and the machines will too.
Have you asked ChatGPT or Google’s AI Overviews about your business yet — and were you happy with what they said?
If you would like to know more about this topic, please contact us on danieln@merxmarketing.co.uk
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Written by Daniel Nikolla, Founder of Merx Marketing Ltd and Marketing Minute
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