Generative engine optimization (GEO)

For twenty years, getting found online meant ranking on a page of blue links. GEO is the version of that discipline built for a world where an AI assistant reads the web and hands the guest a short, spoken-or-typed answer instead of a list. When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini "where should I get dinner near me," the model names a handful of places and skips the rest. GEO is the work of being one of the names it says.

The stakes are already real and lopsided. 20% now use AI tools to research restaurants and bars, and among younger diners it is far higher: 61% vs 4%. Yet visibility is brutally concentrated. Uberall's GEO benchmark found 83%, and when people ask an assistant for pizza nearby, 17% appear / 86% on Google. AI also leans on reputation to decide who to name: assistants skew toward higher-rated places, with ChatGPT primarily recommending businesses at 4.3+ stars, and it typically surfaces 79%.

GEO for a restaurant is less about tricks and more about being legible and well-regarded to a machine: consistent, complete listings (see NAP consistency), strong and actively managed reviews, Schema markup that spells out your cuisine, hours, menu, and location, and content that answers the real questions diners ask. It overlaps heavily with Local SEO and with getting cited inside AI Overviews. Read our take on local SEO for how the two fit together.