Generative Engine
Optimization
Someone looks for a practice like yours by asking an assistant instead of searching. It names three and skips the rest. GEO is the work that makes yours one of the three, across more of the questions patients actually ask. Ranking on page one no longer settles it. You need to be the source the answer is built from.
AI Citations
Get named by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity
AI Overviews
Appear in Google's AI answers
Off-Site Presence
What AI reads about you beyond your site
Understanding the Shift
What is Generative Engine Optimization?
When someone asks ChatGPT "Who's the best anxiety therapist in Seattle?" or Google's AI Overview synthesizes an answer to "How do I find a physical therapist near me?", they're not seeing a list of blue links. They're getting a direct answer, often with specific recommendations.
GEO is the work of becoming one of those recommendations more often. It's the evolution of SEO for an age where AI systems curate, synthesize, and recommend rather than just rank. You'll also see it called answer engine optimization (AEO) or AI optimization (AIO). Same work, different labels.
This isn't a niche case. In Seer Interactive's 2026 study, 86% of informational searches phrased as questions triggered a Google AI Overview, and 77% of informational "near me" questions did. Those are the searches a practice lives on.
Traditional SEO gets you on the list. GEO makes you the answer. See what the research says about AI search for therapists.
The search landscape is splitting
Traditional Search
User searches → Sees ranked list → Clicks through to websites
Generative Search
User asks question → AI synthesizes answer → Cites trusted sources
Check It Yourself
Find out whether AI names your practice, for free
You don't need a paid tool for a first read. You need a short list of questions, a spreadsheet, and some patience with answers that change every time you ask. This is the method we use, with what each step can and can't tell you.
Before you start, check that you aren't blocking AI crawlers. On Squarespace that's Settings, then Crawlers, with "Block known artificial intelligence crawlers" unchecked. That setting governs assistants like ChatGPT, not Google's AI Overviews, which follow your normal Googlebot and snippet settings.
- 1
Write down the questions patients ask
Five that name your practice ("Is [Practice] a good fit for anxiety therapy in Seattle?") and ten that don't ("How do I find a therapist near me who takes Aetna?"). Questions, comparisons, and question-shaped "near me" searches are the formats most likely to get an AI answer. A bare "therapist near me" is not one of them, because that returns the map pack instead. An AI tool can draft the list from your site, and Squarespace does that automatically. Treat it as a starting point and swap half for the wording you hear on intake calls.
What it can't tell you: your guess at the phrasing is a guess. And don't paste contact-form messages into an AI tool to sharpen it; summarize the themes yourself.
- 2
Ask four engines, then plain Google
Run each question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Mode, in a private browser window. Gemini only offers some of its features without an account, so sign in there with an account that isn't your day-to-day one. Then run the same question as an ordinary Google search and look for the AI Overview at the top. That's a different surface from AI Mode, and it's the one the numbers on this page are measured against, so don't skip it. Each engine builds its answer from a different set of sources, so checking one tells you almost nothing about the others.
What it can't tell you: a private window hides your history, not your location. Your IP still sets that, so run these from the office. Testing on a trip or through a VPN quietly gives you someone else's local results.
- 3
Repeat, and record only "named" or "not named"
Run each question several times over a couple of weeks. Log the question, the engine, the date, whether you were named, which competitors were, and which sites the answer cited.
What it can't tell you: the same question returns a different list almost every time. One run proves nothing, and your position in the list means nothing.
- 4
Look at who got cited instead
Your own site is only part of what an AI reads about you. McKinsey put a brand's own sites at 5% to 10% of the sources AI answers draw on, measured on consumer brands rather than practices. If a directory listing, a review site, or your Google Business Profile keeps showing up as a source, check that you're listed there and described the same way everywhere.
What it can't tell you: different descriptions across your profiles give the AI conflicting material to summarize. A profile you forgot about still counts.
- 5
Ask the AI to read your page back to you
Two prompts, same page. First: "Summarize this page: [your page URL]. List every service, specialty, credential, location, and insurance detail it states." Check what's missing or wrong, because being described wrongly is a different problem from being absent. Then: "Which parts of that page were confusing, contradictory, or hard to read?" That second answer is a list of the places your page made a machine work, and those are the places it skips when it builds an answer about a therapist in your city.
What it can't tell you: ask it to quote one sentence back before you trust any of it, because some engines answer from memory instead of reading the live page. And a model asked what confused it will always find something, so treat the list as places to check, not a verdict.
- 6
Read Search Console and analytics as trends, not verdicts
Search Console's generative AI report shows impressions only, grouped by page, country, device, or date. Use it to see whether you're appearing at all and which pages do it. Clicks and position live in your main performance report instead, and every link inside one AI Overview shares that overview's position, so the position number says nothing about prominence. In analytics, watch referrals from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai, but expect most AI influence to arrive as branded search and direct traffic.
What it can't tell you: an impression is counted when your link is on the page, scrolled to or not, so the line can climb without a single person reading you. Links a reader has to expand to see don't count until someone expands them.
What none of this measures
Inquiries. A practice can be named in every answer and stay quiet, or be named in none and be full. Keep the spreadsheet next to your inquiry count, not instead of it.
On a free consultation we can walk through what your results show and which gaps matter for your practice.
Book a Free ConsultationThat's a spreadsheet and an evening, repeated every month or two. If your site runs on Squarespace, part of it is already built into your dashboard.
Built into Squarespace
On Squarespace? Part of this is already in your dashboard.
Squarespace's AI Visibility tool lives in the SEO panel next to your SEO report, on version 7.1 sites in English. It drafts a set of prompts from your site, split into branded (asking about your practice by name) and non-branded (asking for a practice like yours), and you can add or delete them.
Each run puts those prompts through ChatGPT and Gemini and shows whether you were mentioned, where you appeared, which competitors were recommended instead, and which sites the answer drew on. Re-run the same prompts later and you can see whether anything moved.
Runs spend the AI credits included with your plan. The Basic plan has ten one-time credits, so choose prompts carefully; Core and above add a monthly allowance.
How to read it
- It covers ChatGPT and the Gemini app. The AI Overview inside Google search results is a separate surface, so run the plain Google check from step 2 alongside it.
- It's a measurement tool, and Squarespace says so plainly: it reports whether you're mentioned rather than changing whether you are. What moves the answer is your content and your profiles.
- The visibility score works as a to-do list rather than a grade. It reaches 100% once every prompt's latest run returned your name, on top of complete alt text and meta descriptions.
- Each run is one sample, the same as running the prompts by hand. That's how these models behave, not a quirk of the tool. Run it again before you celebrate or panic.
The Foundation
Why traditional SEO still matters
GEO isn't a replacement for SEO. AI systems don't operate in a vacuum. They rely on the same underlying signals that drive traditional search. The practices that win in generative search are the ones with strong SEO foundations. Three of those signals matter most for being named, and the first isn't the one most people expect.
Clarity gets you picked
The most authoritative source isn't automatically the quoted one. In SE Ranking's study of 50,000+ health searches in Germany, YouTube was the single most cited source in Google's AI Overviews, cited more than twice as often as an established medical reference like MSD Manuals. That study counts sources, not reasons. Our read: plain, direct explanations get quoted, and careful, hedged pages get passed over.
Technical Health
AI crawlers still need to find, read, and understand your content efficiently. A fast, accessible, error-free website that doesn't block them is the minimum for being used as source material.
Authority keeps you in the pool
Links from real sites, reviews, a named clinician behind the content: these still decide whether an AI treats your site as a candidate at all. They don't decide which passage gets used. Authority is the entry ticket, not the answer.
Our GEO Services
How we optimize for AI
Four things shape whether an answer names you: what your pages say, how they're structured for machines, what the rest of the web says about you, and whether AI can read any of it. We work on all four.
Off-Site Presence
A practice's own website is only part of what an AI reads about it. We get your Google Business Profile, directory listings, and review profiles complete, accurate, and saying the same thing your site says, so every answer is built from one consistent story.
Google Business Profile, Psychology Today, Healthgrades, and whichever sources your audit shows the answers actually use
Structured Data Implementation
We build complete, logical schema markup across your pages, so an AI reading your site can state your specialties, your clinicians and their credentials, your locations, and your hours without guessing. That's what lets it match you to a specific question instead of passing over you.
LocalBusiness, MedicalBusiness, FAQPage, and the schema types your specialty calls for
Plain-Language Clinical Writing
We rewrite your key pages so each section answers one question in its first sentence, in the words a patient would use, with the specifics an AI can lift straight into an answer. Accurate, and clear enough to be quoted.
Answer-first sections, FAQ blocks, and original content about how your practice actually works
Technical Foundation
We make sure AI crawlers can reach every page, even with JavaScript disabled, and that nothing in your platform settings or robots file is quietly blocking them. Fast pages, clean HTML, no accidental opt-outs.
Server-side rendering, clean HTML, crawler access checked on every platform
How It Works
Positioning you for generative search
AI answers shift as your content and your profiles change. Here's how we approach it, with a measured start and a measured finish.
AI Visibility Audit
We run a fixed set of branded and non-branded questions, repeatedly, across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI features. We record how often you're named, who's named instead, and which sites the answers draw on. Are you cited? Ignored? Described wrongly? That baseline shapes everything that follows.
Technical Optimization
We implement structured data, improve technical SEO health, and make sure AI crawlers can reach and read every page, with nothing in your settings quietly opting you out.
Content and Profiles
We rewrite key pages so each section answers one question plainly, add original content about how your practice actually works, and bring your business profile and directory listings in line with your site. No generated pages at scale; those get throttled and de-indexed, not cited.
Re-check
At the end of the engagement we re-run the same questions the same way and show you what moved: named more often, described accurately, cited from the right sources. You keep the question list and can re-run it whenever you like.
Common Questions
Questions about GEO
This is new territory for most practice owners. Here's what we hear most often.
Get in touchIs GEO replacing traditional SEO?
No. GEO builds on traditional SEO, it doesn't replace it. The fundamentals still matter: technical health, quality content, authority signals. GEO adds a layer of optimization specifically for how AI systems discover, interpret, and cite your content. Think of it as SEO plus, not SEO versus.
How do I know if AI is currently citing my practice?
Ask the engines the questions your patients ask, more than once. The same question returns a different list almost every time, so one check means little. A dozen runs across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google's AI Mode, and plain Google search start to mean something. The free method above walks through it. On Squarespace, the AI Visibility tool in your SEO panel runs a prompt set through ChatGPT and Gemini and reports whether you were mentioned. Our audit does the same across all of them, repeatedly, and adds the part a spreadsheet can't: why.
Is this just hype, or does GEO actually matter?
It matters, and how much depends on what the person is trying to do. In Seer Interactive's 2026 study, questions looking for information, the 'how do I find an anxiety therapist near me' kind, triggered a Google AI Overview in 1,214 of 1,413 cases, and informational 'near me' questions 77% of the time. Searches with booking intent, the 'therapist near me' kind that returns a map pack, triggered one about 5% of the time, and just 1.5% for the near-me subset. So your educational pages carry the exposure and your map listing mostly doesn't. Being named inside those answers earned more than double the clicks per impression of appearing on the same page uncited, though still about 38% below what pages earned where no AI Overview appeared at all. A citation is the best position available on an AI Overview page, not a return to the old baseline. Google says AI Mode passed a billion monthly users a year after launch.
How long until I see results from GEO?
It depends on where you start. Technical fixes count from the next time Google recrawls the page. Being named consistently takes longer, because it depends on content and profiles the AI keeps re-reading, and the answers themselves change from run to run. We measure at the start and again at the end, so you see the change rather than take it on faith.
Should I prioritize GEO over other SEO work?
Not at the expense of fundamentals. If your site has serious technical issues or you're not ranking for basic terms, fix those first. GEO works best when layered on top of a solid SEO foundation. For practices that already have decent SEO in place, GEO is where the next gains are.
I'm on Squarespace and I have the AI Visibility tool. Where does that leave me?
In a good place to start. It gives you a baseline across ChatGPT and Gemini without buying anything, and re-running the same prompts is a reasonable way to watch for change. Squarespace is clear that it reports whether you're mentioned rather than changing whether you are, so moving that status is the content, structure, and profile work described above. Add a plain Google check alongside it, since AI Overviews are a separate surface from the two it covers.
Related Services
Build the foundation first
Technical SEO
AI crawlers need a clean, fast foundation. Technical SEO ensures they can access your content.
Content Strategy
AI needs original, clearly written content to cite. Strategic content gives it something worth quoting.
Backlinks & Authority
Links and reviews decide whether AI considers you at all. Clarity decides whether it uses you. Authority keeps you in the pool.
Ready to be the answer?
AI answers about practices like yours are being built from someone's pages and profiles right now. Let's find out whether they're yours, and what would make them so.