How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI
By saang studio · · 5 min read
GEOSEO
A quiet change is happening in how customers find businesses. Instead of typing “nail salon Thonglor” into Google and scrolling two pages of results, they ask ChatGPT or Google’s AI mode a full question — “where should I get my nails done near Thonglor, somewhere that takes walk-ins?” — and get back three names. Either your business is one of the three, or the conversation is over before you knew it happened.
Getting into those answers is what GEO — generative engine optimization — is about. It is the successor habit to SEO, and the good news for small businesses is that it rewards substance over budget: the assistants are trying to give a correct, defensible answer, and they build it from whatever trustworthy information about you they can actually read.
How an AI decides who to recommend
When an assistant answers “where should I…”, it is synthesising from sources it can crawl and trust: your website, Google Maps listing, review platforms, directories, and articles that mention you. Three properties decide whether you surface:
- 1.Readable — the information exists on pages a machine can crawl, in real text rather than text baked into images.
- 2.Consistent — your name, address, phone, hours and prices say the same thing everywhere they appear.
- 3.Quotable — clear, factual statements a model can lift into an answer: who you serve, what you do, where, for how much.
Why a Facebook page is not enough
Most Thai SMEs live on Facebook, Instagram and LINE — which are fine for customers who already found you, but mostly closed to the crawlers AI systems learn from. Posts scroll away, prices hide in chat, and the platforms restrict what outside systems can read. A simple website you own is the one page on the internet where your information is permanent, public and machine-readable. That is why it is the anchor of every GEO effort.
The starting checklist
- A website that states plainly what you do, for whom, where, and at what price — in Thai and English.
- Structured data (Schema.org markup for your business type, services, FAQs) so machines read facts, not guesses.
- A Google Business Profile that exactly matches the website — same name, address, phone, hours.
- FAQ content written the way customers actually ask, because assistants answer questions with questions-shaped content.
- Fresh reviews you reply to — assistants read them as evidence you are real, active and good.
None of this is a trick, and that is the point. GEO is mostly the discipline of publishing the truth about your business in a form machines can verify. The shops that do it now are being quoted while their competitors are still invisible to the question.
Frequently asked questions
- Is GEO different from SEO?
- They overlap heavily. SEO earns you a position in a list of links; GEO earns you a mention inside an AI-written answer. Good technical SEO — crawlable pages, structured data, consistent facts — is the foundation of both, but GEO puts more weight on quotable, question-shaped content.
- My business only has a Facebook page. Can AI still recommend it?
- Occasionally, via Google Maps and reviews — but you are running on luck. Social platforms are largely closed to the systems AI learns from, so a crawlable website you own raises your odds dramatically.
- How long before it works?
- Structured data and a consistent Google Business Profile can be read within weeks; being cited for competitive questions builds over months as reviews and content accumulate. It compounds — early pages keep earning.
- Does this matter in Thai, or only in English?
- Both. Thai customers ask assistants in Thai, tourists ask in English and Chinese. Publishing your facts bilingually roughly doubles the questions you can be the answer to.