What is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization Explained.

For years, the question was simple: do you appear on Google? If the answer was yes, the work was done. Since 2024, something has changed permanently. People started asking questions to ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and accepting those answers without clicking anywhere else.

The result is that a growing share of your potential traffic never reaches your website. The search happened, the answer was given, and your business name may or may not have appeared in that answer. That is the problem GEO addresses.

How does AI decide what to recommend?

To understand GEO, you need to understand what happens when someone asks ChatGPT, for example, who is the best digital marketing consultant in the Algarve.

Language models do not search in the same way as Google. They combine trained knowledge with, in some cases, real-time information retrieval. In both scenarios, the model needs to recognise your brand as a clear and credible entity for the topic of the question.

Without that association built, you can have the best website in the world and the AI simply will not mention you. It is not bad luck. It is the absence of strategy.

GEO vs SEO: they are not the same thing

Dimension	SEO	GEO
Destination	Google search results pages	AI-generated responses
Format	List of clickable links	Generated text, with or without citations
Focus	Keywords, backlinks, speed	Entity, topical authority, structure
Time to results	3 to 6 months	4 to 8 weeks (with solid foundation)
They are complementary and reinforce each other

What needs to be worked on to appear in AI?

Several dimensions influence a brand's ability to be recognised and recommended by AI engines. Without going into technical details that always depend on the specific case, there are pillars that appear in every GEO project I work on:

• How the brand is represented on its own website, what is called an entity home
• The technical structure of content and the use of structured data
• The presence and consistency of the brand across credible external sources
• The type of content produced and how it answers real questions

Each of these pillars has multiple layers. What works for a tourism business in the Algarve is different from what works for a law firm in Lisbon, so there is no universal formula.

GEO in Portugal: the window is open, for now

Most Portuguese brands have not yet adapted their digital strategy for AI search engines. Those who act now have a real advantage over the competition, especially in niche sectors and local markets like the Algarve, where I work with most of my clients.

For businesses with a tourism component, the challenge is even clearer: they need to be visible not just on Google in Portuguese, but also in AI responses in English, German, French. That requires an approach combining technical SEO, authority content and entity strategy, designed specifically for this market.

Where to start?

The first question is simple: if you search on ChatGPT right now for the service you offer in your area, does your name appear? Run the test. The answer will tell you a great deal.

If the result is empty, or if your competitors appear but not you, an entity diagnosis is the right starting point. That is the work I do at the beginning of every GEO consultancy project: finding where the problem is and what will have the most impact for that specific business.