How to get your business recommended by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews: a GEO guide for GCC companies

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to understand, trust and cite. For a company in the GCC it comes down to five things: one consistent business identity across the web, pages that answer buyer questions in the first sentence, structured data, independent proof such as reviews and press, and real content in both English and Arabic.

GEO and SEO: what is the difference?

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is about ranking a page in a list of ten blue links. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is about being named in the answer itself when someone asks an AI assistant a question such as "Which company in Dubai builds custom CRM systems?" or "Who is the best app developer in Riyadh?".

The two overlap heavily. AI assistants that browse the web (ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI Overviews) pull their information from search indexes, so a site that is invisible to Google and Bing is usually invisible to them too. GEO adds a second layer: the assistant has to be confident enough about your business to put its name in a short answer.

How AI assistants decide which companies to mention

There is no public ranking formula, but the behaviour is consistent enough to plan around. An assistant answering a buyer question will typically:

• Search the web for the question and read a handful of results.
• Prefer sources that state facts clearly: who the company is, where it operates, what it does, and for whom.
• Cross-check those facts. A business that is described the same way on its website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and industry directories looks reliable. One that has three phone numbers and two names looks risky.
• Favour independent proof, such as reviews, case studies, directory listings and press coverage, over a company's claims about itself.

So the job is to make your business easy to find, easy to understand, and easy to verify.

1. Make your business identity consistent everywhere

Start with the boring part, because it has the biggest effect. Pick one company name, one main website, one phone number and one set of addresses, then make every public profile match exactly:

• Your website header, footer and contact page.
• Google Business Profile and Apple Business Connect.
• LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook company pages.
• Directories buyers and AI assistants read, such as Clutch, GoodFirms and local chamber or free-zone listings.

If you run more than one domain, choose one as the main brand and 301-redirect the others to it. Duplicate sites split your authority and confuse assistants about which one is real.

2. Answer the question in the first sentence

AI assistants quote. Give them something worth quoting. Each important page should open with one plain sentence that answers the question the page is about, for example:

"Start Tech is a Dubai-based software development and digital agency that builds websites, mobile apps and custom CRM systems for companies across the UAE and GCC."

Then add detail: services, sectors, markets, process, timelines and proof. Avoid vague openings such as "We are passionate about digital excellence". They say nothing an assistant can repeat.

Good formats for GEO are:

• Service pages that say exactly what you deliver, where, and for whom.
• FAQ sections written as the real questions buyers ask.
• Case studies with a named client, the problem, what you built and, when the client agrees, measured results.
• Guides like this one that answer a specific question in depth.

3. Add structured data

Structured data (schema.org markup in JSON-LD) tells machines what each page is about without guessing. At a minimum, a services company in the GCC should have:

• Organization (or ProfessionalService) on every page, with the legal name, logo, addresses, phone, area served, languages and links to official social profiles.
• Service on each service page.
• FAQPage where you have visible FAQs.
• BlogPosting on articles, and BreadcrumbList for navigation.

Keep the markup truthful and identical to what the page shows. Markup that contradicts the visible page can do more harm than good.

4. Let AI crawlers in

Many sites block AI crawlers by accident, through a security plugin or a copied robots.txt. Check that yours allows the crawlers you want to be found by, such as GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI), PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot (Anthropic) and Bingbot. Google AI Overviews use the normal Googlebot crawl, so if Googlebot can reach your pages, AI Overviews can use them.

You can also publish an llms.txt file: a short plain-text summary of who you are, what you do and which pages matter most. It is a young convention and not every assistant reads it, but it is cheap to add and gives a clean, factual brief to any system that does.

5. Earn independent proof

What other people say about you carries more weight than what you say about yourself. Build it deliberately:

• Ask happy clients for Google reviews and directory reviews that mention the service and the city ("built our booking app", "Dubai").
• Keep a profile on the directories that rank for "best agency in Dubai" type searches, because assistants often read those lists.
• Pitch real stories to regional business and tech media.
• Publish case studies with numbers, with client permission. A specific result is far more likely to be repeated than a general claim.

6. Publish in Arabic as well as English

A large share of buyer searches in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Kuwait happen in Arabic, and assistants answer in the language of the question. If your Arabic presence is a translation widget or a thin copy of the English site, you will be missing from those answers.

Give Arabic its own URLs (for example under /ar/), write the copy for Arabic readers, connect the two versions with hreflang tags, and include Arabic versions of your FAQs and structured data. See our Arabic localisation checklist for the details.

How to measure GEO

GEO is newer than SEO and the tools are less mature, but you can still track progress:

• Each month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot the five to ten questions your buyers ask, in English and Arabic, and record whether and how you are mentioned.
• In your analytics, watch referral traffic from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com.
• In Google Search Console, watch impressions for long, question-style queries. They often rise before AI mentions do.

A 30-day GEO checklist

1. Agree on one company name, domain, phone and address set, and fix every profile to match.
2. Redirect secondary domains to the main site with 301 redirects.
3. Rewrite the first sentence of your home page and each service page as a direct, quotable answer.
4. Add Organization, Service, FAQPage and BreadcrumbList structured data.
5. Check robots.txt, allow the AI crawlers you want, and publish an llms.txt file.
6. Collect five new Google reviews that mention your service and city.
7. Publish one case study and one in-depth guide, in English and Arabic.
8. Run your first monthly AI visibility check and save the results as a baseline.

This is the same approach we used when we rebuilt starttechagency.com. If you would like us to audit your site and run the checklist for you, see our SEO, GEO and digital marketing service.