The shift
The way customers find businesses has fundamentally changed
For two decades, online discoverability meant one thing: Search Engine Optimization. Rank higher on Google, get more clicks, get more customers. The entire discipline of digital marketing was built on this assumption.
That assumption no longer holds exclusively. A growing share of high-intent searches, such as "who should I hire for X", "what's the best Y in Edmonton" or "recommend a supplier for Z in Alberta", are now directed not at Google's ranked list of links but at AI-powered systems that synthesize a direct answer. ChatGPT. Perplexity. Google's own AI Overviews. Microsoft Copilot in search. These systems don't return a list of ten blue links. They return a paragraph, a recommendation, a named business with reasons.
In 2025, Semrush found Google AI Overviews appearing on roughly 16% to 25% of tracked queries, peaking at 24.61% in July. Perplexity's last official volume figure was 780 million queries in May 2025. The businesses named in AI answers are generally not placed there by advertising; they earn their citation through digital signals AI systems can confidently synthesize.
What that looks like in Canadian numbers. We scored 75 businesses for our benchmark across eight sectors on the same rubric, 15 of them national, multinational or US-based firms. The median business scored 48 out of 100 on overall discoverability, and 53% scored below 50. For the 51 Canadian independent local businesses, the median was 44.
Generative engine optimization is the practice of building those signals deliberately, so that when an AI system is asked about your business category in your region, yours is a name it can confidently provide. The term comes from a Princeton-led research paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" (Aggarwal et al., arXiv 2023, published at KDD 2024), which reported visibility improvements of up to 40% in test conditions.
GEO vs SEO
How GEO differs from traditional SEO
GEO and SEO share some underlying signals, but they optimize for fundamentally different outcomes. Understanding the distinction is the starting point for knowing what to fix.
A business can rank #1 on Google and be entirely absent from AI-generated answers. A business with modest Google rankings but strong structured data, consistent profiles, and high review velocity can still be cited by AI platforms. The signals overlap but are not the same.
The signals
What actually drives GEO for Alberta small businesses
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High
Google Business Profile completeness and recencyIn our audits, your GBP is one of the strongest signals for local AI recommendations. Hours must be accurate, service descriptions must be current and specific, photos must be recent, and you should be posting updates at least monthly. An abandoned or incomplete GBP can suggest to AI systems that you may not be operating.
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High
Review volume and velocityAI systems treat consistent, recent reviews as a trust signal. 80 reviews over 3 years is likely a stronger signal than 80 reviews from one month in 2021. Velocity (the rate of new reviews) signals an active, current business. Platforms: Google, Yelp, Facebook, industry-specific directories.
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High
Schema.org structured data markupSchema markup describes what your business is, what it does, where it operates, and who it serves in a form search engines can read directly. Google says it is not required for AI search features, but it helps search engines understand your pages. LocalBusiness and Service types are a sensible starting point for most Alberta small businesses; keep the markup matching what visitors see on the page.
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High
NAP consistencyYour business Name, Address, and Phone number must be identical, character for character, across every platform: your website, GBP, Yelp, industry directories, social profiles. Inconsistencies signal unreliability and fragment your entity signal across systems.
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Medium
Content depth and direct answerabilityAI systems favour content that answers questions directly and demonstrates genuine expertise. A page that explains what you do, who you serve, what the process looks like, and what outcomes you deliver is far more citable than a page filled with keyword-targeted phrases that don't actually answer anything.
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Medium
Third-party mentions and directory authorityIn our audits, AI systems tend to favour authoritative external mentions: industry directories, chamber of commerce listings, media coverage, professional association profiles. Each consistent external mention reinforces your entity signal and can increase AI systems' confidence in naming you.
Find your gaps
The Discoverability Check: know where you stand
Many Alberta small businesses don't know whether they appear in AI-generated answers for their category, because they've never checked. The Discoverability Check changes that.
Send your business name and city, and Jordan runs the queries by hand across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI: the same kind of live checks a buyer runs before deciding who to call. You get the results by email within one business day: whether AI names your business, who it is recommending instead, and the single clearest gap. The free Check does not carry a score or a competitor leaderboard; those come with the paid Discoverability Report.
Common questions
GEO FAQ
Does GEO replace SEO?
No, it supplements it. Google still processes billions of traditional searches daily, and organic rankings still drive significant traffic. GEO is the additional layer that helps you also appear in the AI-generated answers that increasingly sit above traditional results for commercial queries. The most effective strategy addresses both, but in our experience GEO is the newer and less-addressed gap for many Alberta businesses.
How quickly can GEO improvements affect AI citations?
It varies, and no engine publishes a timeline. A change can only show up after the page is recrawled, so notifying engines of updated pages (IndexNow does this for Bing and other participating engines) shortens the wait. Reviews and third-party mentions take longer to build but compound over time. We did this on our own site. In June 2026, no AI engine we tested named us for municipal AI policy. By early October, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot each named us first for that question, about 16 weeks later.
Is GEO only for local businesses?
No, but local signals are particularly high-impact for service businesses operating in a geographic area, which describes most Alberta SMBs. Businesses with a physical location or a defined service area benefit most immediately from GEO improvements, because AI platforms can answer local recommendation queries with more confidence when entity signals are strong.