Straight answers about GEO, AEO, and getting your business cited by AI. Every figure below carries its window and its instrument.
GEO is the work of making your business easy for AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI to find, understand, and cite. Classic SEO optimizes for a list of links. GEO optimizes for an answer: when someone asks an AI a question your business can answer, you want the AI to pull from your pages and name you as the source.
SEO earns rankings in traditional search results. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) targets direct answers, like featured snippets and voice results. GEO targets generative engines that write answers from many sources. The three overlap heavily: clean structure, clear passages, and consistent business data help all three. I treat them as one discipline with three scoreboards.
Cited means an AI answer pulled from your pages and used them as a source. In my mom's shop's case, Microsoft Clarity's AI Visibility dashboard recorded 143 page citations between June 10 and July 23, 2026, mostly on how-to questions, and that instrument covers Microsoft Copilot and its partner surfaces rather than ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews. It does not mean AI recommends the shop to buyers.
Mostly not yet. The shop's citations sent well under 1% of sessions. The value today is position: AI engines treat your pages as a trusted source, and as more buying decisions start inside AI answers, the sources already being cited are placed to win them. Closing the citation-to-customer gap is the problem I'm working on in the open, and I do not have it solved.
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity five real questions your customers ask, and see if your business shows up or gets named. Then check your robots.txt, and check the right agents: each provider runs several. OpenAI splits GPTBot (training), OAI-SearchBot (search appearance) and ChatGPT-User (the live fetch during an answer). Anthropic splits ClaudeBot, Claude-User and Claude-SearchBot. Perplexity runs PerplexityBot. Blocking a training crawler does not block the search agent, and Google-Extended governs Gemini apps rather than Search. Then run one product page through Google's Rich Results Test to see if your structured data parses. That is the ten-minute version; my guide walks through the full check.
The foundation costs time rather than money. Every tool I use to measure it is free, and the core work (fixing your business data, writing pages that answer one question each, unblocking AI crawlers, cleaning your catalog) is work an owner can do across a few afternoons. Where money starts to matter is the slow part: earning mentions on the third-party pages engines already trust. That is relationship work, and it is the piece most people eventually pay for. Be suspicious of anyone quoting you a monthly retainer for the free part. If you would rather I did it, my time is $75 an hour and you can buy hours on the services page. The SEO by the hour page covers the one hour minimum and why I do not sell retainers.
Yes, and sometimes more than for e-commerce. When someone asks an AI "who does custom embroidery near me" or "what should I look for in a memory quilt," the engine assembles that answer from your Google Business Profile, your reviews, local directories, and whatever pages describe what you do. A local business with no catalog at all can still be the source an engine names. The work is the same: be readable, be clear, be mentioned where the engines already look.
Most of it, yes. On Shopify or a similar platform, unblocking crawlers is a text file, writing question-shaped pages is writing, and structured data is usually a theme setting or an app rather than code. The parts that genuinely benefit from a developer are custom schema on a hand-built site and fixing a theme that generates broken structured data. If you can edit your own pages and read a robots.txt file, you can do the first pass yourself.
I'm an operator, not an agency. I run the SEO and AI-search work for my family's boutique. Before that I spent nearly a decade in fire protection, reading real systems. I also served twelve years in Army National Guard intelligence. I teach GEO and AEO for small businesses and e-commerce stores on YouTube at @itsryanlenk. My mom's real shop is the lab, and the About page carries the full receipts.
Yes, and they are checkable. Every number comes from a named tool export: Microsoft Clarity counts the AI citations, Search Console counts search clicks, Merchant Center covers shopping data, Shopify covers the catalog work. I publish percentages with their base and windows with their figures. When a number turns out to have been published imprecisely, I correct it in place and list the correction publicly at llms.txt rather than editing it away. If a number can't survive that standard, I don't air it.
Yes. I sell my time by the hour, starting at $75, and you can buy hours on the services page without talking to me first. The eight things I do are listed there, and I will tell you before you pay if I think you do not need me yet. I also still do free audits case by case, in my own time, usually because the site is interesting or the question is one other owners will have. Everything else here stays free: the guides, the articles, the newsletter, and the tools on GitHub. Read anything on this site knowing that I benefit if you find the work credible. If you have a question about your own store, email hello@ryanlenk.com; good questions become future articles and videos, kept anonymous unless you say otherwise.
Pick the service that matches your problem, choose how many hours you want, and check out. You will be asked for your website, your business name, and what you want fixed. That is everything I need to start. If you would rather talk first, email hello@ryanlenk.com.
I read what you sent, look at your site, and email you. If the work you bought is not the work you need, I say so and refund you. Otherwise I start, and you get a plain account of what I changed and what happened after.
Your website URL, and access to whatever the job touches. That can mean your site admin, your Google Business Profile, Search Console, or your traffic reports. If you cannot give access, say so. I will tell you what is still possible and refund the rest.
Yes. Full refund before I start, no questions asked. After I start, I refund every hour you bought that I have not worked. If I decide I am not the right person for the job, I refund everything. The full policy is linked in the footer.
No, and neither can anybody else. Search engines and AI assistants change without notice and I do not control them. I guarantee the hours, the work, and a straight account of what happened. If someone promises you a ranking, ask them what happens when Google changes the rules.
Yes. Being nearby only matters for the map results, and that means Pittsburgh plus Fayette, Allegheny, Washington and Westmoreland counties. The rest is the same wherever you are. The work happens in your website, not in your town.
Start with three moves. Make your name, address, and phone identical everywhere they appear. Pick the three questions customers actually ask you and answer each one on its own clean page. Then install free measurement (Google Search Console and Microsoft Clarity) so you can see what happens. That covers more ground than most businesses ever do, and it costs nothing but afternoons. If you would rather take the whole site in the order to use it, start here.
The Receipts is my free newsletter. One concrete move per issue: how small businesses and e-commerce stores get found and cited by AI, proven on a real shop with real numbers, including the experiments that flopped. You can join at ryanlenk.com or itsryanlenk.beehiiv.com/subscribe.