How to get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity

Try this. Open ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity and ask: “Who is a good financial advisor for incorporated physicians in Ottawa?” You’ll get a short list of names, usually one to three, with a sentence about each. If your practice isn’t on it, you were never in the running for that person. This explainer covers how those answers are built, what AEO and GEO mean, and what an advisory practice can do to be part of the answer.

Two acronyms, one idea

Answer engine optimization (AEO) is about being used as the direct answer to a question. That includes Google’s featured snippets and AI overviews, and the answer a voice assistant reads out. Generative engine optimization (GEO) is about being recommended inside generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot when someone asks for a provider like you.

In practice they overlap almost entirely, and they share most of their foundations with traditional SEO. The difference is the destination. SEO earns you a spot in a list of ten links. AEO and GEO earn you a spot in the answer itself, where there may be only one or two names. That makes the stakes higher and the payoff larger.

How AI tools decide who to recommend

AI platforms don’t rank pages the way Google does. They build an understanding of entities: your practice, your name, what you do, where you are, who you serve. Then, when someone asks a question, they look for entities that match confidently and that appear trustworthy. Several things feed that confidence.

• Clarity. Does your website say, in plain language, who you are, where you are and exactly who you help? Vague copy like “helping you reach your financial goals” gives an AI nothing to work with. “Fee-only financial planning for incorporated dentists in Ottawa” gives it everything.
• Consistency. Do your website, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, dealer directory listing and any press coverage all describe you the same way? Inconsistency reads as uncertainty, and AI tools don’t recommend what they’re unsure about.
• Third-party mentions. Being quoted in a news article, listed in a reputable directory, or discussed in a community like Reddit tells the model that other people vouch for you. These signals matter more to AI tools than almost anything else you control.
• Structured, citable content. Articles that answer a specific question with the answer up front, then explain, are the kind of content AI tools quote. Long meandering posts are not.
• Specificity. Specialists get recommended far more often than generalists. If you ask an AI for “a financial advisor,” it hedges. If you ask for “a financial advisor who works with farm families in Saskatchewan,” it names whoever has made that clear.

What this means for an advisory practice

The good news is that the work required is mostly work you should be doing anyway. The practices that show up in AI answers are the ones with a clear story told consistently across the web, backed by people other than themselves. Here’s what that looks like in order of impact.

Rewrite your core pages for a reader, not a regulator

Your homepage and service pages should answer three questions in the first screen: who you are, where you are, who you serve. Then each niche you serve gets its own page with the same directness. This is the single highest-leverage change for both AEO/GEO and traditional SEO, and it’s the one most advisors resist because it means choosing.

Make every listing match

Google Business Profile, LinkedIn, your firm’s advisor directory, any professional associations. Same name, same description of who you serve, same city. It’s tedious and it works.

Earn mentions you don’t control

Press coverage is the strongest signal. A quote in a local news story about retirement planning, a column in an industry publication, a mention in a community thread. We work with journalists every week to earn this kind of coverage for the practices we represent, because it helps everywhere at once: Google rankings, AI recommendations and the confidence of a referral who looks you up.

Publish answers, not essays

Each blog post should answer one question a prospect actually asks, with the answer in the first paragraph. “Can I split my pension income with my spouse?” “What happens to my corporation when I retire?” These are the questions people type into AI tools, and a clear, well-structured answer from a real advisor is exactly what those tools want to cite.

A worked example

Take two advisors in the same city. The first has a homepage that says “Helping families achieve financial confidence,” a LinkedIn headline that says “Financial Advisor,” and no press mentions. The second has a homepage that says “Retirement income planning for public-sector employees in Ottawa,” a LinkedIn headline that says the same thing, a Google Business Profile with the same description, and two quotes in local news stories about retirement planning.

Ask an AI tool for a retirement advisor for a public-sector employee in Ottawa and it will name the second advisor almost every time. Not because the second advisor is better, but because the model can tell exactly what they do, sees that story repeated across the web, and sees other people vouching for it. The first advisor might be excellent. The model just can’t tell.

How to check where you stand

Ask the tools directly. Try five or six prompts a real prospect might type, including your city and each niche you serve. Note who gets named and what the tool says about them. Then look at those practices’ websites and listings. You’ll usually see the pattern immediately: they say clearly who they help, and other people have written about them.

At Level 2 and above, our search plans include prompt tracking across ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, so you can see month by month which questions you appear in and which you don’t. We also seed conversations on Reddit and similar communities, because those threads are heavily weighted in what AI tools learn from.

How long it takes

Faster than you might expect. Because AI tools re-read the web continuously and reward clarity over age, practices that publish clear, specific pages often start appearing in answers within a few months, sometimes before their traditional Google rankings move. Consistent recommendations across a range of prompts typically build over six to twelve months alongside the rest of the SEO work.

What it costs

AEO/GEO is included in every one of our search plans. Level 1 covers the foundations and Gemini visibility. Level 2 adds advanced optimization for ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, Reddit seeding and prompt tracking. Details are on our SEO & AEO/GEO page. If you’d like to see what AI tools currently say about your practice and your competitors, book a meeting and we’ll run the prompts together.

Frequently asked questions