GEO Strategy: A 90-Day Plan to Get Your Business Cited by AI

Key takeaways

A GEO strategy has three parts: the buyer questions you want to win, the sources AI cites for them, and a plan to fix your site and earn those outside sources.
Research disagrees on how much AI relies on brand sites versus third-party sources. The answer depends on the type of question, so measure your own category first.
The original GEO study found the biggest gains for pages that were not ranking first: a site in fifth place gained 115% visibility by citing sources.
Plan in 90 days: diagnose and fix access first, then content and business data, then outside proof, measuring every month.

115%visibility gain for a fifth-ranked site that cited sources (GEO study)

87.2%of 442M+ AI citations came from third-party sources (Scrunch)

86%of 6.8M citations came from sources brands manage or influence (Yext)

What is a GEO strategy?

A GEO strategy is a plan for getting your business named and cited in AI answers. It defines which buyer questions matter, which AI assistants your buyers use, which sources those assistants cite today, and the order of work: technical access, your own pages, business data and outside proof. It also sets how you will measure progress month by month.

It is not a separate thing from your SEO strategy; it extends it. If you already have one, the SEO strategy guide covers the base. The GEO hub explains the concepts, and the GEO checklist is the task list that comes out of this plan.

Which questions should a GEO strategy target?

Start with 15 to 30 questions a buyer asks before choosing a business like yours: comparisons, prices, best options in a city, how to solve a problem you fix. Leave out trivia that never leads to a purchase. Ask them in each AI your buyers use and in each language you sell in, and record who is named and cited.

Google's advice for content applies directly here: its helpful content guide says that "why" is perhaps the most important question to answer about your content. A GEO strategy built around questions that do not lead to a sale produces a nice visibility chart and no leads. For a clinic, "how much does an implant cost in Medellín" is worth ten times more than "what is a dental implant".

What does the research say a GEO strategy should prioritize?

Three things. Content that cites sources, quotes experts and adds statistics, which raised visibility by about 30 to 40% in the original GEO study. Pages that already rank, but not first, because they gained the most. And topic fit: the best method changed by subject, so test in your own category instead of copying a generic recipe.

The details of the GEO study are worth knowing. Citing sources raised visibility by 115% for websites ranked fifth, while the top-ranked site lost about 30% on average when the others improved. In practice, GEO is where a smaller business can overtake a bigger one, and where a leader that stops improving can lose ground. Microsoft adds a useful detail on how assistants read: in its guidance for AI search answers, Bing explains that AI assistants do not read a page top to bottom like a person; they pick the pieces of content that earn a place in the answer, and headings act like chapter titles for those pieces.

Should you invest in your own site or in outside sources?

Both, in a ratio that depends on your category. Studies disagree because they count differently. Yext found 86% of citations came from sources brands manage or influence, including listings. Scrunch found 87.2% came from third-party sites. For local services, your site and listings carry more weight; for national products, reviews and media matter more.

Study	What it found	Why it differs
Yext, 6.8M citations	86% from sources brands manage or influence: websites 44%, listings 42%; forums like Reddit 2%	Counts directories and listings as brand-managed; heavy on local queries
Scrunch, 442M+ citation events	87.2% from third-party sources; the brand's own site 5.95%	Counts listings as third-party; mixes many categories
University of Toronto, 2025	A systematic bias toward earned media; 92.1% earned in US consumer electronics	Product categories, compared with Google's own results

The Toronto researchers found, for example, that in US automotive queries AI search cited 81.9% earned media and 18.1% brand content, while Google's results were 45.1% earned. My reading for a business owner: if you sell a local service, your own site plus complete, consistent listings come first. If you sell a product nationally, reviews, comparison articles and media coverage come first. Either way, the only reliable answer for your category is the sources list from your own question test.

A 90-day GEO plan

Period	Work	Output
Days 1 to 15	Pick the questions, run the baseline test in each AI, set up the free reports, check crawler access	Baseline: who is named, which sources are cited
Days 15 to 45	Fix access and indexing, rewrite the key pages answer-first with sourced facts, align business data everywhere	Updated pages and profiles
Days 45 to 75	Work the outside sources the test found: listings, reviews, industry lists, honest forum answers, local media	New mentions and reviews
Days 75 to 90	Rerun the same test, compare with the baseline, decide the next quarter	Trend report and next priorities

Keep the test identical each time. AI answers change from run to run; a SparkToro study found less than a 1 in 100 chance of the same brand list appearing twice, so judge the plan on the trend across many questions. And do not shortcut the outside work: Google's AI features guide warns that seeking inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it might seem.

How much does a GEO strategy cost?

You can run a basic GEO strategy yourself with free reports and a spreadsheet; it costs time. If you hire it out, my step 1 is a GEO audit from USD 400, paid once, which finds the errors and sets the priorities. Ongoing work is the GEO Growth plan at USD 1,750 per month or GEO Scale at USD 2,500.

Every plan and what it includes is on the GEO services page. To measure progress with one number, read the AI share of voice guide. No one can guarantee you a mention in ChatGPT or Google's AI, and I do not. What a good strategy does is remove the reasons AI skips you and track the trend honestly. The home page explains how I work.

Frequently asked questions

How long does a GEO strategy take to show results?

Access and content fixes can show in live-search answers within weeks. Outside proof and reputation take months. Judge the strategy on a 90-day trend.

Is a GEO strategy different from an SEO strategy?

It builds on it. The SEO base stays; GEO adds the question test in AI assistants, the work on sources AI cites and AI-specific measurement.

Does a small business need a GEO strategy?

A light one, yes. Twenty buyer questions, a monthly test and a short list of fixes is enough to start, and it can be done in a few hours a month.

What should I do first?

Run your buyer questions in the AI assistants your customers use and write down who is named and which sources are cited. That baseline decides everything else.

Can someone guarantee my business will be cited by AI?

No. AI answers change and no one outside the AI companies controls them. Be careful with any provider that promises a guaranteed mention.

About the author

Juan José Giraldo is an SEO consultant in Medellín, Colombia, with 5+ years of experience. He works on technical and local SEO for 600+ US car dealerships at Reunion Marketing, an Inc. 5000 agency, and supervises the SEO of 18 US online stores with more than 3 million products at Prontomowers. Read more · LinkedIn.

GEO strategy: a 90-day plan to get your business cited by AI.