Field notesGenerative Engine Optimization, written down.
How ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews decide which businesses to recommend, and what you can change on your side to be one of them. Written for cafes, restaurants, hotels and tour operators.
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One market already lets publishers bill Google for AI impressions
To launch AI Overviews in France, Google agreed to an opt-out, separate AI-versus-classic reporting, and payment tied to AI impressions. That package is a preview of the argument everywhere else.
How much of an AI citation is just your Google ranking?
We wrote in June that nobody had measured the overlap between ranking and AI citation. The numbers now exist, and they are less flattering to GEO than the pitch decks suggest.
Google now routes search clicks through a redirect. Check your Direct traffic.
Google confirmed the google.com/goto passthrough in late August 2026. It is aimed at scrapers, and the side effect lands on your analytics and your rank tracking.
AI answers moved into Gmail this week
Gmail search AI Overviews went global on 15 September and finish rolling out on 21 September, on by default. A new AI answer surface, and the first one you cannot optimise for.
Reddit lost 86 percent of its ChatGPT citations in about a week
One robots.txt line took Reddit from roughly 3.83 percent of ChatGPT Search citations to 0.52 percent. Google's surfaces barely moved and Perplexity did not. The off-site surface is now built per engine.
Is Cloudflare blocking ChatGPT from your website?
The September 2026 Cloudflare default only touches pages that display ads. The change that quietly blocks AI crawlers on a restaurant or clinic site landed in July 2025.
The research says hiding your prices keeps you out of AI answers
A SIGIR 2026 experiment ran 252,000 trials across six models. Publishing a price was a gatekeeper. Restructuring the same content did nothing. What that means for a clinic.
Three corrections to every GA4 guide for tracking ChatGPT referrals
GA4's AI Assistant channel excludes Perplexity, a third to two thirds of AI sessions land in Direct, and most ChatGPT referrals now hit your homepage. Fix the setup before you report the number.
Does llms.txt do anything? 97 percent of the files Ahrefs found got zero requests
Ahrefs checked 137,210 domains and found almost nothing fetching llms.txt. Google says it neither harms nor helps. Here is the one case John Mueller conceded, and how to check your own logs.
Block, allow or price: the AI crawler decision after Cloudflare's September flip
Cloudflare's 15 September 2026 default is a publisher story. The decision a normal business site has to make is narrower: which crawlers to block, which to allow, and whether pricing is even available to you.
ChatGPT can book a table now. Can it book yours?
Since 10 August 2026 ChatGPT books restaurant tables through Yelp, OpenTable and Resy. Why that splits into two problems for restaurants, and why joining may still be the wrong call.
Why every AI visibility tool gives you a different number
Why every AI visibility tool gives you a different number for the same brand, and the sampling method that produces a figure you can defend.
Where ChatGPT gets its restaurant recommendations
Where ChatGPT gets its restaurant recommendations, what a 2,880-prompt test found about Yelp and Foursquare, and why listings come before your website.
What GEO should cost a single-location cafe, and when you should not buy it
What GEO should cost a single-location cafe: mostly a one-off technical fix plus listings hygiene, when a retainer earns its keep, and when to walk away.
The booking that came from ChatGPT and never showed up in your analytics
Why a booking that came from ChatGPT never showed up in your analytics: stripped referrers, inflated Direct traffic, and what you can and cannot know.
Your restaurant ranks first on Google and ChatGPT has never heard of it
Why a restaurant can rank first on Google while ChatGPT has never heard of it, and the boring causes: a JavaScript menu, CDN bot rules, listings that disagree.
If your menu loads in JavaScript, no AI can read it
Why a JavaScript-loaded menu is invisible to ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity, how to run the disable-JavaScript test, and whether the fix is a template or a rebuild.
Most GEO is a scam. Here is the part that is not.
A direct answer to whether GEO is a scam: which parts are rebranded SEO or unsupported by evidence, and the narrow set of work that survives scrutiny.
Nine things in a GEO pitch that should end the meeting
Nine things in a GEO pitch that should end the meeting, from guaranteed placement and the 40 percent figure to llms.txt on the invoice, with the evidence for each.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
A direct answer to whether generative engine optimization replaces search engine optimization, what the measured overlap is, and where the two genuinely diverge.
How to get ChatGPT to recommend your business
What determines whether an AI assistant names your business in an answer, separated from the tactics that are sold hard and supported by nothing.
What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
GEO is making a business legible to AI answer engines so it gets named when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google for a recommendation. How it differs from SEO.
AI search for tour operators and experience businesses
Experience queries carry constraints: duration, group size, fitness level, language, weather. Tour operators who publish those constraints win the queries that convert.
Getting a specialty coffee shop found in AI search
Coffee queries are attribute-driven: roaster, brew methods, wifi, seating, laptop policy. How a small cafe publishes the details that decide those queries.
Schema markup for AI search: which types matter
Which schema types are worth deploying for a hospitality business, what to put in each, and the honest limit: a matched study found no lift in AI citations.
How to get your restaurant recommended by ChatGPT and Perplexity
A checklist for restaurants that want to appear when someone asks an AI assistant where to eat: entity setup, the attributes behind filtered queries, and cited sources.
llms.txt: what it is, how to write one, and whether it does anything yet
A plain guide to the llms.txt proposal with a working example, and an honest assessment: Google says it does not use the file and no major provider reads it in answers.
How to measure whether AI assistants are recommending you
There is no Search Console for ChatGPT. A workable measurement system: a prompt set, sampling on a schedule, and the four metrics worth reporting to a client.
How AI assistants decide which businesses to recommend
What happens between a question like 'best coffee near me' and the three names an assistant returns, and which parts of that pipeline a business can influence.
Google AI Overviews: what local businesses can influence
AI Overviews sit above the results a local business relied on. What feeds them, which levers exist, and how to stop losing the clicks position one used to bring.
GEO vs SEO: what changes, and what stays exactly the same
A practical comparison of Generative Engine Optimization and SEO: which SEO work carries over, which habits stop paying, and where the two genuinely conflict.
AI search visibility for boutique hotels and small properties
Independent hotels compete for AI recommendations against OTAs with far more content. Where the leverage sits: attribute depth, trip-intent language and cited sources.