If you’ve ever asked ChatGPT or Gemini to recommend a plumber, a solicitor or a decent café “near me” and your business didn’t come up, here’s why. AI engines can’t quote what they can’t understand. If your website is a wall of paragraphs with no clear questions and answers, the AI skips it and cites someone else, usually a competitor who bothered to structure their page properly.
In this post:
- Why AI search behaves differently to Google search
- What “AEO” and “GEO” actually mean, in plain English
- The three things that make AI more likely to quote you
- What schema markup does, and doesn’t, do for you
Google Search Isn’t the Only Search Anymore
For twenty years, ranking meant getting a blue link on page one. That’s changing. People are starting to just ask an AI and take the answer it gives them, no clicking, no scrolling, no ten tabs open. If the AI doesn’t know you exist in a way it can use, you’re invisible. Doesn’t matter how good your business is.
AEO and GEO, Without the Jargon
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) both mean roughly the same thing for a small business: making your website easy for an AI to read, lift, and repeat back to a customer. Not for humans to browse. For a machine to extract a clean answer from.
What Actually Helps
Three things matter here, and none of them require a developer or a five-figure agency invoice.
Question-based headings. Write your section titles as the actual question a customer would type, not clever copy. “How much does a boiler service cost in Louth?” beats “Our Pricing” every time.
Short, direct answers up top. Answer the question in the first two or three sentences, then go into detail after. AI tools grab the beginning of a section, not the middle.
FAQs at the bottom of key pages. A proper list of real questions with plain answers. Not padding. Real questions people actually ask you on the phone.
Where Schema Markup Fits In
Schema is the invisible code that tells an AI “this bit is a question, this bit is the answer.” It doesn’t get you the little FAQ box in Google search results anymore, Google shut that down for most sites in 2023. But for ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar tools, it still helps them lift your content with more confidence. Worth doing. Not a magic trick on its own.
The Bottom Line
None of this replaces having a decent, honest website with real content on it. Schema and headings won’t save a page with nothing useful to say. But if you’ve already got the substance, structuring it properly is the difference between being the answer and being invisible.
The Questions Business Owners Actually Ask Me
What’s the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO focuses on getting your content picked for direct answers and featured snippets. GEO is the broader job of structuring your whole site so generative AI tools like ChatGPT can pull from it confidently. In practice, for a small business, they overlap almost completely.
Does FAQ schema still help my Google ranking?
Not for the FAQ rich snippet, Google restricted that to government and health sites back in 2023. It still helps AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity understand and cite your content, so it’s worth doing for that reason alone.
Do I need a developer to add schema markup to my site?
Not necessarily. Many website builders and plugins can add FAQ schema without touching code. If your site’s on WordPress, a plugin can usually handle it in minutes.
