Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your business visible in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. Codifyany is a New Zealand agency that builds GEO into your website, structured data and content so AI assistants can find, understand and recommend you. GEO packages start from NZD 1,500.
Search used to end with a list of links. Increasingly, it ends with an answer. When someone asks ChatGPT for "a good digital marketing agency in Auckland", the assistant does not show ten blue links. It names two or three businesses. If you are not among them, you were not beaten in the rankings — you were never in the consideration set at all.
This is a different problem from SEO, and it does not have the same solution. Ranking fourth on Google still earns clicks. Being fourth in an AI assistant's assessment usually earns nothing, because the assistant stops naming businesses after the second or third. Visibility in AI search is closer to winner-takes-most than traditional search has ever been.
Three things have changed at once. AI assistants now handle a meaningful share of the questions people used to type into Google. Google itself puts AI Overviews above the organic results for a growing proportion of queries. And a rising share of website visits are made by AI agents acting on someone's behalf rather than by people browsing — agents that ignore your design entirely and read only your text and structured data.
The businesses that adapt early get an advantage that compounds. AI systems build a picture of who is credible in a category over time, drawing on how consistently and clearly you present yourself across the web. That picture is easier to shape now, while most New Zealand businesses have not started, than it will be in two years.
Every GEO engagement follows the same five stages. Under the Codifyany GEO Methodology, entity mapping always precedes structured data work — because schema built on an inconsistent brand identity simply encodes the inconsistency. Each stage produces a deliverable you keep, whether or not you continue to the next one.
We establish exactly who you are in machine-readable terms, and make that answer identical everywhere it appears — your site, Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and directory listings.
Deliverable: An entity map with a consistency score and a corrected canonical description.
We translate your services, pricing, locations and expertise into structured data AI systems can read without inference — Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Offer, FAQPage, BlogPosting and Speakable schema.
Deliverable: Validated JSON-LD across your entire site, plus an llms.txt file.
We restructure your content so it answers questions directly, in the first sentence, in language a machine can lift cleanly — converting headings into the questions your customers actually ask.
Deliverable: Rewritten opening sections for every core page, plus a real FAQ set.
We build the independent evidence AI systems look for before recommending you — Google Business Profile, directory listings, review generation, and realistic third-party mentions.
Deliverable: A corroboration map and a prioritised plan for expanding it.
We test a defined set of prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini every month, recording whether you appear, how you are described, and who appears alongside you.
Deliverable: A monthly AI visibility report showing what changed and what we are adjusting next.
GEO does not replace SEO. Most of the technical foundations are shared, and a site that is invisible to Google is usually invisible to AI assistants too. But the goal, the unit of success and the way you measure it are genuinely different.
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in a list of links | Be named inside a generated answer |
| Unit of success | Position on a results page | Inclusion and framing in a response |
| Who sees you | Anyone scrolling the results | Only those named — typically two or three |
| Query type | "marketing agency Auckland" | "who should I hire to get my Auckland business into AI search?" |
| What wins | Backlinks, keywords, technical health | Entity clarity, structured data, corroboration |
| Role of schema | Helpful, drives rich results | Fundamental — often the primary input |
| Role of authorship | A ranking signal | A trust gate — anonymous content is discounted |
| Measurement | Rank tracking, Search Console | Prompt testing across assistants; AI referral traffic in GA4 |
The practical implication: the work overlaps by roughly half. If you are already doing SEO properly, GEO is an extension rather than a rebuild. If you are not, GEO will expose that quickly — because AI systems are less forgiving of a messy technical foundation than Google is.
GEO is not equally urgent for everyone. It matters most where customers ask questions before they buy, and where the purchase is considered rather than impulsive. Here is an honest assessment — including who should probably spend their money elsewhere.
We will run your site through our audit and show you which of the five stages above you are already passing.
Run the free auditFor businesses starting from scratch. Delivered in 3 weeks.
Continues the work after the foundation is in place. No lock-in.
GEO combined with SEO, Google Ads and AI lead generation.
Every engagement starts with a free 30-minute call and a free automated audit of your current site. If GEO is not the right spend for your business right now, we will tell you what is.
GEO is the practice of making your business visible in answers generated by AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. Where SEO aims to rank a page in a list of links, GEO aims to get your business named inside the answer itself. It combines entity consistency, structured data, answer-shaped content and independent corroboration.
SEO gets you into a list of links; GEO gets you named inside a generated answer. The technical foundations overlap by roughly half — both need a fast, crawlable, well-structured site. GEO adds heavier emphasis on structured data, consistent entity information across the web, named authorship, and content written so a machine can extract a clean answer from it.
No. GEO extends SEO rather than replacing it. Google remains the largest single source of discovery for most New Zealand businesses, and a site invisible to Google is usually invisible to AI assistants too, because many of them retrieve from search indexes. We treat GEO as an additional layer on a sound SEO foundation, not an alternative to one.
Expect six to twelve weeks before meaningful movement, and longer for competitive categories. AI systems update their picture of a business on their own schedule, which you do not control. Retrieval-based tools such as Perplexity and ChatGPT search reflect changes fastest, sometimes within weeks. Anything relying on model training data moves far more slowly.
Two ways, monthly. We test a fixed set of prompts across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini, recording whether your business appears, how it is described, and which competitors appear alongside you. Separately, we configure GA4 to isolate visits referred by AI assistants, which are otherwise buried in generic referral data.
No, and you should not trust anyone who does. No agency controls what an AI model outputs, and there is no submission process or paid placement. What we can do is make your business as easy as possible to find, understand, verify and quote — which is what these systems reward. Any guaranteed placement offer is either misunderstanding the mechanism or misrepresenting it.
Codifyany's GEO packages start at NZD 1,500 for a one-off foundation build and NZD 800 per month for ongoing work. The foundation covers entity mapping, structured data and answer architecture. Ongoing work covers corroboration building, content, and monthly citation monitoring across five AI platforms. Marketing services are month-to-month with no lock-in contract.
Ranking well helps but does not guarantee inclusion in AI answers. AI systems weight signals differently from Google's ranking algorithm — entity consistency, structured data and named authorship matter more, while raw backlink volume matters less. We regularly see businesses ranking on page one of Google that no assistant names when asked directly for a recommendation.
Only if the evidence supports it. AI systems favour businesses that are clearly described, consistently represented across independent sources, and specific about what they do. Vague positioning loses to specific positioning almost every time. This is why GEO work usually improves your human conversion rate too — the same clarity helps both audiences.
Often more so than for a large one. The New Zealand market is small enough that few competitors have started, so the barrier to being the clearest source in your category and region is genuinely low right now. A specialist trades business in Christchurch faces far less competition for AI visibility than a national brand does. That window will narrow.
Book a free 30-minute call. We will test your business against live prompts in ChatGPT and Perplexity while you are on the call, and tell you honestly whether GEO is worth your money right now.