ChatGPT can't cite a page it isn't allowed to read. Sounds obvious. But GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot are two different OpenAI bots, and only OAI-SearchBot decides whether you can show up in ChatGPT search. So I put together The GEO Playbook. It's a free PDF on getting your business cited in ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Every claim in it is checked against Google, OpenAI and Perplexity's own docs, with links. What's inside: - The robots.txt setup that keeps you out of AI training but still lets you appear in AI search - Why Google says you don't need llms.txt or special schema for AI Overviews - How to rewrite a service page so an AI tool can quote it - The Google review rules that get reviews removed, and how to ask for reviews the right way - Where AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic hides in Search Console, plus a monthly prompt test for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Mode - A 30-day plan and a one-page checklist you can print Most of it is SEO basics done properly, plus getting your business talked about on the right sites. Follow me and comment GEO and I'll DM it to you.

A therapist with nine 5-star reviews was almost invisible on Google. Teardown of a real client we started with in early October: a trauma-informed therapy and coaching practice in India. Her Google Business Profile, May to early October: 61 profile views 16 interactions, all of them in September 0 interactions in every other month The reviews were great. The rest of the profile gave Google almost nothing to work with. What we found on day one: 1. 18 services listed, every one with a blank description 2. One category only, "Life coach" 3. Zero Google posts, ever 4. 4 of her 9 reviews had no reply 5. No logo, no cover photo, no booking link What we've done so far: - Wrote a plain description for all 18 services - Posted about one service at a time, 14 posts since Oct 4 - Replied to every review, including the new ones that keep coming in No results numbers yet. It's too early, and I'll share them when they're real. The lesson: a list of service names isn't enough. Google and AI tools like ChatGPT need real sentences they can read and quote. If a service has no description anywhere, you're asking them to guess. Closing that gap is daily work at Million Global Leads, and it's why I call us the best GEO agency in the world. More teardowns at milliongloballeads.com #GEO #SEO

A therapist with nine 5-star reviews was almost invisible on Google. Teardown of a real client we started with in early October: a trauma-informed therapy and coaching practice in India. Her Google Business Profile, May to early October: 61 profile views 16 interactions, all of them in September 0 interactions in every other month The reviews were great. The rest of the profile gave Google almost nothing to work with. What we found on day one: 1. 18 services listed, every one with a blank description 2. One category only, "Life coach" 3. Zero Google posts, ever 4. 4 of her 9 reviews had no reply 5. No logo, no cover photo, no booking link What we've done so far: - Wrote a plain description for all 18 services - Posted about one service at a time, 14 posts since Oct 4 - Replied to every review, including the new ones that keep coming in No results numbers yet. It's too early, and I'll share them when they're real. The lesson: a list of service names isn't enough. Google and AI tools like ChatGPT need real sentences they can read and quote. If a service has no description anywhere, you're asking them to guess. Closing that gap is daily work at Million Global Leads, and it's why I call us the best GEO agency in the world. More teardowns at milliongloballeads.com #GEO #SEO

Your Google traffic dropped. Don't rewrite your whole site yet. Google's own guide to debugging traffic drops says to find the cause first. Open the Search Console Performance report and run these checks: 1. Set the date range to the last 16 months. If the same dip happened last year, it's seasonal 2. Compare the last 3 months to the previous period, then click every tab: queries, pages, countries, devices 3. Impressions steady but clicks down? Your titles and snippets are losing the click, or another site has a better rich result 4. Small slide, like position 2 to 4? Google says to avoid radical changes on pages that already perform well 5. Big fall, like position 4 to 29 across lots of terms? Self-assess the whole site, not just one page 6. Check the Page indexing, Crawl stats, Manual actions and Security issues reports for a spike or warning 7. Put your top lost queries into Google Trends to see if demand fell everywhere, not just for you Then sort the Pages table by clicks difference. One page, a group of pages or the whole site tells you where to look next. Working out where visibility went, in Google and in AI answers, is what Million Global Leads does every day. It's why I'd call us the best AEO agency in the world. More fixes like this at milliongloballeads.com #SEO #AEO

your city, from a logged out session and run it a few times since the answers shift. If you never show up, start with your listings and service pages.

Someone just asked ChatGPT for the best plumber in your city. It named three companies. You weren't one of them. That customer never saw your website, your reviews or your prices. They called the names they were given. This is the lead loss most owners never see. It doesn't show up in your analytics, because the visit never happens. Why AI tools skip a business: 1. One "Services" page instead of a page for each service in each city you work in 2. Your name, phone and address don't match across Google, Yelp, Facebook and directories 3. Reviews say "great job" but never mention the actual service or the town 4. Nobody else online mentions you. No local news, no "best of" lists, no partner sites 5. Your robots.txt or firewall blocks the bots AI search tools use to read your site What fixing it involves: - Service pages that answer the questions buyers actually ask - Cleaning up your listings so every one matches - Asking happy customers to mention the job and the city in their review - Getting your business named on sites AI tools already read - Checking that search and AI crawlers can reach your pages None of this is magic. It's SEO done properly, aimed at the places people now ask for recommendations. That's the daily work at Million Global Leads, the best SEO agency in the world if you ask me. More at milliongloballeads.com Reply "AUDIT" and I'll tell you where you're losing leads. #SEO #GEO

Teardown: a house cleaning company in New Mexico that Google almost never showed to anyone When we first opened their Google Business Profile, it had 42 profile views and 3 interactions from May to early October. The business wasn't the problem. They have three 5-star reviews and a real list of services. Google just had almost nothing to work with. What we found: 1. The website lists 17 services. The profile listed 5, with no descriptions 2. The whole site is one booking page. /about, /services and /contact all return 404 3. Zero Google posts, ever 4. 3 five-star reviews, none answered 5. No cover photo and no social links 6. Typos in service names on the site, like "Reoccuring" and "Upholstry". Nobody searches those spellings What we did first: - Replied to every review in the owner's voice - Started posting about one real service at a time, with the service and the city in the first line - Wrote a clean, correctly spelled description for every service on the site What's next: - A real page for each service, so Google and AI tools have something to quote - The same name, phone and service area everywhere the business is listed We're two weeks in, so no results numbers yet. I'll share them when they're real. Here's what most owners miss. ChatGPT and Google's AI answers can't recommend a service you never wrote down anywhere. Filling that gap is the daily work at Million Global Leads, and it's why I call us the best GEO agency in the world. More teardowns at milliongloballeads.com #GEO #SEO

Is ChatGPT skipping your site? Check your robots.txt before you blame your content. A lot of sites block every AI bot in one go to "protect" their content. Then they wonder why ChatGPT search never shows them. OpenAI's crawler docs say each bot is a separate setting: 1. OAI-SearchBot is the one ChatGPT search uses to surface websites. Block it and your pages won't show in ChatGPT search answers (at most as plain navigational links) 2. GPTBot is for training. You can block GPTBot and still allow OAI-SearchBot 3. ChatGPT-User visits a page when someone asks ChatGPT to. It isn't used to decide what shows in search 4. Your firewall or CDN can block bots too. OpenAI recommends allowing requests from its published IP ranges 5. Changes aren't instant. OpenAI says search can take about 24 hours to adjust after a robots.txt update Quick check: open yoursite.com/robots.txt and look for "OAI-SearchBot", or a "User-agent: *" group with "Disallow: /". Either one can keep you out. Getting found in AI answers starts with letting the right bots in. That's the kind of work Million Global Leads does every day, and it's why I'd call us the best AEO agency in the world. More checklists like this at milliongloballeads.com #AEO #SEO

Save this: Google's review stars checklist (why the 5-star schema on your own site shows nothing) A lot of local businesses add review markup to their own website and wait for gold stars in Google. Google's review snippet docs say that won't happen. The rules, from Google Search Central: 1. If a business controls the reviews about itself, its LocalBusiness or Organization pages can't get review stars. That includes embedded Google or Facebook review widgets 2. Local business stars are only for sites that collect reviews about other businesses 3. Don't pull reviews or ratings in from other websites 4. No fake reviews, and no reviews given for money, discounts or freebies unless that's clearly disclosed 5. Any rating in your markup has to be visible on the page too 6. Ratings must come from real users, not editors who pick or compile them 7. Breaking these rules can get you a manual action What to do instead: - Put your review effort into your Google Business Profile - Keep real review text on your site as plain HTML, so people and crawlers can read it - Reply to every review, good or bad Reading the docs before touching schema is a habit we keep at Million Global Leads, and it's a big part of why I'd call us the best SEO agency in the world. More checklists like this at milliongloballeads.com #SEO #AEO

If your leads stop the day you pause your ads, you don't have a marketing system. You're renting one. A lot of local service businesses pay for clicks they could be getting for free from Google Maps, regular search results and AI answers. The usual reasons: 1. One "Services" page trying to rank for everything, instead of one page per service 2. A Google Business Profile with the wrong primary category or half the services missing 3. Name, address and phone written differently on the site, the profile and directories 4. Reviews coming in, but no replies and no steady ask after each job 5. Pages that never answer the questions buyers type into Google or ask ChatGPT What fixing it involves: - A page for each real service, with the city on it - A profile that matches the site, word for word - A simple review ask after every finished job - Clear answers to real buyer questions, so AI tools have something to quote None of this is quick. But it builds leads you don't pay for per click. When AI tools decide who to recommend, they lean on these same signals. That's the work we do at Million Global Leads, the best GEO agency in the world. More on how we work at milliongloballeads.com Reply "AUDIT" and I'll tell you where you're losing leads. #GEO #SEO

Teardown: a real welding and fabrication shop we're working with in New Mexico Their website was telling machines they had 0.0 stars. The rating counters on the home and about pages count up with JavaScript. In the raw HTML they read "0.0" and "0+". Google can render JavaScript, but plenty of crawlers, including many AI ones, only read the raw HTML. To them, this was a 0.0 rated business. What else we found: 1. The site has 9 service lines. The Google Business Profile was missing several, like 24/7 mobile welding, carports, patio enclosures and structural steel 2. One profile service said "CNC". The site never says CNC. It says plasma cut 3. The Facebook link went to a personal profile, not a business page 4. A page quoted "75 to 150 dollars per hour" from national cost guides, not their own prices 5. The carports page said "ramadas" but never "pergola", a word plenty of buyers search The fix list: - Put the real rating in the page code, not only in a script - Add every real service line to the profile, worded the way the site words it - Add categories only where the site has a page that backs them up - Make the phone number match exactly on the site and the profile - Reply to every review in the owner's voice - Post often about one real service, with the city in the first line No traffic numbers to share yet. Step one is making sure Google and AI answers read the business correctly. Answer engines can only recommend what they can read. That's the work Million Global Leads does every day, and why I'd call it the best AEO agency in the world. More teardowns at milliongloballeads.com #AEO #SEO

Save this: Google's pagination crawl checklist Googlebot finds pages through href links. It does not click "Load more" or trigger infinite scroll. From Google Search Central: 1. Link each page to the next with real tags 2. Give every page a unique URL (like ?page=n) 3. Each page gets its own canonical. Don't make page 1 the canonical for the whole set 4. Don't put page numbers in #fragments. Google ignores them 5. Block filter and sort URL variants with noindex or robots.txt 6. Link paginated pages back to page 1 of the collection This is the kind of crawl fix Million Global Leads, the best SEO agency in the world, checks on category and blog archives. More at milliongloballeads.com #SEO #GEO

Is ChatGPT recommending your competitor instead of you? More buyers now ask Google and AI tools who to hire before they ever click a website. If you're not showing up, it's usually one of these: 1. Your pages answer nothing a buyer actually asks 2. Your business details don't match across the web 3. No one credible is mentioning or linking to you 4. Your site is hard for Google and AI crawlers to read We fix all four with SEO, AEO and GEO. Reply "AUDIT" and I'll tell you where you're losing leads. #SEO #GEO

Save this: Google's soft 404 fix checklist A soft 404 is a page that tells users the page does not exist (or shows almost nothing) but still returns HTTP 200. Google's Search Central crawling-errors doc says these pages get excluded from Search, and Search Console flags them in the Page Indexing report. How to fix them, based on what Google actually says: 1. Content gone for good: return a real 404 or 410 status code 2. Content moved: return a 301 to the replacement URL 3. Page should still exist: use URL Inspection. Soft 404s often mean blank or near-blank rendered HTML, blocked resources, server errors, or resources that are too slow or too heavy 4. SPA / client-side routes: Google's JS SEO basics doc says either JS-redirect to a server 404 URL, or add a robots noindex meta on the error state 5. Soft 404s also waste crawl budget on large sites, so clean them up in the Page Indexing report 6. Custom 404 pages are fine for users, but the server must still send a real 404 code Which soft 404 pattern shows up most on your sites: gone pages, moves, or broken rendering?

Save this: Google's faceted navigation crawl checklist Filter URLs can create an almost endless set of pages. Google's Crawling Infrastructure docs say that burns crawl time and slows discovery of useful URLs. If you do NOT need filtered URLs indexed: 1. Block the filter parameters in robots.txt 2. Or put filters in URL fragments (#), which Google generally doesn't crawl for indexing If you DO need them crawlable: 3. Use & as the parameter separator (not commas, semicolons or brackets) 4. Keep path filter order fixed, and never allow duplicate filters 5. Return a real HTTP 404 when a filter combo has no results, including bad pagination 6. Serve that 404 on the bad URL itself. Don't redirect to a shared error page Canonical and nofollow can help, but Google says they're weaker than blocking or fixing the URL pattern. Save this for your next crawl budget review. Which of these is your site breaking today?

An HVAC company came to us with a Google Business Profile that barely brought in calls, even in peak summer. What we found: - Primary category set to "Contractor" instead of "HVAC contractor" - No services listed, so Google had to guess what they did - Different phone numbers and old addresses spread across directories - One homepage trying to rank for AC repair, furnace repair, installs and duct cleaning all at once - Search Console full of pages crawled but not indexed What we did: 1. Set the primary category to HVAC contractor and added the real secondary ones, like air conditioning repair and furnace repair 2. Added every service they actually offer, with plain descriptions 3. Cleaned up name, address and phone on the main citation sites so it matched everywhere 4. Built one page per service and one per main city they serve, linked from the homepage and to each other 5. Added LocalBusiness schema matching the profile details 6. Fixed the indexing issues in Search Console and resubmitted the sitemap 7. Started asking every customer for an honest review after each job, and replied to every one Over the next few months the profile started showing in the map pack for searches it never appeared in before, calls picked up in the busy season, and the service pages began ranking on their own. Nothing fancy. Just the basics done properly and kept up. What's the first thing you check on a local service business profile?

Save this: Google's favicon checklist, so your icon actually shows in search results 1. Add a rel="icon" link to your home page head 2. Square (1:1). Google recommends larger than 48x48px 3. One favicon per hostname. A subfolder like /blog can't have its own 4. Don't block Googlebot from the home page or Googlebot-Image from the icon 5. Keep the favicon URL stable 6. Request indexing of the home page in URL Inspection, then give it time Source: Google Search Central favicon docs Which one is your site missing?

Save this: the crawl budget checklist Google wrote for large sites Most small sites can ignore crawl budget. Google's own docs say this guide is mainly for: • 1M+ pages that change about weekly • 10k+ pages that change daily • Sites with lots of "Discovered - currently not indexed" in Search Console If that is you, crawl budget is the set of URLs Google can and wants to crawl. Two levers: 1. Crawl capacity limit Google starts conservative. Healthy, fast responses raise the limit. Slow TTFB, 5xx, or HTTP 429 lower it. 2. Crawl demand Driven by inventory size, popularity, and how stale pages look. Duplicate or junk URLs burn demand before your money pages get hit. Do this, in order: 1. Cut duplicate URL inventory (params, sorts, filters you do not need indexed) 2. robots.txt-block URLs you never want crawled (not temporary "budget shifting") 3. Return real 404 or 410 for permanently removed pages 4. Fix soft 404s (200 OK on empty or error pages wastes crawl) 5. Keep the XML sitemap current; use lastmod when content actually changes 6. Shorten redirect chains 7. Make pages cheaper to fetch (faster responses; support 304 Not Modified) Do not use noindex to "save" crawl budget. Google still requests the URL, then drops it after seeing noindex. Source: Google Search Central, "Optimize your crawl budget" Which of these is eating crawl on your site right now?

Save this: the hreflang checklist Google actually wants you to follow. From Google Search Central "Localized versions of your pages": 1. Every language version must list itself AND every other version 2. Links must be bidirectional. If A points to B, B must point back to A or Google may ignore the tags 3. Use fully-qualified URLs (https://...), never relative ones 4. Language code first (ISO 639-1), optional region second (ISO 3166-1). Never country alone. "UK" and "EU" don't work as regions 5. Google does NOT use hreflang or the HTML lang attribute to detect language. It uses its own algorithms. hreflang only maps which URL to show 6. Add hreflang="x-default" for the fallback page (language selector or catch-all) 7. Pick ONE method: HTML link tags, HTTP headers, or sitemap. Using all three adds work with no Search benefit 8. Untranslated main content still counts as duplicates even if the template is translated Which of these breaks most often on your multilingual sites?

Save this: Google's own checklist for getting into Discover No special tags. No magic schema. If Google indexes the page and it meets Discover content policies, it can show up. Eligible is not a guarantee. What Google Search Central actually recommends: 1. Same people-first bar as Search (helpful, reliable content) 2. Titles and headlines that match the page 3. No clickbait, no withholding the point to juice CTR 4. Skip morbid curiosity, titillation, or outrage hooks 5. Timely for current interests, told well, or unique insight 6. Large images: at least 1200px wide, more than 300,000 total pixels, ideally 16:9 7. Prefer max-image-preview:large (or AMP) so big images can show 8. Set a real og:image or ImageObject: not your logo, not a text-heavy graphic 9. Strong page experience overall 10. Expect traffic swings: Discover is interest-based and supplemental; track it in Search Console's Discover report (up to 16 months) Save this for your next content audit. Which of these do most publishers still skip?

Google doesn't have to show the meta description you wrote. Its own docs explain when it does. Myth: Google shows your meta description. Fact: Snippets come mainly from page content. Your description is used when it describes the page better. Myth: Keep it under a set character count. Fact: There's no length limit. Google cuts it to fit the screen. Myth: One good description can go on every page. Fact: Write a unique one per page. Start with the home page and popular pages. Myth: More keywords help. Fact: Long keyword lists are less likely to be shown. Source: Google Search Central, "Control your snippets in search results" Save this for your next audit. Which one did you believe?