AI search optimisation in India: how to get your business named by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews

Try this. Open ChatGPT and type "which agency in Ahmedabad builds Shopify stores". You'll get three or four names in a short paragraph, and that's it. No ten blue links, no ads, no page two. If you aren't in that paragraph, the person asking may never hear of you at all.

Funny how fast this changed. A couple of years back, AI search optimisation in India was a conference topic. Now a sweet shop owner brings it up with me before the chai has even arrived, usually straight after asking "is SEO dead now?". So let me clear up the jargon, then we'll get to what works, what doesn't matter, and a checklist with ten things on it.

What are AEO and GEO, in plain English?

Two names, nearly one job. AEO, answer engine optimisation, is when you write a page so a machine can copy a neat answer straight out of it. GEO (generative engine optimisation) is when you want your brand's name to turn up inside the reply the AI writes itself.

Old SEO? You wanted position one for "dentist in Bodakdev" and the click that came with it. Simple. Then Google started printing a chunk of somebody's page in a box above the results, and that's roughly where AEO was born. GEO showed up later still. Now ChatGPT reads a handful of websites, writes its own little answer and, if you're lucky, mentions where it got it.

How do AI tools decide which businesses to mention?

Short version: they name the ones they can find, and then double-check you somewhere else. The exact weighting is a secret (anyone claiming to know it is selling something), but we've tested enough client sites to see the same patterns repeat.

Can the bot even get in? That's the first thing we check. ChatGPT's search borrows from Bing, Gemini and AI Overviews borrow from Google, and Perplexity sends out its own crawler. Block them in robots.txt and you're a closed shutter. We've seen a developer paste a "block AI bots" snippet from some forum without telling anyone.

Then the page has to actually say something. A model writing about "website cost in Ahmedabad" needs a sentence with a cost in it, and "contact us for a quote" gives it nothing.

And your details have to match. Your website says Satellite. Google thinks you're in Prahlad Nagar. Justdial's still got that old 2019 number you stopped using. Which one is true? The model can't tell, so it trusts none of them.

What gets a business cited in AI answers?

There are five, and no, none of them is a hack.

Direct answers near the top of the page

Answer first. Explain later. So under a heading like "How long does a Shopify store take to build?" I want to read "Most stores take three to six weeks" straight away, and only then the ifs and buts. The bots pick up that opening line, and so does the guy reading your page on his phone in the back of an auto.

FAQs written the way customers ask

Where do you get the questions? From your own WhatsApp chats, mostly, plus Google's "People also ask" box. Do you deliver to Surat? Is GST included? I'd keep each reply to roughly 40 to 90 words, and kick off with yes, no or a number so nobody has to dig.

Schema markup

Schema's a bit of code your visitors never see. It just tells machines "this is a shop, that's its address, and here are some questions with their answers". We normally put LocalBusiness on the whole site, then Service or Product where it fits and FAQPage on the FAQ bits. Google hardly shows FAQ dropdowns any more, but we add it anyway, since the bots still read it.

The same name, address and phone everywhere

Boring, but it matters. Your name, address and phone (NAP) should read exactly the same on your website, Google Business Profile, Justdial, IndiaMART, Facebook and every other directory. "B-84, Pruthvi Tower" here and "Pruthvi Twr, Satellite" there looks harmless, but a crawler may see two companies.

Third-party profiles and original numbers

Think about how you'd judge a new CA. You'd trust what his other clients say over his own visiting card, right? AI tools work the same way. So fill in that Clutch profile, get a few honest reviews on Justdial and put prices on your IndiaMART catalogue, because every one of those backs up your own site.

And then give them a number to repeat. Prices, delivery days, minimum order, which cities you ship to. Bots love a number. Nobody, human or machine, has ever quoted "quality products at competitive prices".

What does this look like for a real kind of business?

A made-up example, but a very ordinary one. Say there's a tile maker in Morbi selling porcelain and vitrified tiles into the Gulf and East Africa. Some buyer in Dubai asks ChatGPT, "Which Morbi tile manufacturers export 600x1200 porcelain slabs with low minimum orders?"

What does our Morbi company need? A page that just says it: we make 600x1200 porcelain slabs, we ship to the UAE, our minimum is one container. Same wording on IndiaMART, same on TradeIndia, same company name on both. Throw in an FAQ like "Which port do you ship from?" and you've basically written the bot's sentence for it.

Compare that with the usual exporter site: a photo slider, "world-class manufacturer since 1998", a contact form. Nothing to quote. Better tiles, maybe, and still no mention.

What should you not panic about?

Most of the noise is louder than the change itself.

Is SEO dead? No. Where do you think these AI answers come from? Pages Google can crawl and trust, which is the stuff good SEO was building anyway.

And llms.txt? Only a proposal so far, so don't pay extra for one.

What about the dip in traffic? Yes, it's happening, and no, it isn't the end of the world. The "what is" type pages lose clicks first, and buyer pages mostly don't. Count calls and WhatsApp enquiries; Analytics sessions alone will scare you for nothing.

Guaranteed ChatGPT mentions? Doesn't exist. The same question on two different days can bring back different names. If somebody offers "ChatGPT ranking in 30 days, guaranteed", thank them politely and leave.

Do you have to redo the whole website? Thankfully not. Start with whatever ten or fifteen pages bring in the money, which for most people is the home page, services, pricing, contact and a few top products.

How do you check if AI tools already mention you?

Just ask them. It takes maybe thirty minutes of your Saturday.

I open ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and an incognito Google tab and type the way a real customer would. "Physiotherapy clinic near Vastrapur open Sunday." "Interior designer Thaltej 2BHK cost." Some of it in Guglish too, since half the city searches like that anyway. Who comes up? Which websites do the bots link to? Those links tell you where you need a profile. Log the same questions in a Google Sheet and repeat monthly.

Your 10-point AI search optimisation checklist

Work through these roughly in order. The first five cost almost nothing.

Item 9 is where most Indian businesses dig their heels in. "But competitors will see our prices." Yes, they will. They could also ring you as a fake customer and get it in five minutes. And the buyer who just wanted a rough figure? He's already called the guy who put one online.

How long does AI search optimisation take to work?

Two to four months, in my experience, before anything steady shows up. Google and Bing have to come back and recrawl, and a Justdial edit can sit for weeks before it shows. Good news is you mostly do the checklist once and you're done.

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