Generative engine optimization in New York, measured in sessions, not promises.
GEO is the work that gets a business named when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI for a recommendation. We do it for a Brooklyn spa where traffic from AI assistants grew 54% between two consecutive windows in August 2026, and we can show you which part of the work did it and which part did not.
Three layers. Most agencies sell only the first.
On-site: what the engines can read
Robots rules that let AI crawlers in, an llms.txt that describes the business in their language, structured data on every page, FAQ pages written as the answers the engines want to quote.
Off-site: what the engines trust
For local recommendations the engines cite Google Business Profile, Yelp, TripAdvisor and editorial lists. In our audit for a spa the AI answers cited Condé Nast Traveler, Yelp, Reddit and TripAdvisor, not the spa’s site. Presence work is listings, reviews and two or three editorial placements.
Measurement: what actually changed
An AI Assistant channel in GA4 that isolates ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot referrals, and a monthly prompt panel that records who gets named for the questions your clients ask.
What we did, what moved, what did not.
A 50,000 sq ft wellness destination. Simple4u has been its embedded technical team since 2023.
Traffic from AI assistants, up 54%
Two consecutive ten-day windows in August 2026, the same weeks we shipped crawler access, llms.txt and FAQ schema on 29 URLs. 93% of it from ChatGPT.
source: client GA4, AI Assistant channelFAQ pages the engines can quote
FAQPage structured data on rooms, treatments and policy pages, written from the questions guests actually ask the spa’s concierge.
source: worldspa.com, schema auditOrganic clicks on rebuilt room pages
The room and treatment pages rebuilt for Google more than doubled their organic clicks in comparable windows. Those are the pages AI assistants now send visitors to.
source: Google Search Console, comparable windowsAudit, on-site, presence, measure.
Audit
Twenty prompts your clients would ask, run across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google. Who gets named, which sources are cited, what your site exposes to AI crawlers.
On-site
Crawler access, llms.txt, structured data, FAQ pages, the AI Assistant channel in your GA4. Fixed price together with the audit.
Presence
Google Business Profile, review responses, the two or three listings and editorial lists the engines actually cite for your category. Quoted after the audit. Honest part from the spa case: on-site work moved traffic but did not get the spa named for “best spa in Brooklyn” at first. The engines cited TripAdvisor, Yelp and editorial lists, which is why this step exists.
Measure
The prompt panel re-run, the AI channel in GA4, one report that says what changed and what to do next.
The pages that rank are the pages that get quoted.
We run GEO and SEO as one job because the engines read the same web. At World Spa the room and treatment pages that were rebuilt for Google, and doubled their organic clicks, are the same pages the AI assistants now send visitors to. A GEO agency that does not also do the SEO is optimizing pages nobody can find.
What we will not do: stuff pages with “best spa in Brooklyn”, buy citations, or promise a number of mentions. The engines change monthly. What we promise is a measured channel and a plain report.
What clients ask before they buy GEO.
SEO gets a page ranked in Google’s list of links. GEO gets a business named inside an answer written by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google’s AI Overview. The engines read the same web, so the pages that rank well are usually the pages they quote. The difference is in what they trust: for local recommendations they lean on Google Business Profile, review sites and editorial lists more than on your own site.
Partly, and we say so before you pay. For the spa we work with, AI Overviews rarely appear on local spa queries at all, so on-site work alone moved traffic from AI assistants but did not get the spa cited on the prompts that matter. Citations came from listings and reviews. We do both, and we measure both.
Two ways. A dedicated AI Assistant channel in your GA4 that separates ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot referrals from everything else. And a monthly panel of real prompts run across the engines, recording who gets named and which sources they cite.
A GEO-only first build takes two to three weeks, shorter than a full system build, and shows in the AI-assistant channel within a month. Citations in the engines’ answers depend on third-party sources and take one to three months of listing, review and editorial work.
The audit plus on-site implementation is a fixed-price first build. The presence sprint, which is the listings, reviews and editorial placements, is quoted after the audit because it depends on where you already stand.
Or talk it through first
GEO is new enough that most of the first call is separating what is real from what is sold. Slava runs the AI-search work at World Spa personally and will tell you if your category is one where it pays.
Your message goes straight to the founder. No sales team, no sequence of follow-up emails.