The short answer
GEO, short for generative engine optimization, is the work of making AI tools such as ChatGPT find, check and name your firm. Nobody can promise placement, and Google says there are no extra requirements for its AI answers beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet.[1]
This guide is for US firm owners who want to know what, if anything, they can do about AI answers. If you only want a promise that ChatGPT will name your firm, nobody can honestly give you one, and this guide won't either. It covers what GEO means, what Google and OpenAI say they need from a site, and what we saw when we tested ourselves. It ends with a monthly check you can run without paying for a tool.
What is GEO for a law firm?
GEO is making your firm easy for an AI tool to identify, verify and cite when someone asks it for a lawyer. You will also see it called AEO (answer engine optimization) or AI SEO. The words differ, and the work is mostly the same.
Most of that work is ordinary SEO: pages that can be crawled, indexed and read, and facts about your firm that match everywhere. The AI part is deciding where to look. In our own test, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overview cited different pages for the same questions.
Our local SEO and AI search page covers what we do for firms. This guide covers what we found out.
What do Google and OpenAI say a site needs?
For Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Google says: "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary."[1] The page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.[1]
For ChatGPT, OpenAI says its OAI-SearchBot "is used to surface websites in search results in ChatGPT's search features", and recommends allowing it in your robots.txt file.[3] Its other crawler, GPTBot, is a separate setting that concerns model training, not search.[3]
So the first job is dull and checkable: let the crawlers in, and get your pages indexed. Our own crawl check, further down, shows how to test it.
What can a law firm actually do?
Make the facts about your firm easy to find and easy to check, in more than one place. Nobody outside the AI companies knows exactly how the tools choose, and no step below promises a mention.
- Let the crawlers in. Check robots.txt, your firewall and whether your pages are indexed in Google Search Console.
- Say plainly who you are on your own site: firm name, practice areas, city, the lawyers' names and bar admissions. Use the same name, address and phone number everywhere.
- Write pages that answer the questions clients really ask, with something only your firm can say.
- Keep your Google Business Profile complete (our local SEO for lawyers guide has the steps), and get listed where the tools already look.
- Earn mentions from sources outside your site, such as local press, bar association pages and honest reviews. In our test, the tools said exactly this about us: they found our own claims and nothing independent.
Google says content people find unique, compelling and useful will likely influence your presence in generative AI search.[2] Our test answers cited directories, Reddit, YouTube and LinkedIn as well as law firm sites (see our test below).
A 2023 research paper tested ways to change a page so an AI engine cites it more. Its authors report that "GEO can boost visibility by up to 40% in generative engine responses".[6] That was a research benchmark, not a law firm's real results. We treat it as an idea to test.
Directories are one place the tools look. Citorian, a law firm SEO and GEO agency, logged 359 answers from five AI tools across five US cities for personal injury searches.[9] Of the answers it could trace, 33% cited Super Lawyers at least once and 20% cited Justia.[9] It is one vendor's small sample from one practice area, so treat it as a hint about where to check your own listings, not a rule.
What doesn't help
Some popular GEO advice isn't backed by the people who run the tools. Here is what the sources we opened say.
| Advice you will hear | What the source says |
|---|---|
| Add an llms.txt file | Google says "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features."[1] |
| Add special AI schema markup | Google says "Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there's no special schema.org markup you need to add."[2] |
| Optimize once for every AI tool | Ahrefs, an SEO software company, found "AI Mode and AI Overviews cited the same URLs only 13.7% of the time" in September 2025 US data.[4] Two Google features, two sets of sources. |
| Pay for placement | OpenAI says "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you" and that ads are "always separate and clearly labeled".[8] You may be able to buy a labeled ad, but not a place in the answer. |
An agency that promises a ChatGPT ranking is promising something it doesn't control. Ask what they would do and how they would show it worked. Our guide on how to choose a law firm SEO company has more questions to ask.
How do you measure it?
AI answers can change between runs, and our own test asked each question once, so one answer proves little. Track three things:
- The answers to the questions your clients ask, on a set schedule, written down.
- Calls and booked consultations, not only visits.
- One snapshot from our free AI visibility checker, which asks ChatGPT and Perplexity who they would pick for your practice area and city and shows whether they named your firm. It's one snapshot, so run it more than once.
Counting clicks is harder. Pew Research found that people clicked a traditional result link in 8% of visits where a Google AI summary appeared. Where none appeared, they did so in 15% of visits.[5] That was a study of 900 US adults' browsing in March 2025.
Check the advertising rule before you quote a result
If you tell the public that ChatGPT recommends your firm, it has to be true. California Rule 7.1 says "A lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services."[7] A screenshot of one lucky answer is a poor basis for that line. Check with your ethics counsel before you use it in ads.
Does ChatGPT name Naelar? Our October 17 test
No. On October 17, 2026, we ran 18 non-brand questions through the APIs behind ChatGPT (gpt-5.4-mini with web search), Perplexity (sonar-pro) and Google AI Overviews, one run each. None of the answers named Naelar.
Ten questions were US ones, such as "best law firm SEO company for personal injury lawyers". Eight were UK ones. We also asked two questions about Naelar by name, to see what the tools say when they are asked about us directly.
| Questions | ChatGPT | Perplexity | Google AI Overview |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 US, Naelar not named in the question | 0 named us | 0 named us | 0 named us |
| 8 UK, Naelar not named in the question | 0 named us | 0 named us | 0 named us |
| 2 that named Naelar | 2 of 2 | 2 of 2 | 2 of 2 |
When the question named us, the tools found naelar.com and described us roughly right. ChatGPT and Perplexity both said they found no independent proof, such as reviews, case studies or rankings. That is a fair reading of where we stand. Our reviews and client proof are still thin.
When the question didn't name us, the answers leaned on agency-run "best of" lists and directory pages such as Clutch. They also cited a few Reddit threads, YouTube and LinkedIn. For rule questions they used regulators. Across the 18 questions, no naelar.com guide was cited for any of them.
We asked the question this page answers
One of the 18 was "how do I get my law firm recommended by ChatGPT". ChatGPT answered that you generally can't pay for a recommendation, and it cited one OpenAI help page. Perplexity cited ten pages, all from company websites and blogs.
That is a reason to read agency advice on this topic with care, ours included. This guide sticks to what Google and OpenAI say in their own documents.
What our own crawl check showed
On October 17, 2026, we fetched naelar.com as eight different crawlers and as a normal browser, including Googlebot, Bingbot, GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and ClaudeBot. All nine got a normal response with the same page, and none got a challenge page. Our robots.txt has no rule that blocks any of them.
That means access isn't why ChatGPT doesn't name us. A security setting can block these crawlers without anyone choosing it. Ask whoever runs your site to check robots.txt and your firewall settings, and test with a crawler's user agent, not only a browser.
What the pages the tools cited had in common
We opened 29 of the pages the tools cited in our test. Our count is below.
2,845
Words on the middle page of the 29 cited pages.
Source: Naelar's own count, October 17, 2026.
19
Of the 29 pages had a table.
Source: Naelar's own count, October 17, 2026.
21
Of the 29 pages showed a 2026 modified date.
Source: Naelar's own count, October 17, 2026.
Cost pages carried many dollar figures. Rule pages from regulators carried none and were cited for being the source.
This describes what was cited. It doesn't show that a table or a long page causes a citation. Google says no special format is needed.[2]
GEO questions firm owners ask
Can I pay to be recommended by ChatGPT?
Not inside the answer. OpenAI says "Ads do not influence the answers ChatGPT gives you", and its ads are labeled and kept apart from the answer.[8]
Do I need an llms.txt file?
Not for Google. Google says you don't need AI text files to appear in its AI features.[1] Other services may read them, but no source we opened shows that adding one changes who gets named.
Is GEO different from SEO?
Mostly no. Google says there are no extra requirements for its AI answers beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet.[1] GEO is the agency name for making a firm easy for AI tools to find, check and cite. Most of that work is ordinary SEO.
Try this today
Spend 20 minutes on the three checks below. You don't need Naelar or any paid tool.
- Open your robots.txt (yourfirm.com/robots.txt) and look for any rule that names GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot, or blocks everything.
- In a private window, ask ChatGPT and Perplexity "who are the best [your practice area] lawyers in [your city]?" Write down the date, the tool and the firms named.
- Repeat the next month with the same question. A change over several months tells you more than any single answer.
Sources
- Google Search Central, "AI features and your website", last updated December 10, 2025, developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features. Checked October 20, 2026. Primary source.
- Google Search Central, guide to optimizing for generative AI search, last updated July 10, 2026, developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide. Checked October 20, 2026. Primary source.
- OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI crawlers", page undated, developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots. Checked October 20, 2026. Primary source.
- Ahrefs, "AI Mode vs AI Overviews", December 15, 2025, ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-vs-ai-mode. Checked October 20, 2026. Vendor study: September 2025 US data from Ahrefs' Brand Radar, 540,000 query pairs for the citation count.
- Pew Research Center, "Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results", July 22, 2025, pewresearch.org. Checked October 20, 2026. Browsing data from 900 US adults, 68,879 Google searches, March 2025.
- Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", submitted November 16, 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024, arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735. Checked October 20, 2026. Research benchmark, not law firm data.
- State Bar of California, Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 7.1, calbar.ca.gov, Chapter 7: information about legal services. No date shown. Checked October 20, 2026. Primary source.
- OpenAI, "Our approach to advertising and expanding access to ChatGPT", no date shown, openai.com/index/our-approach-to-advertising-and-expanding-access. Checked October 20, 2026. Primary source. The post describes ads OpenAI planned to test for logged-in adults in the US on the free and Go tiers.
- Citorian, "Legal Directories Ranked by AI Citation Weight", July 21, 2026, citorian.com/blog/legal-directories-ranked-by-ai-citations. Checked October 29, 2026. Vendor study (Citorian is a law firm SEO and GEO agency). Personal injury searches only, five US metros; Gemini links could not be traced and are excluded from the directory tally.