Guides to search after the AI shift.
How search and AI answers work now, and what to change on your website — without the jargon.
What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
GEO explained for business owners: how AI assistants choose which websites to cite, how GEO differs from SEO and AEO, and the 7 changes that matter most.
What is answer engine optimisation, and how do you do it?
A practical 15-point AEO checklist for small businesses: question headings, answer-first paragraphs, FAQ schema, lists, entity data and how to test each one.
What is llms.txt, and how do you create one?
What llms.txt is, why it helps AI assistants understand your site, the exact format, a small-business example and how to publish it on WordPress, Shopify or any host.
Which AI crawlers should you allow in robots.txt?
The difference between AI search bots and AI training bots, which to allow so assistants can cite you, and a copy-paste robots.txt for small businesses.
Where to start
If you only have an hour, start with AI crawler access and llms.txt: they take minutes and decide whether AI assistants can read your site at all. Next, add Organization or LocalBusiness structured data so machines know exactly who you are, where you operate and how to contact you. Then work through the answer engine checklist one page at a time, beginning with the pages that earn you the most enquiries.
Each guide ends with sources from Google, OpenAI, Schema.org and the relevant standards so you can check the detail yourself. They are updated as the platforms change their documentation.
How the guides relate to your Surge Score
Every recommendation in these guides maps to one or more of the 66 checks in an AIRankSurge audit — all listed in the methodology. Run the free scan to see which ones your website already passes, which ones fail, and how many points each fix is worth.