BEACON Guides

GEO & AI search guides

Everything you need to become visible — and cited — in AI answers. Practical, current guides on getting recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews, plus the schema and crawler setup that gets you quoted.

GuideWhat is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?GEO is the practice of getting your brand named, cited and recommended inside AI-generated answers — the way SEO gets you ranked in the classic blue links. As people increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews directly, being the brand the model recommends is becoming as important as ranking #1.Read guide →GuideChatGPT SEO: how to get recommended in AI answers.When buyers ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overview for a recommendation, you want your brand named. Here’s the practical playbook — the technical foundations and content moves that make AI engines read, trust and recommend you.Read guide →GuideHow to appear in Google AI Overviews.Google’s AI Overview now sits above the classic results and answers many searches outright — citing a handful of sources. If your page isn’t one of them, the ranking underneath barely matters. Here’s how AI Overviews choose sources, and the concrete moves that get you cited.Read guide →GuideSchema markup for SEO and AI search.Structured data — usually JSON-LD — is how you tell Google and AI engines exactly what a page is: a product, an article, an FAQ, an organization. It powers rich results in search and makes your facts cleanly extractable for AI answers. Here’s what to add and why.Read guide →GuideSpeakable schema markup: the passages AI reads aloud.Speakable schema (the SpeakableSpecification type) tells voice assistants and AI engines which parts of a page are the clean, spoken-answer summary. As AI Overviews and assistants increasingly answer out loud, marking your best answer passages makes you the source they quote. Here’s what it is and exactly how to add it.Read guide →Guidellms.txt: what it is and whether you need one.llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at your site root that gives language models a curated, machine-readable map of your most important content. It’s an emerging convention — not yet a universal standard — so here’s an honest look at what it does, what it doesn’t, and how to write one.Read guide →GuideHow to allow AI crawlers in robots.txt.If ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Google’s AI can’t crawl your site, they can’t cite or recommend you. The most common reason is a robots.txt that blocks their crawlers — often by accident. Here’s the exact robots.txt to allow every major AI crawler, what each user-agent does, and how to check it’s working.Read guide →GuideWhy isn’t my website showing up in ChatGPT?You ask ChatGPT for a recommendation in your category and your brand never comes up — even though you rank fine on Google. There are only a handful of reasons, and almost all are fixable. Here’s how to diagnose exactly why ChatGPT can’t see or recommend you, in order of how common they are.Read guide →GlossaryThe GEO glossary: AI search terms, defined.Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) has a fast-growing vocabulary — engines, metrics, crawlers and tactics that didn’t exist a few years ago. This glossary defines the terms you actually need to understand and measure your visibility inside AI answers, in plain language and updated for 2026.Read guide →ComparisonOtterly.ai alternative: Beacon vs Otterly.Otterly.ai is a well-liked, focused tool for monitoring how brands show up in AI search. If you’re comparing it with Beacon — or looking for an alternative — here’s an honest breakdown: what Otterly does well, what Beacon does differently, and how to choose. Where we don’t know a current Otterly detail (pricing and features change), we say so — check their site for the latest.Read guide →GuideHow to track ChatGPT & AI traffic in GA4.AI assistants now send real visitors to your site — and they convert unusually well — but Google Analytics 4 lumps most of them into “Referral” or “Direct,” so you can’t see them. Here’s a copy-paste regex that matches the major AI engines, and the exact steps to build an AI-traffic view in GA4.Read guide →GuideIs my site blocking AI crawlers?If ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude or Google’s AI never mention your brand, the first thing to rule out is the simplest: your site might be blocking their crawlers — often without anyone realising. Here’s how to check in seconds, the accidental causes most people miss, and how to fix each.Read guide →GuideOAI-SearchBot vs GPTBot: which should you allow?OpenAI runs two different crawlers, and they do different jobs — so “should I allow GPTBot?” has a more useful answer than yes or no. Here’s what OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot each do, how to decide, and the exact robots.txt for every choice — including the popular middle ground: appear in ChatGPT’s answers without feeding model training.Read guide →GuideHow to get cited by Perplexity.Perplexity is the most citation-transparent AI engine — every answer shows a “Sources” list, and getting into it is a concrete, winnable goal. It also rewards freshness more aggressively than other engines. Here’s the practical playbook for becoming a Perplexity source, in the order that matters.Read guide →GuideHow to optimize for Google Gemini & AI Mode.Google’s AI now answers across three surfaces — Gemini (the assistant), AI Mode (the conversational search tab) and AI Overviews (above the blue links) — and they all draw on Google’s index, gated by a control most sites overlook. Here’s how to be visible across Google’s AI, in the order that matters.Read guide →ComparisonBeacon vs Semrush, Ahrefs & Surfer: which fits the AI-search era?Semrush, Ahrefs and Surfer are excellent at what they were built for. But none was built for the question now deciding visibility: when a buyer asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Google’s AI for a recommendation, does it name you? Here’s an honest comparison — what each tool does best, and where Beacon is different (GEO, measured-not-modeled data, and a free tier).Read guide →GuideThe EU AI Act, explained.The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) is the world’s first comprehensive AI law. It entered into force on 1 August 2024 and applies in phases — banning some AI practices outright, putting strict duties on “high-risk” systems, and requiring transparency whenever people interact with AI or see AI-generated content. In 2026 the “Digital Omnibus on AI” shifted several deadlines, so here is the up-to-date picture: what the Act covers, who must comply and by when, the penalties, and what it means for an ordinary website.Read guide →

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