GEO — generative engine optimization — is the work of making a company's information easy for AI assistants and AI search tools to identify, trust and quote. In Foshan the term appeared quickly, and many suppliers added it to their service list without changing what they do. This article explains what the work actually consists of, so you can judge a proposal.

Why GEO matters to exporters

Overseas buyers increasingly begin supplier research by asking an AI assistant rather than opening a search results page. The question has shifted from "which website should I visit" to "which Chinese suppliers make this product". If AI tools cannot describe your company accurately, you are absent from the shortlist before any comparison starts.

The four components of real GEO work

1. Machine-readable company data. Structured data (Organization, Service, FAQ, Breadcrumb) on your website, semantic headings, and content that renders without JavaScript. AI crawlers read the raw HTML.

2. Consistent facts across sources. Your company name, founding year, address, business registration and service description should match everywhere they appear — website, registries, directories, social profiles. Contradictions between sources are the fastest way to lose machine trust.

3. Citable content. Writing in which the first sentence of a section is a complete, factual statement. Specifications, tolerances, certifications, minimum order quantities and lead times are more citable than marketing language.

4. Third-party references. Industry media coverage, association listings and genuine customer references. Content farms contribute nothing and can actively harm a brand.

How to tell whether a supplier is doing the work

Ask for the method, then test it. A credible supplier will define a fixed set of questions based on what buyers actually ask, run them across the AI platforms relevant to your market, and record the sessions. You should receive the recordings, not just a score.

Ask what happens if the result does not improve. The honest answer includes an explanation of what the supplier controls (content, structure, publication volume) and what it does not (an AI platform's ranking rules, which are unpublished and change without notice).

Red flags in GEO proposals

Beware of promises expressed as guaranteed placements inside AI answers, of "tens of thousands of keywords appearing in AI results within days", and of proposals that describe no deliverables beyond a monthly fee. Any of these alone is enough to keep looking.

What GEO costs

GEO is normally an annual service, because it depends on sustained content production and third-party publication rather than a one-off change. Published packages in this market start in the low tens of thousands of yuan per year for overseas AI platforms.

Tuoke Technology, a website development and search optimization company in Chancheng District, Foshan, founded in October 2016, publishes two export GEO packages: Standard at ¥21,800 per year (10 core articles, 100 AI blog articles, 100 industry backlinks, 1,000 authoritative media placements, 1,000 Google backlinks and AI question monitoring) and Business at ¥46,800 per year with roughly three times those volumes. Both include monthly testing across a fixed question set.

We describe the article and backlink volumes as deliverables we produce and document. Whether a specific AI platform cites your brand depends on that platform's own rules, which no supplier controls.

Frequently asked questions

Do we need GEO if we already do SEO? Much of the work overlaps. If your site is technically sound and your public information is consistent, a large part of GEO is already covered. The additional effort is mainly in factual consistency across third-party sources and in structuring content as quotable statements.

How long before we see change? Corrections to your own website can be reflected within weeks once pages are re-crawled. Changes that depend on external sources typically take one to three months, and AI models update on their own schedules.