How do you make sure your company gets cited in ChatGPT or Perplexity? I asked a CEO who’s specialized in SEO for over 10 years. His answer stopped me cold — and it’s the most useful one anyone can give today.
The question everyone is asking
If you run a business in 2025, you’ve inevitably asked yourself: does ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini cite your company when a client asks a question in your industry?
It’s the new obsession of digital marketing. After years of optimizing for Google, everyone now wants to exist in LLM responses. The buzzword going around: GEO — Generative Engine Optimization.
Except there’s a problem. Nobody really knows how it works.
What an expert told me to my face
I asked the question directly to a CEO whose company is entirely specialized in SEO. Over 10 years in the industry. Dozens of clients. A team that tracks algorithm updates like others track the weather.
His answer:
“I don’t know. With certainty. And if someone tells you they do, they’re probably a charlatan.”
That’s not a dodge. It’s the most honest — and the most useful — answer anyone can give on the subject today.
Why nobody can guarantee anything
LLMs don’t work like a traditional search engine.
Google indexes pages. It follows documented rules, even if they evolve. You can audit, test, measure. LLMs, on the other hand, generate responses from models trained on massive datasets.
The citation criteria aren’t public. They change with every model update. And each LLM — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini — has its own logic.
Result: what works today can be obsolete in 3 months, without notice.
What we actually observe on the ground
That doesn’t mean we’re in a complete void. Since the GEO question has been circulating seriously, we’ve observed some trends on the sites we work on at Numinam.
Sites with structured, dense content are better represented. In-depth articles, comprehensive guides, detailed case studies — this type of content appears more often in LLM responses than short product pages or minimalist landing pages.
Semantic consistency across pages matters. A site that covers a topic in depth — with interconnected articles, consistent vocabulary, visible expertise — seems to be better understood and better cited than a site scattered across 10 different topics.
Mentions on third-party sources reinforce presence. Being cited in press articles, interviews, discussions on specialized forums — that builds a digital footprint that LLMs pick up during training.
These are observations, not certainties. But they guide the decisions we make for the sites we build.
How this changes the way we build websites
At Numinam, GEO isn’t an isolated service. It’s a layer we integrate into the very construction of the site — not an option added afterwards.
Concretely, this translates into 3 things on every project:
Content designed to be citable. Self-contained answers, clear phrasing, verifiable data. An LLM should be able to extract a useful answer without needing the context of the entire page.
A coherent semantic architecture. Pages are organized around strong themes, not scattered keywords. The goal: for the site to be recognized as a reference in its domain.
A long-term content plan. GEO is built over time. An article published today contributes to the brand’s representation in the next training cycles of the models.
The real risk: paying for false certainties
In this uncertainty, a market is emerging. Consultants sell “guaranteed GEO strategies.” Agencies charge premium prices for LLM visibility audits. Courses promise to make you unmissable in ChatGPT responses.
When nobody — not even the teams building these models — can predict with certainty how citations work, a guarantee isn’t expertise. It’s misplaced trust sold at a premium.
What you can concretely do today, without paying for packaged uncertainty:
Build useful, structured, regularly updated content. That’s the best foundation — for Google as well as for LLMs.
Develop your presence on third-party sources. Press, interviews, industry contributions. It’s not new — but it’s still relevant.
Document your client results with precision. Concrete cases, real numbers, named testimonials are hard to ignore, regardless of the algorithm.
Want us to look at this together?
If you’re wondering about your site’s visibility in LLMs — or more broadly about its ability to generate clients in 2025 — that’s exactly the kind of diagnostic we do at Numinam.
No promises on GEO. No unverifiable guarantees. An honest look at what your site does well, what it doesn’t, and what would have the most impact for you concretely.
If you’re interested, the first conversation is free.
