GEO - SEO. What you need to know for your visibility on Google

Chantal van Nuland

May 202621 May 2026

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Google, ChatGPT, and Bing now answer many searches with AI-generated summaries before anyone clicks a result. GEO is about making sure your business gets cited in those answers. Here's what it means for businesses on the Costa Blanca, and where to start.

Search doesn't work the way it did last year

Type "best estate agent Moraira" or "English-speaking notary Dénia" into Google, and the first thing you see is often no longer a list of links. It's an AI summary of a few lines, generated by Google's AI Overview, pulling from multiple sources and answering the question directly. No click needed. The same thing happens in ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Perplexity though there it's usually longer answers with explicit source citations.

Those summaries are pulling from somewhere. The question for you is whether they're pulling from your website, or from a competitor's.

What GEO actually is

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It's the practice of making sure your business and your content get cited by AI-generated search answers, not just ranked in the traditional blue links. The platforms doing this are Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT with web search, Bing Copilot, and Perplexity. All of them pull from sources they consider authoritative, structured, and relevant.

GEO doesn't replace SEO; it builds on it. A strong local SEO foundation is still the base, and businesses already ranking well there have a significant head start.

How AI decides what to cite

The biggest shift is that ChatGPT's search results don't come from Google they come from the Bing index. A Seer Interactive study from February 2025 analysed 500 ChatGPT citations and found that 87% matched Bing's top 20 results, compared with only 56% for Google. For Google's AI Overviews it's the other way around: follow-up research showed that roughly 93% of citations link to at least one page in Google's own top 10.

The practical conclusion is simple. Pages already ranking well in traditional search have by far the strongest chance of being cited in AI answers. But where you need to rank depends on which AI you're optimising for. For ChatGPT visibility, your Bing position matters more than your Google position. For Google's AI Overviews, your Google ranking is still what counts. Most Dutch- and English-speaking businesses on the Costa Blanca don't track their Bing rankings at all, even though a large share of their clients use ChatGPT to ask questions in their own language about Spanish services.

What AI systems specifically reward

Five things separate content that gets cited from content that gets skipped.

1. Direct answers up front. A paragraph that opens with "Buying property on the Costa Blanca requires an NIE number, a Spanish bank account, and a notary" is more likely to be cited than the same information buried after three paragraphs of introduction. AI systems scan for sentences that directly answer the question.
2. Structured layout. Headings, subheadings, short paragraphs, FAQ sections. A wall of text is harder to parse than a page with clear H2 and H3 headings, each answering a specific question. This is exactly where many older real estate and legal websites on the Costa Blanca fall short.
3. Schema markup. The technical signals that tell search engines what your content is about. LocalBusiness schema for your contact details, FAQ schema for common questions, Article schema for blog posts. Most websites on the Costa Blanca don't have it, which means the ones that do add it have a measurable advantage.
4. E-E-A-T signals.Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. An article that says "we've guided 80 British families through their purchase in Jávea and Moraira over the past five years" beats an article that only gives general information. AI systems recognise specific, experience-backed details and treat them as stronger evidence of authority.
5. Citations and backlinks from local sources. Being referenced by local news sites, Spanish and international business associations (like Dameszaken or Handel met Spanje), industry directories, and relevant expat platforms. The more quality sources linking to you, the stronger the signal to AI that you're worth citing.

What's different from traditional SEO

In traditional search, position 1 means someone clicks your link. In AI search, being cited means you're mentioned in the summary, sometimes with a clickable source, sometimes just by name in flowing text. The user reads the answer, sees your business name, and decides on that basis whether to look further.

The goal shifts from "hitting rankings" to "being cited as the source that answers the question". For some searches that means fewer clicks, but stronger brand recognition with the people who do end up reaching out.

What this means for Costa Blanca businesses right now

Very few local businesses on the Costa Blanca are actively working on GEO yet. Most are still catching up on basic SEO, and that's precisely where the opportunity sits. For specific questions that buyers and expats actually search, "Which notary in Dénia speaks English?", "NIE number cost Spain", "Best international school Jávea Moraira", "English-speaking tax advisor Costa Blanca" the competition to be cited is still limited.

A business in Altea, La Nucia, or Moraira that builds a properly structured, authoritative website now, with direct answers to those specific questions in English, Dutch, and Spanish, is positioning itself as the source AI pulls from once those questions get asked more often. That window won't stay open for years.

Where to start

GEO and SEO share the same foundation. Do SEO properly, and you're automatically building for both.

In practical terms: make sure your website loads fast, has clean technical structure, and a logical architecture. Write content that answers real questions with specific, experience-backed detail not generalities anyone could have written. Add schema markup where it makes sense. Build local citations through the Spanish and English platforms your audience actually uses. Keep your Google Business Profile complete and current, with regular updates and photos.

The businesses that appear in AI answers two years from now as the go-to source for "English-speaking web designer Costa Blanca" or "estate agent for expats Moraira" are the ones starting to build that authority today.

Read more:

• Local SEO for the Costa Blanca: what actually works in 2026
• Why an AI-built website won't bring in clients
• Should you use AI to write your website content?
• Why your website doesn't work (and what to do about it)

About the author

Chantal van Nuland

I'm Chantal van Nuland, a Dutch web designer and developer living on the Costa Blanca. I build websites in Next.js, Astro.js, Shopify and WordPress for local businesses, real estate agencies and entrepreneurs in the area. My focus is on websites that are fast, multilingual and built to actually get you clients.