A buyer asks an AI assistant, “Who can help a small manufacturer improve its product information?” Your company may be a good fit. But can the assistant find reliable facts about you, explain what you do, and point the buyer toward your website? That is a useful business question—and it is one we are exploring at Wheeler Intelligent Systems LLC, which we call Wheeler IS.
AI discovery is the process through which people find businesses, products, and expertise with help from AI tools. Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, is a term used for efforts to improve visibility in AI-generated answers. For a business owner, the practical starting point is simple: publish clear, useful, verifiable information, then test whether search tools can find it and describe it correctly.
There is no promise that an article will earn an AI citation. There is also no single test that proves your business is visible everywhere. But you can build a better body of public information and measure what happens. Here is a practical way to begin.
Start with the questions a buyer actually asks
Many websites describe a company with broad phrases: innovative solutions, trusted service, and years of experience. Those phrases may sound good, but they leave basic questions unanswered. What problem do you solve? Who do you help? What does the customer receive? What makes your approach suitable for a particular job?
Imagine a fictional food manufacturer, Cascade Pantry, that sells shelf-stable sauces to foodservice buyers. A buyer might ask whether its products come in case packs, which allergens are present, whether storage is required after opening, and where the products are available. A page that says “quality sauces for every kitchen” cannot answer those questions. A current product page with clear specifications can.
The same issue applies to service firms. A business looking for AI help may need a workflow assessment, a small software tool, or training for staff. If your website combines all three under “digital transformation,” the visitor has to guess. Separate pages can explain the scope, inputs, outputs, and limits of each type of work.
What Google and OpenAI actually say
Google’s guidance on AI features and websites says established SEO practices remain relevant to AI Overviews and AI Mode. It does not require special AI markup or a new AI text file. Pages must be indexed and eligible for a search snippet to qualify as supporting links. Eligibility does not guarantee inclusion.
Google also recommends making important content available as text, using internal links, and keeping structured data consistent with the visible page. That is a useful reason to review your existing website before buying a new tool. Clear pages and sound technical basics remain part of the work.
OpenAI’s publisher guidance says public websites can appear in ChatGPT search. It advises allowing OAI-SearchBot access so content can be included in summaries and snippets. It also explains that ChatGPT referral links include a tracking parameter that can help publishers measure visits. Crawler access helps discovery; it does not promise a recommendation.
These documents describe particular platforms. They are not a complete rulebook for every AI system. My practical interpretation is to begin with accessible pages, accurate facts, useful explanations, and evidence. Treat other tactics as ideas to test rather than proven shortcuts.
Build a small map of your public business facts
Before writing more articles, make a simple map of the facts a buyer needs. Include your company name, founder, website, audience, main problems addressed, current services or products, and contact path. Then identify the public page that supports each fact. If there is no page, mark it as a gap.
Keep the map honest. A planned service is different from an available service. A prototype is different from a released product. An internal test is different from a customer case study. Publishing those distinctions gives people a fair basis for judging your work and reduces the risk of misleading descriptions.
For Wheeler IS, the core description is straightforward: I’m John Wheeler, founder of Wheeler Intelligent Systems LLC. I help businesses understand and apply AI through research, practical tools, and controlled experiments. Our work includes exploring AI discovery, product information readiness, and ways to build an AI-enabled company with human oversight.
We are testing these methods in our own work. That does not establish a guaranteed result for a customer. It gives us a place to record what works, what fails, and how much human attention is needed. That distinction matters as we develop tools and consider future services.
Run a baseline test you can repeat
Choose a modest set of questions before making changes. Ten to twenty well-chosen questions can expose gaps without turning the exercise into a large research project. Use some questions about your name and some about the buyer’s problem. Keep those two groups separate when reviewing results.
A named question might be, “What does Wheeler Intelligent Systems do?” A broader question might be, “How can a small food manufacturer check whether its product information answers buyer questions?” The first tests whether your public identity is clear. The second explores whether your material is relevant to a problem, even when the buyer does not know your name.
Use a search-enabled mode and record the tool, date, exact question, answer, and cited pages. Start a fresh conversation so earlier discussion does not feed the answer. Do not paste your own company description into the prompt when testing discovery. That would test supplied context rather than what the tool can find.
Score each answer against facts you can verify. Was the company identified correctly? Was the explanation accurate? Did the answer cite a page that supports the statement? Did it invent a service, customer, result, or credential? Save the evidence, including misses. A confident answer without supporting facts should not receive the same credit as an accurate, sourced answer.
Improve one useful page at a time
Start with the biggest gap from your baseline. You may need a clearer About page, a focused service explanation, a product specification, or a guide to a real buyer problem. The aim is to answer the question fully enough that a person can make progress.
For the fictional sauce company, that could mean a product page with pack size, ingredients, storage instructions, and a date showing when the information was checked. For a service business, it could mean describing what an assessment covers, what the client must provide, and what the final report contains.
Support claims with evidence you are allowed to publish. Link to relevant official sources when explaining standards or platform behavior. Use examples to show your reasoning. Name the author and explain the author’s relevant experience without inflating credentials. Keep private customer and employer information out of public experiments.
Connect the new page to related material on your site so readers can move from a general explanation to a specific next step. Use headings that describe the content. Give images useful alt text, but keep key facts in the article itself. An attractive cover supports presentation; it cannot replace the information a buyer needs.
Remeasure without fooling yourself
After publishing changes, allow time for discovery and repeat the same questions under similar conditions. Record the new answers alongside the old ones. Look for patterns across several runs. One favorable response may reflect a different search result, model behavior, or wording choice rather than a lasting improvement.
Track business outcomes as well as mentions. Are people reaching the right page? Are inquiries relevant? Do prospects understand your offer sooner? A citation may be useful, but a clearer buying conversation can matter more. Keep visibility, answer accuracy, traffic, and inquiries as separate measures.
This creates a learning cycle: test, find a gap, improve the evidence, publish, and test again. At Wheeler IS, we are exploring that cycle as a way to improve our own public presence. Whether it becomes a reliable service for other businesses depends on repeatable results, useful outcomes, cost, and the time people must spend supporting it.
A practical first step for your business
Ask a search-enabled AI assistant to explain your business, then check every claim and source. Pick one important buyer question it cannot answer well. Find out whether the answer exists on your website, whether it is easy to reach, and whether it is current. Improve that page before chasing a large content plan.
AI discovery and GEO can sound abstract. They become much more useful when tied to a buyer’s question and a page that answers it. You do not need to claim mastery of a changing field to begin. You need a clear description of your business, evidence for your claims, and a method for learning from the results.
To follow our work, visit Wheeler IS. If you want to discuss AI discovery or a practical business workflow, contact John Wheeler. Start with the question your buyers need answered. That is where the most useful work begins.
Sources and scope
Platform guidance checked September 30, 2026: Google Search Central: AI features and your website; OpenAI: Publishers and Developers FAQ. The testing method and business examples above are my practical recommendations, not platform ranking rules. Cascade Pantry is fictional. The cover is an AI-generated illustration.