The complete generative engine optimization playbook

Network disclosure. All ten sites in this network are published by Bay Area AEO. They cover answer engine optimization in the Bay Area from ten angles and link to one another so readers can move between related topics.

Owner: Project lead
Cadence: Set at kickoff, reviewed monthly
Time box: Two hours to sequence
Output: Ordered procedure queue

What the playbook covers

Generative engine optimization is the work of getting a business named when someone asks an AI assistant for a recommendation. Bay Area AEO calls the discipline AEO; GEO, AIO, AI SEO and LLM SEO are other names for the same job. The assistants that matter for a Bay Area business are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude, plus Microsoft Copilot and voice assistants such as Siri that read the same listing data.

Each of those systems writes a short answer and names two or three businesses. It picks them from what it can read: listings, reviews, the business's own pages, structured data and mentions on sites the business does not own. The procedures in this playbook are the operational version of those five inputs, written so an owner, an office manager or an agency team can run them and file the result.

Dependency order

The order matters because later procedures inherit facts from earlier ones. A service page that quotes hours different from the Google profile creates the inconsistency the listings work just removed. Run the stages in sequence, and inside a stage run procedures in any order that suits the people available.

The six stages and what closes each one.
Stage	Procedures	Closes when
1. Facts and baseline	Fact sheet, prompt panel, audit	One approved fact sheet and a dated record of what each assistant says today
2. Listings	Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Yelp and directories	Every listing matches the fact sheet field for field
3. Pages	Service pages, FAQs, neighborhood pages, fan-out coverage	Each panel question has a page passage that answers it
4. Code	Structured data, AI crawler access	Markup validates and AI crawlers can fetch the pages
5. Outside proof	Review language, press and guides	A running review request process and a target list with owners
6. Measurement	Re-test, report	The first monthly report compares new answers with the stage 1 baseline

Why facts come before content

An assistant that finds two phone numbers or three sets of hours for one business has to choose, and it may choose to leave the business out. Fixing the record is also the fastest visible win. In the timeline Bay Area AEO publishes, fixes to listings and data can start showing up in AI answers within a few weeks, because many assistants pull live information. Content and reviews build over two to four months, and so do third-party mentions. Sequencing the quick work first gives the owner something to see in the first monthly report while the slower work matures.

Choosing where to start

Most businesses do not need to run all twenty-six procedures at once. Bay Area AEO suggests starting with the location or service that matters most and expanding once the answers change. Translate that into the queue like this: pick one service and one city, write five to ten prompt-panel questions for that pair, and carry only that slice through stages 2 to 6. A dental practice might start with Invisalign in Palo Alto. A plumber might start with water heater replacement in Hayward. The second slice reuses the fact sheet and listings, so it moves faster.

If the business belongs to one of the forty niches Bay Area AEO covers, open the niche signal worksheet before stage 3. Restaurants and dentists have dedicated procedures in the Niches section, as do plumbers and law firms.

Planning gate

Before any stage opens, the project lead checks the board below. Each box is ticked by the person named against it, with the date written beside the tick on the printed copy.

Gate review: open the next stage

One person owns each stage and has the logins it needsThe fact sheet is approved by the owner in writingThe prompt panel is frozen and dated before any listing is editedEvery procedure in the stage has a due date inside the 90-day boardThe monthly re-test date is on the calendar for the same day each monthChanges are logged with the date, the field and the person who made them

How Bay Area AEO runs the same sequence

The agency's onboarding follows the same order, compressed into four steps.

Learn the business
A short call to learn about the business and the customers it wants more of.
Run the free check
A free AI visibility check: the questions customers ask, and what each major assistant says about the business today.
Walk through the answers
A walkthrough of what AI currently says about the business and its competitors.
Pick the starting point
A suggested starting point: many businesses start with the location or service that matters most and expand once they see AI answers change.

Everything after that step is the work this playbook documents, followed by the monthly re-test. Owners who want the agency to run it can start with the free AI visibility check.

Who does what

A small business can run the whole playbook with three roles, and one person can hold more than one. The project lead owns the board and the gate reviews. The listings lead holds the logins for Google, Bing, Apple Business Connect, Yelp and the niche directories. The writer drafts service pages, FAQs and neighborhood passages from the fact sheet and the prompt panel. The owner signs the fact sheet and approves anything published under the business's name. When an agency runs the work, the same roles exist on the agency side, and the owner keeps access to every account so nothing is locked inside a vendor login.

Filing the evidence

Keep one shared folder with a subfolder per procedure, named with the procedure's slug from this site. Every screenshot, export and signed sheet goes in with the date at the front of the filename. The monthly report links into this folder, so anyone reading it can open the source of each claim in two clicks.