How do I do GEO for my Malaysian business?

GEO, generative engine optimisation, is improving how AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews understand, cite and recommend your business. For a Malaysian business, it comes down to eight steps: know the questions, check what AI says, let AI read your site, put your facts on your own website, publish prices and answers, keep your official records consistent, write key pages in English, and check again every month.

Each step below is backed by what we measured in ChatGPT's answers about Malaysian businesses in September 2026.

What are the steps to do GEO for a Malaysian business?

The steps start with finding out where you stand, then fix what AI reads about you, in the order that matters most. Google's view is that this work "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO"¹, so nothing here undoes the SEO you already have.

Step 1: Which questions do my customers ask AI?

Start with the questions that decide who gets hired: who's good near me, how much it costs, and when you're open. ChatGPT searched the web for every one of those in our test: 18 of 18 answers for local recommendations, 12 of 12 for prices and 12 of 12 for a named business's details (how ChatGPT decides to search).

Write down 10 to 20 of them, in the words your customers use, such as "aircon servicing near Puchong" or "how much is a condo kitchen renovation".

Step 2: What does AI say about my business now?

Ask those questions in ChatGPT with no chat history, more than once, and note who gets named. One answer isn't enough: in our test, two answers to the same question shared 15% of the businesses they named (the data).

Don't use your own logged-in ChatGPT for this. It knows your business and your chat history, so it answers you differently from a customer.

Step 3: Can AI read my website?

Check that nothing blocks ChatGPT's crawler. OpenAI asks site owners to "make sure you aren't blocking OAI-SearchBot"². In our check of 59 websites' robots.txt files, none blocked ChatGPT, so the usual culprits are firewall settings such as Cloudflare's, and pages that only load with JavaScript. We've listed five checks for why ChatGPT can't see a website.

Step 4: Are my key facts on my own website?

Your own website is the single biggest source ChatGPT quotes. Of the 482 pages ChatGPT cited for Malaysian businesses in our analysis, 34% were businesses' own websites, and none were Facebook, Instagram or TikTok (the full breakdown). When asked for a named business's details, ChatGPT quoted that business's own website in 11 of 12 answers.

State what you do, where, for whom and when you're open, as plain text on ordinary pages, not only in images or PDFs.

Step 5: Have I published my prices and answered customers' questions?

Publish your prices or price ranges, and a page for each question customers keep asking. When ChatGPT answered "how much does a condo kitchen renovation cost in Malaysia", one run quoted a Subang Jaya renovation studio's own cost guide.

Specific facts help. The research paper that named GEO found that adding statistics and quotations to a page raised its visibility in AI answers³. For a business, that means real figures: your price ranges, how many projects you've done, how long a job takes.

Step 6: Do my official records match my website?

Make sure your SSM registration, licences and industry listings say the same thing as your website. Official registers and regulators, such as SSM and SEDA, made up 26% of the pages ChatGPT cited for Malaysian businesses in our analysis. For company secretaries and solar installers, they were the main source.

If your registered name, address or services differ from what your website says, ChatGPT reads both.

Step 7: Which language should my pages be in?

Write your key pages in English first. When asked in Malay, ChatGPT ran 87% of its web searches in English; when asked in Chinese, 96% (our language test). Add Malay or Chinese pages for the customers who read them, but don't let them replace the English facts.

Step 8: How often should I check again?

Check every month. The answers change as the web changes, and no AI provider publishes a timetable for when a fix shows up. Keep the same list of questions from Step 1, so you're comparing like with like.

What makes GEO different in Malaysia?

Three things stood out in our Malaysian data, compared with general GEO advice:

• English pages carry most of the weight, even for customers who ask in Malay or Chinese.
• Official registers matter. SSM, SEDA and other regulators were a quarter of what ChatGPT cited.
• Free pages can work. Free Google Sites pages were 8% of the pages ChatGPT cited, and seven small renovation and accounting firms with one were named in every answer that cited their page.

Which source matters most depends on your industry. In our data, official registers led for company secretaries and solar installers, businesses' own websites for accounting firms, booking sites for hotels, and marketplaces for renovation contractors. Find out which one ChatGPT reads for your trade, and start there.

How do I get my starting point for GEO?

Your starting point for GEO is a record of what ChatGPT says today for your Step 1 questions: whether it names you, who it names instead, and which pages it read. GEO is working when that record improves, so ChatGPT names you more often than it did before. You can only see that by asking the same questions the same way, month after month, with no chat history getting in the way.

That's what our free AI visibility check gives you: a starting point, taken the way a customer would ask.

What can't this guide tell me?

• Other AI tools in depth. Our measurements are of ChatGPT. Google's AI Overviews and Gemini may weigh sources differently.
• How fast it works. No AI provider publishes a timetable for when changes show up.
• Guarantees. Nobody controls what an AI names. These steps improve your odds; they don't promise a result.

Before you start on the eight steps, take your baseline. Fill in the free-check form below and we'll send you whether ChatGPT names you today, who it names instead, and which step to begin with.