GEO in Girona: the AI searches for your customer

Tuesday, seven in the evening. A young woman who has just moved to Girona for work has a wrecked back and still doesn't know anyone in the city. She doesn't open Google. She types into ChatGPT: «I need a physio near me who has evening appointments». A moment later she has three names, a line about each one and a map on her phone screen. What happens in those few seconds decides whether one of the three is you, and that is what GEO in Girona is about.

What the AI does between the question and the answer

OpenAI explains it on its help page about searching the web with ChatGPT, and it is worth reading because it puts an end to the idea that the AI already «knows» who to recommend. When a question calls for up-to-date information, ChatGPT searches the internet: it rewrites the question into one or more searches and sends them to the search providers it works with.

For a local business, the important part comes next. ChatGPT works out an approximate location from your IP address and can pass that area on to the search provider. OpenAI's own example is set in San Francisco: someone asks for «good restaurants near me» and the search that goes out is «top restaurants San Francisco». Asked from a phone in Girona, the physio question could end up as something like «physiotherapist Girona evening».

Google does something similar. Its documentation on AI features in Search says that AI Overviews and AI Mode may run several related searches, across subtopics and data sources, before writing the answer. Google calls it a «query fan-out».

So for questions like these, the AI doesn't rely on what it remembers: it searches, reads what it finds and summarises it. To name you, it first has to find you in those searches, and then it has to understand without any doubt what you do and where you do it.

GEO in Girona starts with writing «Girona»

If the search the AI runs includes the name of the city, your website needs it too, and in the places that get read: the page title, the main heading and the text of each service. It sounds obvious, but plenty of local business websites never say «Girona» anywhere except in the address in the footer. «Your wellbeing, our passion» tells a search engine nothing. «Physiotherapy in Girona, in the Eixample, with appointments until nine» tells it everything.

Neighbourhoods work the same way. OpenAI itself advises ChatGPT users to add their city, neighbourhood or postcode to the question if the results come from the wrong area. So some people type «in Montilivi», «in the Barri Vell» or «in Santa Eugènia». If you work across the whole city, say so, naming the areas. And if you also go to Salt, Sarrià de Ter or Quart, write it down: according to Idescat, Girona has 108,352 inhabitants and the Gironès district almost twice as many, 208,967. Many of your customers live on the other side of the municipal boundary.

It is the same groundwork as SEO in Girona, with one difference: an AI's answer has room for two or three names, not ten.

One page per service, without inventing offices

If you do several things, each one deserves its own page, with what it includes, what it costs and the area you cover. We explain how in the services page. What doesn't work is copying the same page twenty times and changing the name of the town. Google treats that as spam, calls it «doorway abuse», and according to its documentation a page that can't appear in Search can't appear as a source in its AI answers either.

In Girona people ask in Catalan, Spanish and English

Girona doesn't speak just one language. According to the same Idescat figures, 31,918 residents were born abroad, almost three in ten. Add the students, the people who come to work for a season, the families moving up from Barcelona and the visitors staying in one of the city's 30 hotels. Each of them asks the AI the way they speak.

The answer comes back in the language of the question, and the searches the AI runs in the background usually do too. If your website only exists in Spanish, someone asking in Catalan («on puc trobar un fisioterapeuta a Girona?») or in English has less of your material to read. You don't need to translate it into five languages: with good Catalan and Spanish versions you cover most people, and English pays off if you serve foreigners. How to set it up without doubling the work is in a website in Catalan and Spanish.

The listings the AI also reads: Google, Bing and Apple

Your website isn't the only place your name can come from. Business listings on maps count too, and there are three worth looking after equally well:

• Google. In the same documentation on its AI features, Google recommends checking that your Business Profile information is up to date. That is your Google Business Profile: the exact category, opening hours (holidays included), services, photos and service area.
• Bing. Among the search providers ChatGPT works with, OpenAI links to the privacy statement of Microsoft, the company behind Bing. Bing has its own listing, Bing Places for Business, which is free and lets you bring over the details from your Google profile instead of typing everything again.
• Apple. Apple Maps, the maps app that comes with every iPhone, has its own business listing, which you claim and edit through Apple Business.

What does the most damage is when they don't match. If Google says you close at eight and Bing says seven, the AI may repeat either one, and your customer finds the shutter down. Name, address, phone number, opening hours and services: the same on the website and on all three listings.

What Girona says about you

When there are five physios with their listings in order, what tips the balance is proof that you do the job well. The first proof is reviews, and they don't all carry the same weight. «Very friendly» helps very little. «They treated a stiff neck for me in the Eixample and the next day I could turn my head again» says what you did and where, and gives the next customer a reason. Here we explain how to get Google reviews without taking risks.

Then come mentions outside your website: the local press, the traders' association on your street, your trade guild, the fair you take part in or the club you sponsor. Every page that puts your name next to what you do and next to «Girona» is one more piece of proof, and any of them can end up among the sources the AI shows under its answer. Whatever doesn't hold up outside your website, on the other hand, adds nothing: a «we're the best in Girona» that nobody else repeats stays on your website.

How to check today whether the AI names you in Girona

You don't need any paid tool to start. Half an hour and a spreadsheet will do:

1. Write five questions the way your customer would ask them, without your name: «physiotherapist in Girona with evening appointments», «on puc portar el cotxe a revisar a Girona?», «¿dónde puedo llevar el coche a revisar en Girona?».
2. Ask each one three ways: with «near me» from Girona, with «in Girona» and with the neighbourhood or town («in Montilivi», «in Salt»).
3. Try them in ChatGPT and in Google's AI Mode, and if you can, in Catalan and Spanish as well as English.
4. Note down who appears and which sources are cited. ChatGPT shows the sources it used. If it cites a directory you're not in, or one with your old opening hours, you already have your first task.
5. Repeat every month with the same questions, to see whether you're moving.

If you do appear, look at how you're described. If the AI presents you as a «beauty salon» when you do physiotherapy, the problem is on your website or in your listings, and it can be fixed.

What you don't need, even if someone tries to sell it to you

There's a lot of smoke being sold around AI, and both Google and OpenAI make things clear in their documentation:

• Special files for AI. Google says that to appear in its AI features you don't need to create machine-readable files or AI text files, or add any special structured data. Ordinary structured data is still useful, but there is no secret markup.
• Guaranteed spots. OpenAI explains that it ranks results using several relevance and reliability factors, and that placement is not guaranteed. If someone promises you'll definitely show up in ChatGPT, they're promising something not even OpenAI promises.

What you do need to check is that you're not blocking the AI without knowing it. To be able to appear in ChatGPT's search results, OpenAI asks sites to let its crawler, OAI-SearchBot, through in the robots.txt file, and to make sure the hosting or firewall doesn't cut off its visits. Some security plugins block bots by default. Checking robots.txt takes a minute: add /robots.txt to the end of your domain in the browser.

How much GEO in Girona costs

We don't sell GEO on its own, because it's built with the same pieces as everything else: the website, the listings, the articles and the reviews. It comes inside our presence plans, which you can see on our pricing page:

• Basic Presence, €400 a month: hosting, website and email migration, ten mailboxes, three articles a month on your website and three on your Google profile, replies to every review and GEO.
• Mid Presence, €750 a month: five articles on the website and five on the profile, plus management of your Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns.
• Advanced Presence, €1,500 a month: seven and seven, campaigns and two posts a month on your social media.

All plus VAT and with no lock-in, and at the same prices in Girona as in Palamós or Barcelona. What we do at each stage is on our GEO service page. If you want the long version of what it is and how it differs from SEO, it's in our article on GEO.

GEO in Girona, done by people from here

We're three partners working at the same desk, in the Palau Firal in Sant Antoni de Calonge, right next to Palamós. We go to Girona whenever we need to meet, and the rest we sort out over WhatsApp or video call.

If you want to know where you stand today, send us your business name and the three questions you'd like the AI to answer with your name. We'll ask them, show you what comes up and tell you what we'd tackle first. No strings attached. You can also write to us through the contact form.