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LLM SEO: how large language models choose which businesses to name
By Cloute · Published October 1, 2026
The short answer
LLM SEO, also called LLM optimization or LLMO, is the work of getting a business named in answers written by large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. A model can name a business from two places: what it remembers from training, and what it reads on the web while it answers. For local businesses the second matters far more. Across 64,441 AI answers about local businesses, engines named a business 84% of the time when they had opened one of its own pages while answering, and 16% when they had not.
Two ways an LLM can know about a business
| Training data | Live retrieval | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Text the model learned from before it was released | Pages the model searches for and opens while answering |
| How fresh | Months or years old | Current |
| Who it favours | Large, long-established brands | Whoever has a readable, relevant page right now |
| Can a small business move it? | Slowly, if at all | Yes |
A local business rarely appears often enough in training data for a model to recall it reliably. When the engine searches the web and reads, that changes: the business is on equal footing with anyone else whose page answers the question.
What LLM SEO involves
- Let the crawlers in. Each AI company runs separate crawlers for training, for its search index and for live fetches. Blocking the wrong one removes you from answers.
- Put the facts in the HTML. Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript, so text loaded by scripts is invisible to them.
- Write for the question. Pages that state a direct answer in the first sentences are easier for a model to use.
- Keep facts consistent across your own site and third-party sources, so the model does not have to choose between versions.
- Measure by engine. A business can be named often by one model and rarely by another.
A note on the term LLM optimization
Engineers also use LLM optimization to mean making a language model itself faster or cheaper to run. This page is about the marketing meaning: optimizing a business's visibility in what LLMs say.
Read next
AI crawlers: which ones read your website Should I block AI crawlers? GEO vs SEO vs AEO How to measure AI visibility Study: AI recommends what it has readQuestions people ask
Is LLM SEO the same as GEO and AEO?
Yes. LLM SEO, LLM optimization (LLMO), generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) all describe getting a business named in answers written by AI models.
Can I get my business into an LLM's training data?
Not directly, and not quickly. Models are retrained infrequently and you cannot submit to them. What you can change is what the model finds and reads when it searches the web to answer a question today.
What are LLM SEO tools?
Tools that track how often language models name a business or brand, by engine and by question. They measure. Whether the number moves depends on the work done on what the models read.
Which LLMs matter for a local business?
The ones customers use to choose: ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Claude, and Perplexity.
About Cloute. Cloute is an AI visibility company for local businesses. It measures how often ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews recommend a business against its local competitors, and works every month to move it to the top.