What not to do.
Anything that gets a name draws people selling tricks for it. Most of what is sold as GEO right now either repeats old keyword stuffing with new vocabulary or asks for work the assistants do not read. Here is what to skip, and what to do instead.
IN ONE PARAGRAPH
The mistakes that hurt GEO: writing "best AI-recommended RV park" style phrases into pages; adding FAQ blocks full of questions nobody asks so the page has more Q&A; hiding text or markup for machines that guests cannot see; accidentally blocking the crawlers assistants use; putting facts into PDFs and images; rewriting the whole site into a stilted list of facts with no voice; chasing every new file format promised to matter; and buying mentions on junk sites. Each of these either makes the assistant trust the site less or wastes the month. The things that work are boring: be indexed, state facts plainly, keep every source consistent, collect real reviews, and test.
The list
- Stuffing. "ChatGPT-recommended," "top AI pick," "best campground according to AI" on a page. Assistants read it as a page trying to game them and it says nothing a traveler wants.
- Fake FAQs. Forty questions per page, "Why is [park] the best RV park in Idaho?" Google has already cut FAQ display for exactly this, and padded pages do not get quoted more in our testing.
- Hidden text. Facts in the code but not on the page, white text, collapsed blocks nobody can open. Treated as spam by every engine.
- Blocking crawlers by accident. Some "block AI" plugins and firewall rules block the crawlers ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Bing use to read pages. A park that wants to be named must allow them. Check robots.txt.
- Facts in PDFs and images. The rate sheet as a JPEG, the rules as a PDF. Unreadable. Rebuild as tables.
- Robot prose. Rewriting every page into a flat list of facts with the park's voice removed. Assistants quote facts; guests book from voice. Keep both: fact first, then the sentence that sounds like you.
- Chasing formats. Files like llms.txt are proposed, not adopted; none of the major assistants has committed to reading them. Harmless to add, pointless to pay for.
- Bought mentions. Paid placements on link farms and "AI directories." Nothing we have seen suggests assistants read those, and Google treats them as spam.
- Blocking the platform link. Removing the booking platform to "own the traffic." Keep the book button; the platform page is a consistent source too.
What one looks like
A park hired someone for "AI optimization." Three months later the homepage opened with "Voted the top AI-recommended RV park near Yellowstone," every page had 30 FAQs, the rates were still a JPEG, and a security plugin was blocking Bing's crawler. Ask ChatGPT about the park: not named. Ask about the competitor with a plain site and a facts page: named, with specifics. The fix was deleting most of the work, unblocking the crawler, and building one facts page.
What to do instead
- Verify with Bing and Google; allow the crawlers. Bing.
- Write the facts in sentences on a facts page and the main pages. Facts.
- Make every listing agree. Consistency.
- Collect real reviews that mention specifics. Reviews.
- Have a site of your own. The platform page problem.
- Test monthly. Testing.
How to check your own
- Open yourdomain.com/robots.txt and look for lines blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot, or everything.
- Count the FAQ questions on your busiest page. If it is more than ten, cut to the real ones.
- Search your site for the word "AI." If it appears in a boast, remove it.
What we do about it
None of the mistakes above are on a site we build, and when we take over a site we remove them first. The work in the Marketing band is the boring list: index, facts, consistency, reviews, test. SEO, AEO, and GEO with us start at $250 a month. Back to the GEO guide.
Questions about this.
Should I block AI crawlers from my RV park website?
No, if you want assistants to name the park. Blocking GPTBot, PerplexityBot, or Bingbot makes the park invisible to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Copilot. Some security plugins do this by default; check robots.txt.
Does llms.txt help my campground get found by AI?
Not yet. None of the major assistants has committed to reading it. It is harmless to add and not worth paying for.
Should I add more FAQs to rank in AI?
No. Add the questions guests actually ask, with full answers, five to eight per page. Pages padded with dozens of invented questions are trusted less.
Is writing 'AI-recommended' on my site a good idea?
No. It tells a traveler nothing and reads to assistants as a page trying to game them. State facts instead.
Want to know what AI says about your park?
Ask it, then call us. We run the prompt set, show you the before, and build the fixes. SEO, AEO, and GEO with us start at $250 a month.
Part of the RV park GEO guide. Previous: Testing what AI says about your park. See also the SEO guide and the AEO guide.