# How LLMs Work and How to Make Them Recommend Your Product By Jeremy Prasetyo, Co-CEO, Lanesra AI · 2026-08-17 · AEO & GEO > A simple explanation of how LLMs produce recommendations, what GEO and AEO mean, and how brands can improve their visibility in AI answers with Lanesra. Source: https://lanesra.ai/blog/how-llms-work-and-how-to-make-them-recommend-your-product Ask an AI assistant which CRM, payment provider, hotel, or software tool to choose and it may return only a handful of names. The user no longer has to open ten search results and compare them manually. The AI is already doing part of the selection. That changes the marketing problem. Ranking still matters, but your product also needs to be understood correctly, supported by evidence, and relevant enough to be included in the answer. The short answer **LLMs generate answers by predicting what text should come next.** Many AI products then add search, retrieval, ranking, tools, and safety systems around the model. To increase your chance of being recommended, make your product easy to understand, easy to verify, and relevant to the questions customers actually ask. **GEO gets you understood. AEO gets you recommended.** ## How LLMs Generate Answers A large language model learns patterns from huge amounts of text. During training, it learns relationships between words, concepts, companies, products, and ideas. When you ask it a question, it generates an answer one piece at a time based on the prompt, its learned knowledge, and the context available to it. Modern AI assistants can also search the web or retrieve external information. That means the answer may be influenced by your own website, reviews, media coverage, comparison pages, databases, documentation, and other sources the system can access. > Think of an LLM less like a database and more like a machine that builds an answer from patterns and available evidence. ## How AI Decides What to Recommend There is no single recommendation formula shared by every AI engine. But the practical process usually looks something like this: 1 Understand the question The system identifies the user's intent, constraints, category, and comparison criteria. 2 Build the candidate set It uses trained knowledge and, where available, retrieves fresh information from the web or connected sources. 3 Compare the evidence The system connects products with features, use cases, reviews, prices, reputation, and third-party proof. 4 Generate the answer It selects the information that best fits the user's request and turns it into a recommendation or shortlist. ## SEO, GEO and AEO: Different Layers of Discovery SEO Get ranked Help search engines discover and rank your pages. GEO Get understood Help generative systems understand who you are, what you offer, and why you are credible. AEO Get recommended Increase the chance that your brand is selected, mentioned, or cited in the answer. ## What GEO Does GEO - Generative Engine Optimization - is about making your brand clear to AI systems. Your website, product pages, documentation, profiles, reviews, and third-party coverage should tell a consistent story. An AI system should be able to answer basic questions without confusion: What is the product? Which category does it belong to? Who is it for? What makes it different? What evidence supports those claims? GEO comes first: AI cannot reliably recommend a product it does not reliably understand. Consistency does not mean repeating the same slogan everywhere. It means creating a clear, evidence-backed picture of the brand. ## What AEO Does AEO - Answer Engine Optimization - focuses on what happens when someone asks a commercial question. If a customer asks for the best solution for a specific problem, does the AI mention you? Does it describe you accurately? Does it cite credible sources? Does it recommend a competitor instead? GEO improves how the machine understands you. AEO improves how often that understanding turns into inclusion in the answer. ## How to Earn AI Recommendations You cannot force an LLM to recommend your product. What you can do is improve the signals it has available. 01 Target real buying questions Map the comparison, use-case, pricing, trust, and "best for" questions customers ask before making a decision. 02 Make your product unambiguous Keep product names, categories, features, descriptions, and company information consistent across credible sources. 03 Write answerable content Use clear headings, direct definitions, comparisons, FAQs, specifications, and concise explanations that AI systems can extract easily. 04 Replace claims with evidence Support statements such as "faster" or "better" with benchmarks, customer evidence, certifications, or independent validation. 05 Measure what the models actually say The outcome is not how much content you publish. It is whether AI engines mention, cite, position, and recommend you more often. ## How Lanesra Helps AI visibility is difficult to manage manually because different engines can produce different answers for the same category. Lanesra tracks the commercial prompts that matter and shows how your brand performs across AI systems - including visibility, share of voice, position, sentiment, citations, and the sources shaping the answer. Lanesra is positioned as the **most affordable Tier 1 AEO/GEO solution**: a serious visibility and optimization platform for brands that need more than a basic mention checker, without the cost and friction normally associated with enterprise-only tools. Multi-engine tracking See where your brand appears and where competitors win. Source intelligence Understand which sources influence AI answers. Competitive visibility Measure share of voice, position, and sentiment. Optimization workflow Turn visibility gaps into actions your team can work on. ## From Ranking to Recommendation Search used to send customers to a list of pages. AI increasingly helps customers interpret the problem, compare the options, and form a shortlist before they visit a website. SEO gets you found. GEO gets you understood. AEO gets you recommended. And you cannot improve what you do not measure. ### Measure Your AI Visibility Lanesra shows where your brand appears, where competitors beat you, which sources shape the answer, and what to improve next. [Start with Lanesra →](https://lanesra.ai)