HR leaders build their software shortlist in ChatGPT. Is your product on it?
Agent plan at €499 excl. VAT per month per site, no long term commitment.
Harbor Hotel, three state payroll
- Regular pay$4,150.00
- Overtime$386.40
- Federal and state tax($712.35)
- Benefits($214.60)
Filings sent
ChatGPT
We're 250 people across three US states, which HRIS has payroll built in?
"We've been using Hikoo for two months to position Rezilio in resilience management. The platform stands out for how easy it is to use, and it has become a key lever for our market."
Daniel DancauseCEO, Rezilio
How does GEO for HR tech work?
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of getting your HR software recommended when an HR director or a payroll manager asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Perplexity which HRIS, payroll, ATS or scheduling tool to pick. Those questions are rarely generic. They name a headcount, a set of states or countries, a union agreement, the payroll provider already in place. On your site, that means product and integration pages AI engines read easily, plus a page for each situation your buyers describe. Off your site, it means being on the sources the category relies on, G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, HR tech advisory sites and Reddit.
The questions HR leaders type before booking a demo. Headcount and states included.
First pass
- Best performance management tool for a 1,500-employee manufacturer with mostly non-desk workers
- Best ATS for high-volume hourly hiring in retail, around 2,000 hires a year
- Workforce management software for hospitals with 12-hour nurse shifts and union rules
Head to head
- Rippling vs HiBob vs BambooHR for a 400-person company with staff in the UK and US?
- Greenhouse or Lever for a scale-up hiring 150 engineers a year?
- Compare payroll providers that run UK and US payroll in one platform
Switching tools
- Alternatives to ADP Workforce Now for a 300 employee company with hourly staff
- Workday alternatives for a 900-employee company that needs a faster rollout
- What replaces spreadsheets for annual reviews at a 400-person company?
A problem to fix
- Which HR software helps comply with the EU Pay Transparency Directive for a company with French and German entities?
- Best onboarding software for a remote-first company hiring 20 people a month
- How do we cut payroll errors across 12 locations?
The shortlist gets made without you.
The HR director filling in your form often has three names in mind already.
Your competitors wrote the page comparing you.
AI engines lean heavily on the comparison pages HR vendors publish about each other. When the page putting you side by side lives on a competitor's site, theirs is the version the HR director reads first.
The question names three states. Your site names none.
HR buyers put their states and their current payroll provider in the question. Without a page covering that case on your site, the AI recommends the vendor who wrote one.
Your blog cannibalizes itself.
Payroll guides and compliance explainers pile up fast on an HR vendor blog, hundreds of articles chasing the same queries. Until you know which ones AI engines read, every new post adds noise.
A won account grows with the customer's headcount. Your per-employee price does the rest.
An HR director who arrives from an AI answer has usually compared vendors already, often on their exact case. And a won account keeps growing after signature. The per-employee subscription follows headcount, then every module added. Being named in the answer can be enough to get onto a shortlist where nobody expected you.
69%of B2B software buyers chose a different vendor than planned because it was part of the chatbot's recommendation.
Stay cautious. One or two a month on a well defined segment.
The rate you see on mid-market deals.
Your monthly price per employee, times a typical customer's headcount, times 12.
These are your assumptions, adjust them. Hikoo then measures what actually comes in.
€48,000per year
8.0x the yearly price of the Agent plan
1 sale a year from AI covers the Agent plan (€499 excl. VAT per month).
From the payroll page to the Capterra listing.
Product pages, comparisons, third party sources and reporting, every week.
01
Your supported states shouldn't live in a PDF.
Hikoo reads your payroll, tax filing, integration, pricing and security pages the way ChatGPT does. The same problems keep coming up. A per-employee price behind a form, supported states in a PDF, benefits partners shown only as logos, no structured data. Each fix comes back written and ready to publish.
- Payroll and tax filing
- Integrations
- Pricing page
- Security and GDPR
- Structured data
- /payroll/multi-stateSupported states sit in a PDF AI engines skipFixed
- /pricingPer-employee price appears only after the formTo review
- /integrations/benefitsBenefits partners appear as logos onlyIn progress
- /securitySOC 2 is there, the hosting region isn'tDetected
02
One page for California payroll, another for New York.
On the tracked questions, Hikoo looks for the ones where you have nothing to show. Most often that means a page per state or headcount band, and a comparison against each competitor. Hikoo writes them, then refreshes the guides that age, like payroll compliance or the EU Pay Transparency Directive. When two articles chase the same query, it tells you.
- Segment pages
- Comparisons
- Alternatives
- Compliance guides
- Cannibalization
- HRIS for multi-state employersTracked every day, nothing on your sitePublished
- Your HRIS vs Competitor AChatGPT cites the competitor's versionTo review
- EU pay transparency, what HR teams needComes up for companies with French and German entitiesIn progress
- Payroll compliance guide, 2024Three articles target the same queryUpdated
03
Your name on the lists ChatGPT relies on.
In HR software, AI engines draw on G2, Capterra, TrustRadius, HR tech advisory sites and Reddit threads. Hikoo looks for the pages where your competitors appear and you don't. It finds who runs each one and writes them something genuinely useful, follow up included.
- G2
- Capterra
- TrustRadius
- HR tech advisors
- Capterra, payroll software category5 vendors listed, you're not one of themIn progress
- "Best HRIS for mid-size companies" guideAuthor identified, message ready for reviewTo review
- G2, product profileIntegrations and pricing were missingFixed
- Reddit thread, r/humanresourcesUseful reply suggestedSent
04
Your share of voice, segment by segment.
Hikoo compares your share of voice with your competitors', branded and non-branded, by question cluster and by market. Every gain is traced back to the page or message behind it. Publishing a benchmark report? You can follow, month after month, whether AI answers pick up its headline figure.
- Share of voice
- Branded and non-branded
- By cluster
- By market
- AI visits
- You27%
- Competitor A38%
- Competitor B22%
- Competitor C13%
How it runs
- 1Hikoo reads your site and your competitors, then keeps your buyers' questions
- 2The AIs are asked these questions every day
- 3You see who gets cited, where, and thanks to which sources
- 4The fronts fix, publish and win the missing citations
On your dashboard
- Share of voice by cluster, branded and non-branded
- Your rank against each competing vendor
- Sources cited, engine by engine
- Visits from AI answers, by market
Work delivered
- Page fixes, ready to publish
- Segment pages and comparisons
- Messages to review sites and HR media
- A summary of the week
What goes through you
You choose what goes out without you and what waits for your go-ahead, page by page, message by message. Anything about payroll or data protection can go through your product team first.
A realistic timeline
Citation gains usually take 4 to 8 weeks to settle, the time AI engines need to read your pages again. On a segment where many vendors already publish, it takes longer.
Objections we hear from HR tech vendors
Another question? Write to us
It starts from their work. AI engines read the pages Google and Bing index, so your SEO stays the foundation. GEO looks at something else. On each HR buyer question, are you in the answer, and which comparison pages or third party sources tip the AI toward a competitor? Hikoo is happy to work alongside your agency.
On "best HRIS", space is expensive. But your buyers rarely ask it that way. They give their headcount, their states, their industry, their payroll setup, and those questions can be won. Hikoo shows which ones you lose and which sources AI engines cite to answer them. Review sites are still where buyers go to check their pick. So keep G2 and Capterra, and add the comparison pages you're missing.
Partly. Visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot show up in Hikoo page by page, along with your share of voice, branded and non-branded. Many HR buyers never click, though. They remember a name and search for it later. A "Where did you hear about us?" field on the demo form catches those.
With the questions. Hikoo maps each tracked question to the pages AI engines actually read and flags the ones competing for the same query. You then know which articles to merge and which to rewrite. On the Agent plan, Hikoo handles it every week, from page fixes to messages to sources, and you decide what waits for your approval.
Yes. You add the questions where that figure should come up, and Hikoo asks them every day, keeping the answers and their sources. Month after month, you see whether it gets picked up, by which engine, and thanks to which page.
Not on Monday. Page fixes ship in week one, but citation gains typically need 4 to 8 weeks, while AI engines come back to your pages. On a crowded segment it takes longer, and no timeline is guaranteed.
The Agent plan is €499 excl. VAT per month per site, with no long term commitment. That's the plan where Hikoo does the work every week. Monitoring at €69 and Growth at €179 measure and recommend, and both come with a 7 day free trial. Several sites or countries get a custom offer.