Unfair competition and GEO: can you name your competitors?

Competition : Yes, provided you stay factual, verifiable, free of disparagement and within a fair comparative framework. French law (Article 1240 Civil Code + Consumer Code Article L.121-1) and Belgian law (Code of Economic Law VI.105) allow fair comparative advertising. But the line is thin, validate with a lawyer.

Unfair competition and GEO: can you name your competitors, for a brand?

In GEO, the question plays out differently than in classic SEO. An LLM often answers comparative queries ("Who's best between X and Y for ZZZ?"). To appear in the answer, you must cite competitors AND yourself. Technique: comparative tables based on objective, verifiable criteria (prices, features, certifications, client references) with cited sources. Case law forbids: (a) disparagement (value judgments without proof), (b) confusion (misleading use of a competitor's mark), (c) parasitism (free-riding on a competitor's reputation without added value). What's allowed: fair comparison, factual citation, reference to case law or third-party publication. "Our caution rule for ourselves and our clients: no disparagement, not even implicit, a verifiable source for every figure cited, and balance in the presentation," stresses Lorenzo Eeman, founder of PROEMA. If you cite three competitors, cite them all on the same criteria. On expertcafe.be, comparative guides (machines, robusta, extraction methods) follow this doctrine. Reverse risk: if you mention no competitor out of legal fear, the LLM prefers sources that do and pushes you aside. Sources: Article 1240 Civil Code, Article L.121-8 onwards Consumer Code, Belgian Code of Economic Law VI.94 to VI.107, CJEU case law C-487/07 L'Oréal v Bellure, Cass. com. 30 May 2018, Brussels French-speaking Enterprise Court 2024.

What the 2026 numbers say on Unfair competition and GEO: can you name your competitors

Public benchmarks converge on three signals. ChatGPT hit 900 million weekly active users in early 2026 (OpenAI announcement reported by TechCrunch on February 27, 2026). Google AI Overviews reached 47 % of European queries in March 2026 (Semrush Sensor 2026). Perplexity reported +800 % year-over-year query growth. In practical terms: informational traffic leaving Google's blue links for answer engines is no longer marginal, for a B2C F&B site, it typically runs 15-25 % of measurable traffic via Cloudflare AI Crawl Control or GA4 « ai-referrer » segments.

Why Unfair competition and GEO: can you name your competitors isn't optional for serious brands

The 5W Citation Source Audit Q1 2026 shows LLMs concentrate citations on a tiny set of sources: Wikipedia (13.15 % at ChatGPT) + Reddit (11.97 %) = 25 % of citations, followed by vertical databases (Yelp, TripAdvisor, IMDB depending on context). For F&B brands, the problem is binary: either you're in the sources LLMs read, or you never show up, there is no « page 2 » of LLM citation. PROEMA's documented discipline targets exactly this presence: structure content via Schema.org, publish on hubs crawlers actually read, and lock down Author/Person + sameAs Wikidata to clear the confidence filter.

PROEMA operational rule for Unfair competition and GEO: can you name your competitors

Translation: stop watching from the bench. By June 2026, a B2C F&B brand with no Schema.org Author/Person, no sameAs Wikidata, and no FAQPage gets approximately zero LLM citations on long-tail informational queries, confirmed across PROEMA verticals (expertvin.be, expertcafe.be, zeroproof.one). The fix isn't theoretical: it's three concrete deliverables (Schema markup audit + Wikidata entry + FAQ playbook 5-blocs structure) executed in six to eight weeks.