What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?

GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of making a business easier for AI answer engines to find, understand and cite: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot. It stands on the same base as SEO (pages a crawler can reach, content that answers a real question) and adds a few habits of its own: letting the right bots in, stating your facts the same way everywhere, and measuring with repeated questions instead of rankings.

For the research in more depth and for what a citation is worth, read our article on visibility in search and AI answers.

Where the term comes from

The name comes from a research paper. In November 2023, Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues published GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, later accepted at KDD 2024, an ACM conference on data mining. They used "generative engines" for systems that search, gather sources and write an answer, and proposed GEO as a way for content creators to improve their visibility inside those answers.

Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features names GEO and AEO (answer engine optimization) as terms for work aimed at visibility in AI search, then says that, from Google's side, this work is still SEO. Both hold: the foundations are shared, a few details are new.

How AI answer engines choose their sources

No company publishes its full selection logic, but the documentation describes one broad pattern: the engine searches an index, retrieves pages that look relevant, writes an answer and links some of the pages it used.

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Both can run several related searches across subtopics (Google calls this query fan-out) and show a wider set of links than a classic results page. To be one of those links, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet; Google says there are no additional technical requirements. AI Overviews appear only when Google judges that they add something to the normal results.
• ChatGPT search. OpenAI runs separate crawlers for separate jobs. OAI-SearchBot finds pages for ChatGPT's search features, and a site that blocks it is not shown in ChatGPT search answers, although it can still appear as a navigational link. GPTBot collects content for training models, and the two settings are independent.
• Perplexity. PerplexityBot surfaces and links websites in Perplexity's search results, and Perplexity says it is not used to collect content for training foundation models. Its second agent, Perplexity-User, fetches pages on a person's request and generally ignores robots.txt.
• Microsoft Copilot. Bing's AI Performance report counts citations across Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing and some partner services. Microsoft does not explain how sources are picked, but says accurate, up-to-date content matters, and that Bing respects robots.txt.

The common thread: an engine can cite only a page its crawler may read and its index has kept, and among those, only a passage that answers the question well enough to quote.

GEO and SEO: what they share and where they differ

Most of the work overlaps. Crawlable pages, a sound technical setup, clear headings, internal links and content that answers a real question serve both. Google ties its AI features to the same ranking and quality systems as the rest of Search, so on Google a weak SEO base is also a weak GEO base.

The differences are real:

• What comes back. A search engine returns a list of pages and the reader picks one. An answer engine returns a written answer, and your business may appear in it as a cited link, as a name inside a sentence, or not at all.
• Who reads the site. SEO mostly means Googlebot and Bingbot. GEO adds OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and others, each with its own robots.txt rules and sometimes blocked by a forgotten firewall rule.
• What others say about you. An answer can describe your business in the words of a directory, a review or an article, so the facts on other sites matter alongside your own.
• How you measure. There is no stable position to track. Answers change between runs, between people and from month to month.

If your site is in Georgian, the language adds questions of its own: word forms, queries typed in Georgian or Latin letters, and translated pages. We cover them in our article on SEO in Georgian.

What a business can do in practice

None of these steps guarantees a citation. Together they remove the most common reasons an engine cannot find, read or trust your pages.

• Let the right crawlers in. Check robots.txt and any firewall or CDN rules for Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Decide separately about training crawlers and tokens such as GPTBot and Google-Extended. Google-Extended controls whether Google may use your content to train Gemini models and to ground some of its other AI products; it does not affect inclusion or ranking in Google Search. Search Console also has a control for Search generative AI features, and every site is included by default.
• State your facts once, and repeat them exactly. Your name, what you do, for whom, and how to reach you. Use the same wording on the site, in social profiles and in directory listings, so an engine finds one description instead of three competing ones.
• Add structured data that matches the page. Organization markup (name, address, logo, profiles, phone) helps Google understand who you are. Google is clear that its AI features need no special schema.org markup, so treat it as ordinary SEO hygiene that agrees with the visible page, not a GEO trick.
• Write passages that answer. Put a common question in a heading, answer it in the first sentence or two, then give the detail. Bing recommends clear headings, tables and FAQ sections; Google adds that there is no need to chop pages into tiny pieces for AI.
• Publish what only you have. Your own data, prices, process and opinions give an engine a reason to cite you rather than the tenth page saying the same thing. In the GEO study, adding citations, quotations and statistics did the most for visibility, while keyword stuffing did little, and in some tests made it worse.
• Keep listings and reviews current and real. Google's guidance on AI features asks you to keep your Business Profile and Merchant Center information current. Apply the same rule to every directory listing, and never buy reviews.
• Consider llms.txt, honestly. llms.txt is a proposal from 2024: a Markdown file, usually at the root of a site, that summarizes it and links its key pages for language models. Google says its Search ignores the file, so there it neither helps nor harms. We publish one on this site because writing it tests whether our facts are clear, not for a ranking effect.

How to measure GEO

Measure what you can observe, and keep each measure separate: visibility, visits and inquiries answer different questions.

• Repeated prompts. Write down ten to twenty questions your customers really ask and run them monthly in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot, and record the date, the engine, whether you appear, whether you are linked, and whether the description is accurate. One answer proves little; the trend over months says more.
• Search Console. Google's Generative AI performance report shows how often links to your site appeared in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It counts impressions only, and Google says it reached all sites by August 31, 2026; a site with too few such impressions may not see it yet. Clicks from these features are counted in the regular Performance report, under Web search.
• Bing Webmaster Tools. The AI Performance report, launched as a public preview in February 2026, shows citations and the grounding queries behind them. Microsoft notes that the data is a sample, not a full log.
• Your own analytics. Visits from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and similar referrers, where identifiable, and the inquiries they lead to. Ask new customers where they heard of you.

Common myths

• GEO replaces SEO. It does not. Google's AI features run on its Search systems, and a page that is not indexed cannot be a supporting link.
• The research proves 40% more traffic. The paper reports up to 40% higher visibility on its own metric: roughly, how much of a generated answer drew on a source, weighted by where it appeared. It was measured in a benchmark where a model wrote each answer from the top five search results for the query. It says nothing about traffic, rankings or sales, and the effect varied by subject.
• An llms.txt file gets you into AI answers. Google says Search ignores it. Treat promises of a citation or ranking effect with suspicion.
• Blocking AI bots only stops training. That depends on the bot. Blocking GPTBot concerns training; blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps you out of ChatGPT search answers. Check every name before you copy someone else's robots.txt.
• Someone can guarantee AI citations. Nobody outside the platforms controls them. Google warns against tools that promise ranking success or claim to use internal Google metrics, and says no third-party tool has access to its ranking or AI systems.

Where to start

Start with three steps. Check robots.txt and your firewall for the crawlers above. Write a one-paragraph description of your business and make every profile match it. Pick the questions you will run each month and run them once today, so you have a baseline. For an outside view, request a free audit. How we handle crawler access, structured data, content and AI visibility checks is on the SEO and GEO optimization service page.