What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimisation Explained

GEO, or generative engine optimisation, is the work of making your brand easy for AI systems to find, understand, trust and cite when they write an answer. Those systems include ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Microsoft Copilot. SEO earns a page its position in a list of links. GEO earns your business a place inside the answer itself, as a recommendation or a cited source.

If you’ve searched for something you know well lately, maybe your own service, you’ve probably noticed the change. Ofcom’s 2025 Online Nation research found about 30% of UK searches now show an AI overview, and more than half of adults say they see those summaries often. Below we explain how generative engines choose their sources and what the work involves. It’s the approach our GEO agency team uses with clients, but you can follow it without one.

What does GEO stand for, and where did the term come from?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation (generative engine optimization in US spelling). The term comes from a research paper, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, by a team that included researchers from Princeton University and IIT Delhi. It was first published in November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference.

The paper’s interesting bit isn’t the name. It’s what the researchers found when they rewrote web pages in different ways and measured how often a generative engine used them. According to the full paper, the strongest methods were adding citations to sources, adding quotations and adding statistics, which lifted visibility by 30 to 40% on their main measure. Keyword stuffing did slightly worse than leaving the page alone. And pages that ranked lower in normal search gained the most: citing sources lifted visibility for fifth-ranked pages by 115%.

These were controlled tests on the researchers’ own benchmark, not a promise of what ChatGPT will do with your website next Tuesday, and AI search has moved on since 2023. The direction has held up, though: specific, evidenced writing gets used, and repetition doesn’t.

In marketing, GEO now means a broader programme than the paper’s on-page tests, taking in technical SEO, entity work, digital PR and AI visibility tracking. Our AI search glossary defines the jargon.

How does GEO work?

GEO works by improving the sources an AI system retrieves and trusts when it builds an answer. Most AI search tools don’t answer purely from memory. They run searches against an index, pull back relevant pages, then write a response from what they found, often with links to the pages they used.

Google is fairly open about this. Its guidance on AI features says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use “query fan-out”, issuing multiple related searches across subtopics and data sources to develop a response. One broad question from a user can trigger several narrower searches behind the scenes. A site that covers a topic properly, with clear links between related pages, has more chances to be picked up by one of them.

The other platforms work in a similar way, through their own crawlers:

• ChatGPT uses OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI says that to make a site eligible for ChatGPT search, you should allow OAI-SearchBot to crawl it, and adds plainly that placement is not guaranteed.
• Perplexity uses PerplexityBot, which it describes as built to surface and link websites in its search results, not to train models.
• Claude uses Claude-SearchBot, and Anthropic warns that blocking it may reduce your site’s visibility in its search results.
• Microsoft Copilot draws on Bing. Since February 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools has shown how often your pages are cited in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries.

So GEO starts somewhere unglamorous: can these systems reach your pages at all?

What does “showing up” in an AI answer actually mean?

A brand can appear in a generated answer in several ways, and they aren’t worth the same:

• Named as a recommended provider, or in a shortlist against competitors
• Cited as the source of a fact, with or without a link
• Mentioned in passing, with no link
• Described inaccurately, which is worse than not appearing
• Left out entirely, even though it ranks well in normal search

GEO aims to move you up that list and keep the description accurate. A linked citation sends visits; an unlinked recommendation can still send someone to Google to search for your name.

Why does GEO matter now?

GEO matters because a large and growing share of research now happens inside AI answers, and fewer people click through to websites when an answer is on screen. ChatGPT reached 900 million weekly active users in February 2026. Google’s AI Mode, which arrived in the UK in July 2025, passed 1 billion monthly active users, according to Sundar Pichai’s July 2026 earnings remarks.

The click data is the uncomfortable part. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults and found that people who saw a Google AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when there was no summary. Ahrefs’ 2026 rerun of its click-through study found AI Overviews cut the click-through rate for the top-ranking page by 58%.

What hasn’t changed is how people decide. They still compare options and want to trust whoever they buy from. AI has changed the route to that information. A buyer who once opened six tabs now reads one summary, and that summary shapes which two or three brands feel credible before anyone visits a website. If you’re not in it, you’ve lost the first impression without knowing there was one.

What are the foundations of GEO?

GEO rests on six foundations, set out below. Skip the first one and the other five barely matter.

1. Strong SEO foundations

Generative engines can only use pages they can crawl and index. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page needs to be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. That’s why GEO sits on top of SEO rather than replacing it, which we cover properly in SEO vs GEO.

Check the less obvious blockers too. In July 2025, Cloudflare moved to block AI crawlers by default unless they pay for content, so a site can be shut out of AI search by a CDN setting nobody on the marketing team has seen.

2. A clear, consistent entity

An entity is a recognisable thing: a person, organisation, product, service, place or concept. AI systems build a picture of your business from every source that mentions it, and contradictions blur that picture.

Say a Liverpool law firm calls itself a “legal partner” on its website, a “claims specialist” on LinkedIn and uses an old trading name on directory listings. A model trying to answer “who handles police misconduct claims in Liverpool?” has three half-matching descriptions to reconcile. The firm that describes itself the same way everywhere, with stable service names, named solicitors and an unambiguous address, is simply easier to recommend.

Focus helps too. A business that explains five services in depth is easier to understand than one that lists forty in a line each.

3. Content worth citing

Generic copy gives a model nothing to quote. Citable content contains something specific: a clear definition, original data, a worked example or an expert view. That’s what the GEO paper found too.

Pages that get used tend to have:

• A direct answer in the first couple of sentences under each heading
• Evidence, with links to where it came from
• A named author with relevant experience, and a visible updated date
• Tables for comparisons, because they’re easy to lift accurately
• Honest limitations, such as who a service isn’t right for

Our guide to answer engine optimisation goes deeper on writing passages that work as standalone answers.

4. Independent corroboration

AI systems weigh what you say about yourself against what others say about you. Reviews, trade press, professional directories, industry bodies, partners and local news all count as evidence.

The data backs this up. In an Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions had the strongest correlation with appearing in AI Overviews, at 0.664, while backlinks scored 0.218. Ahrefs is clear that correlation isn’t causation, but it’s a strong hint that digital PR and reputation work belong inside a GEO plan rather than off to one side.

5. Structured data that matches the page

Schema markup and clean, semantic HTML help machines understand what a page is about: the organisation, its services, authors, locations and articles. It should be accurate and should describe what’s visible on the page. Google’s own advice is to make sure everything in your markup is also visible on the page.

Be wary of anyone selling a magic file. Google says you don’t need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema to appear in its AI features. The llms.txt file, which you’ll hear about a lot, is a proposal for a standard published by Jeremy Howard in 2024. It’s harmless to add, but it isn’t a shortcut.

6. Measurement across platforms

The same question produces different answers in ChatGPT, Google, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Copilot, and the answer can change from one week to the next. GEO has to be measured across a fixed set of prompts, using the same wording, location and timing each time, so changes mean something.

A useful report tracks mentions, citations, accuracy, which competitors appear alongside you and the enquiries that follow. Bing’s AI Performance report is free and shows Copilot citations by page. Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode traffic inside the normal Web data in Search Console, so you can’t separate it there yet.

What does GEO look like in practice?

In practice, GEO is slow, cumulative work on top of a site that already earns trust. Our work with HNK Solicitors is a good example. When we started tracking the firm’s AI citations in January 2026, it was cited in 38 AI responses. By August 2026 that figure was 163, according to Ahrefs, including 68 Google AI Overviews and 37 ChatGPT citations. Asked for the best CICA solicitors in Liverpool, ChatGPT returned HNK as a recommended option.

The honest context matters more than the headline. That growth came on top of years of SEO and content work, AI search volumes are still small, and attribution is imperfect. We’d call it evidence of traction rather than a mature channel, and anyone promising more certainty than that is guessing.

How is GEO different from AEO and AI SEO?

GEO is about how generative engines describe, cite and recommend your brand across complex answers. The neighbouring terms overlap with it, but they aren’t the same thing.

Answer engine optimisation (AEO) focuses on being the clear, extractable answer to one specific question. An AEO passage might answer “How long does a commercial solar installation take?” GEO asks the bigger question: when someone asks an assistant which installer to use in the North West, is your company recognised, trusted and recommended? The two support each other, because good direct answers are what generative engines like to cite. Our AEO explainer covers it in detail.

AI SEO is the umbrella term. It covers SEO foundations, AEO and GEO together, measured across both normal search and AI answers. If you want the wider view, read what AI SEO is and how the pieces fit.

What does GEO work involve, week to week?

A GEO programme usually runs in four strands at the same time:

• Audit and strategy. Benchmark the prompts that matter commercially, record which sources get cited for them and check crawler access.
• On-site work. Strengthen service pages, internal links, schema and author details, and fix outdated or conflicting information.
• Off-site authority. Earn genuine mentions through digital PR, expert commentary, original data and review management.
• Reporting and testing. Log every change, re-run the prompt set on a schedule and tie visibility to leads where the data allows.

For the tactics most agencies skip, such as auditing which pages AI systems already cite for your competitors, see our piece on GEO tactics agencies miss.

Which businesses benefit most from GEO?

GEO pays off most where buyers research, compare and look for reassurance before they commit. That’s because those are exactly the questions people now put to AI assistants: “Which accountant in Leeds is good with contractors?” rather than “accountant Leeds”.

Sectors where we see the most to gain:

• Law, accountancy and other professional services
• Healthcare and regulated services, where trust signals matter most
• B2B and SaaS companies with long buying journeys
• Education, travel and financial services
• Home improvement and property
• Ecommerce categories where shoppers choose between similar products

If customers buy on impulse or habit, GEO matters less. A takeaway in Bootle needs a good Google Business Profile far more than a prompt-tracking programme.

What are the most common GEO mistakes?

The most common mistakes come from treating GEO as a trick rather than a reputation built from evidence.

Treating GEO as keyword stuffing

Generative systems work with meaning and evidence, not repeated phrases. In the Princeton and IIT Delhi tests, keyword stuffing performed slightly worse than doing nothing at all.

Publishing AI-written content at scale without review

Volume without expertise produces factual errors, near-duplicate pages and a muddier brand. Google’s spam policies define scaled content abuse as mass-producing unoriginal pages to manipulate rankings, however they’re made. AI can help with research and drafting, but someone accountable has to check and stand behind what’s published.

Ignoring off-site evidence

If the only place that says you’re the best in your field is your own homepage, an AI system has little reason to repeat it.

Judging GEO on one screenshot

One answer from one platform on one afternoon isn’t a trend. Measure a consistent prompt set, across platforms, over months.

Abandoning traditional SEO

Rankings and crawlable, helpful content still feed AI answers directly. GEO should extend your organic programme, not compete with it for budget.

How do you get started with GEO?

Start with a visibility audit built around the questions that drive revenue. Ask ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot the ten questions a buyer asks before contacting someone like you. Note who gets recommended, which sources are cited and whether what’s said about you is right.

Then work through this checklist:

1. Can AI crawlers reach your main pages, including through your CDN and security plugins?
2. Are your key pages indexed properly in Google and Bing?
3. Does your business description match across your website, profiles and listings?
4. Does every priority service have its own clear, substantial page?
5. Do important pages open with a direct answer and back it up with evidence?
6. Can readers see who wrote each piece of content and why they’re qualified?
7. Does your structured data match what’s visible on the page?
8. Do several independent sources confirm your main claims?
9. Are you tracking AI mentions and citations on a schedule?
10. Can you see AI referral visits and the enquiries they lead to?

Most businesses find three or four “no” answers. Fixing those is the first quarter’s work. Our complete guide to AI SEO and GEO sets out a 90-day plan for doing exactly that.

FAQs

What does GEO stand for?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It means improving how often, and how accurately, AI systems such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity mention, cite and recommend your brand in the answers they generate.

Is GEO the same as AI SEO?

Not quite. GEO focuses on generative engines and how they represent your brand. AI SEO is the broader umbrella that combines SEO foundations, answer engine optimisation and GEO, measured across normal search results and AI answers together.

Does GEO replace SEO?

No. AI search tools retrieve pages from search indexes, so crawlability, indexing, content quality and authority still come first. GEO adds a new goal on top: being cited and recommended inside the answer, not only ranked beneath it.

How is GEO measured?

Across a fixed set of prompts on several platforms, tracked over time. Useful measures include mention rate, citations, accuracy, share of voice against named competitors, AI referral traffic and the enquiries those visits produce.

How long does GEO take to work?

Fixes such as unblocking crawlers can take effect within weeks, once pages are recrawled. Entity and authority work takes months, because it depends on other sites mentioning you. Treat early citation gains as encouraging signals, not proof of a finished job.

Can anyone guarantee a mention in ChatGPT?

No. AI platforms decide what to include, and their answers vary by wording, location and time. OpenAI itself says placement in ChatGPT search isn’t guaranteed. An honest GEO programme improves your odds and measures them; it doesn’t promise a result.