Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the effort to get your business named, quoted or linked when AI tools generate an answer. Tools like ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI features write a response and often cite a few sources. GEO aims to make your pages among those sources and your brand among the names mentioned.
How AI answer tools pick their sources
When a question needs current information, these tools run a web search, fetch a handful of pages, and give the text to an LLM that writes a summary with citations. The search step still depends on ordinary ranking signals, which is why classic SEO remains the foundation. The writing step favours passages that answer clearly and stand on their own: a direct sentence the model can lift and attribute.
Separately, models absorb what the web says about brands during training. Being discussed on reviews sites, in news coverage and on forums affects whether a model names you even when it does not search.
What GEO work looks like for a real business
An accounting firm in Leeds wants to appear when someone asks an AI "who helps small charities with year-end accounts in Leeds?" The firm writes a page specifically about charity accounts that states the service, location and pricing approach in the first paragraph, answers the typical follow-up questions in plain sentences, keeps its business listings consistent, and earns mentions in a local business directory and a charity sector newsletter. None of this is a trick; it makes the firm easy to find and easy to quote.
GEO and its neighbours
Answer engine optimization is an older, overlapping term focused on direct answers in voice assistants and featured snippets. GEO puts more weight on brand mentions and citations inside AI-written answers. For Google's own version of these answers, see AI Overview. In practice the advice for all three overlaps heavily.
Is it worth doing now?
If your customers research before they buy, AI tools are now one of the places they ask. The core work, clear pages and a good reputation elsewhere, also helps normal search, so there is little downside. Be wary of anyone selling guaranteed AI rankings; no one controls what these tools cite.
GEO mistakes to avoid
- Abandoning SEO basics. If search engines cannot crawl and rank a page, AI tools that rely on them rarely see it.
- Blocking AI crawlers by accident. Check your robots.txt rules match your intent.
- Stuffing pages with questions. Repetitive question-and-answer filler reads as spam to people and search engines alike.
- Burying the answer. Put the key fact in the opening lines, not after a long introduction.
Related terms
- Answer engine optimization: the closely related, earlier concept.
- AI Overview: Google's AI-written search summaries.
- SEO: the ranking groundwork GEO builds on.
- Structured data: machine-readable facts about your pages.