What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)? GEO vs SEO and How to Do It

When a customer types "Who should I hire to build a company website in Leeds?" into ChatGPT instead of Google, they don't get ten blue links. They get a few paragraphs and, most of the time, three to five names. Whether you are one of those names is a separate question from your classic ranking. GEO is the name of that question.

This guide defines the term, explains how it differs from SEO, lists steps you can apply, and covers the part most often skipped: measurement. The technical details come from Google's, OpenAI's, Anthropic's and Perplexity's own documentation. The documents were read on 12 October 2026 and may change.

What is generative engine optimization?

GEO is short for "generative engine optimization". A generative engine is a system that responds to a question not with a list of links but with an answer it writes after reading several sources: ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude.

GEO has two goals:

• Being mentioned: your brand, product or personal name appears in the text of the answer.
• Being cited: a link to your page is shown next to or inside the answer.

The term became common with the paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, published in 2023 and presented at the KDD 2024 conference. On a benchmark they built themselves, the authors reported that changes such as adding sources, quotations and statistics to content could raise visibility in answers by up to 40 percent, but that the effect varied by topic. This is the result of an academic experiment. It does not show that the same rate will appear in every commercial product today. We add this note because the finding is often passed around the industry as if it were a guaranteed method.

GEO vs SEO vs AEO vs LLMO

The same work has been given several names. The difference between them is usually one of emphasis, not of what gets done.

The two senses in the last row are often confused. We cover each one separately in what is AI SEO.

So is GEO a separate profession from SEO? Google's answer is clear. Its guide to optimizing for generative AI search, updated in July 2026, says that from Google Search's point of view, optimizing for generative AI is optimizing for the search experience, in other words "still SEO". It also suggests you evaluate advice and services offered under the name "AEO" or "GEO" the way you would any third-party SEO advice. The AI features documentation adds that there are no additional requirements for appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode. On the Google side, then, most of GEO is SEO done well. That is what Google says about its own search products. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude work with their own crawlers and their own rules. The difference shows up in two places:

1. The unit changes. In SEO the unit is "keyword and position". In GEO it is "question, and whether you are in the answer". There is no meaningful "position number" in an answer.
2. The field gets wider. An answer draws not only on your site but on forums, comparison articles, news sites and review platforms. How your brand appears there matters as much as your own page.

How do generative engines build an answer?

The information in an answer arrives by two routes. Knowing which one is in play tells you what you can change.

1. What the model knows from training. If the model saw your brand in the text it was trained on, it "knows" you. This knowledge is old, changes slowly, and you cannot correct it directly. The way to influence it is for consistent, accurate information about your brand to exist on the web.

2. A search made at answer time. The system takes the question, searches the web, reads the pages it finds and grounds the answer in them. Source links come from this route. In its AI features documentation, Google explains that AI Overviews and AI Mode can break a question into subtopics and run multiple searches, a technique called "query fan-out". The consequence: being first for a single keyword is not enough. Your pages that cover the question's subtopics need to be findable too.

The second route is your field, because the classic rules apply there: can the page be crawled, is it indexed, does it answer the question?

Differences between platforms

Each system reaches content by a different route. The table below summarises what the providers say in their own documentation.

For the crawler names, which of them follow robots.txt, and sample rules, see the guide to AI crawlers and robots.txt. Platform-specific steps are in two separate articles: how to appear in ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews optimization.

How to do GEO: seven steps

The order matters. Content work is wasted on a site with an access problem.

1. Confirm access

Make sure the search crawlers (Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot) can get into your site. The most common problem is not a deliberate decision but an accident: a CDN with "block AI bots" switched on, a robots.txt rule written too broadly, or a security plugin. The free AI bot and llms.txt checker shows what your robots.txt file tells each crawler in a single table.

Blocking the training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended) is a separate decision and does not switch off search visibility.

2. Be indexed and open to snippets

To be shown as a link in Google's AI features, a page has to be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. A page carrying noindex or nosnippet cannot enter those answers. Google has also added a generative AI control to Search Console: a property is included in these features by default, and a site owner who wants to can opt out. If an agency or a previous team set this to "exclude", no other work will get you into Google's AI answers, so check it once. If the important part of your content only appears after JavaScript runs, don't rely on every crawler seeing it. Keep the main text in the HTML.

3. Answer the question in the first sentence

A system that writes answers takes a fragment from your page. That fragment has to make sense on its own. Open with the answer, not with a story, and give the detail afterwards.

Before (illustrative example):

In today's digital world, having an online presence matters a great deal for every business. With years of experience, we offer our customers the best service. Contact us for information about our prices.

After (illustrative example):

In 2026, a company website with a 5–10 page structure usually costs between USD 1,500 and USD 4,000. Three things set the price: the number of pages, whether the design is custom or a ready-made theme, and who enters the content. The table below shows the scope and delivery time of our three packages.

The second text answers a question (how much does a company website cost?) with a figure, with its conditions, and in a way that makes clear who is saying it. The figures are examples only.

4. Write what isn't available elsewhere

There is no reason to cite a page that rewrites what everyone else has written. Google's post on AI experiences also lists unique content written for people, not available elsewhere, as its first point. The things you have that others don't: your own price, your own measurements, the areas you serve, your delivery time, your guarantee terms, a lesson you took from a real job. State them in plain sentences, with a date and with the name of whoever wrote them.

5. Keep the structure clean

Write headings as questions or clear topics, put comparisons in tables and steps in numbered lists. Use structured data (Organization, Article, Product, LocalBusiness), but set the right expectation. Google's structured data documentation says markup helps Google understand the page; it does not guarantee appearing in a feature. Google's guide also states separately that structured data is not required for generative AI search, and there is no special "AI schema". According to the same guide, splitting content into small pieces so that AI can understand it ("chunking") is not necessary either.

6. Be present where the answers are fed from

When you put your own questions to an AI, look at which sites get cited. Most of the time it is an industry directory, a comparison article, a forum thread or a news site. Being present there with accurate information (a listing, a guest article, a real customer review, a press release) can bring results faster than rewriting your own page. Bought bulk links and fake reviews are not part of this. What harms you in classic search does not help you here either.

7. Measure, change, measure again

Without a fixed list of questions you cannot know whether GEO work is doing anything. The next section is about that.

How is GEO success measured?

There are five separate measures, and none of them stands in for another:

Being mentioned is not traffic, and traffic is not sales. Keep them on separate lines in the report. The generative AI performance report in Search Console covers only Google's own features and gives impressions by page, country, date and device. It does not tell you which question you were shown for. There is no such official report for ChatGPT, the Gemini app or Perplexity. There, measuring with a question list is the only way.

Two warnings. First, AI answers vary with the question, the date, the platform, the country, the language and whether the user is logged in. The same question can return different names five minutes later. A single screenshot is not evidence. Second, don't derive a percentage from a handful of measurements: being mentioned in two answers out of five is not "40 percent visibility".

A fillable table and the steps for measuring by hand are in how to measure AI search visibility. To try a single question right away, the free AI visibility checker asks it live to ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode. The module that does the same job every week, together with the likely range, is described on the AI visibility tracking page.

What you cannot guarantee

• llms.txt: it is a proposal, not a standard. Google's guide says Google Search does not use these files and that keeping one will "neither harm nor help" your visibility in Google Search. You are free to prepare one for other systems. No provider has made an official statement that it gets you into answers.
• Schema: it helps the page be understood. It gives no guarantee of placement.
• "Writing patterns for AI": there is no official source showing that a particular sentence length or heading format guarantees a place in answers. Clear, direct writing is good for human readers too, and that is the reason to do it.
• One-off work: models and search layers are updated often. Being mentioned today does not show you will be mentioned next month.

What comes first for whom?

• E-commerce: price, stock, shipping and returns information readable as text on product and category pages; guides that answer product comparison questions. More: SEOLOK for e-commerce sites.
• Local business: name, address, phone and opening hours identical everywhere; the directory and map listings that get cited for "best … in X" questions. More: SEOLOK for local businesses.
• B2B company: your name appearing in comparison and "alternatives to" questions; pricing, integration and security pages that are clear and current.
• Agency: a fixed question list per client, and separate lines for mentions, citations, traffic and conversions in the monthly report. More: SEOLOK for agencies.

GEO checklist

• Googlebot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot are not blocked in robots.txt
• The CDN and security layer do not stop these crawlers
• A deliberate decision has been made about the training crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended)
• Important pages are indexed and carry no noindex or nosnippet
• The generative AI control in Search Console is set to "included"
• The main text is in the HTML, not loaded only by JavaScript
• Every important page answers its question in the first paragraph
• Information specific to you, such as price, timing, area and terms, is written out and dated
• Organization and page-type structured data is in place and matches the visible content
• A list of the external sites that answers cite has been drawn up
• There is a fixed list of 20–50 questions, measured at regular intervals
• Mentions, citations, referral traffic and conversions are reported separately

Frequently asked questions

Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. Systems that search at answer time depend on indexing and crawlability, and Google writes that for its own AI features this is "still SEO". GEO is a measurement and content layer added to SEO.

Does GEO work, and how long does it take?

Nobody can honestly give you a timeframe. In systems that search at answer time, a new or corrected page can enter answers once it has been crawled. What the model knows from training changes only with a new model version. So note the date you made a change and measure the same questions over several weeks.

Should a small business do GEO?

Basics first: does the site load, is it indexed, and does it give clear answers to questions? If those are in place, writing down ten questions your customers would ask and asking them once a month is enough of a start. It does not need a large budget.

Should I work with an agency for GEO?

That is your choice. When you ask for a proposal, ask this: which questions will be measured, on which platforms, how often, and will the report show mentions and traffic separately? A promise of "guaranteed placement in ChatGPT" is not consistent with any provider's documentation.

If I add llms.txt, will I show up in AI answers?

No official source says so. The file is a format proposed to make a site easier for language models to read. Google states plainly that Search does not use this file, and no other system has announced that it uses it when generating answers.

The core of GEO does not change: a readable site, pages that answer the question, your brand being talked about in other places too, and regular measurement. The first three are good SEO anyway. The fourth is the only thing that tells you whether the work is paying off.