GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

GEO is the practice of making a business likely to be named and cited in answers generated by AI systems — ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot — rather than ranked in a list of blue links.

The mechanic differs from SEO in a way that changes the work. An answer engine retrieves a handful of documents and summarises them, so being cited depends on being in the retrieved set and being quotable once there. Crucially, the retrieved set is often third-party — directories, review sites, "best X" round-ups — rather than your own website.

That makes GEO substantially an off-site discipline. An unambiguous entity, corroboration across independent sources, and presence in the round-ups models read matter more than any amount of on-page optimisation. A company nothing else on the internet mentions is hard to recommend, however good its own pages are.

The on-site half is real but secondary: direct answers in the first paragraph, specific figures rather than ranges, correct structured data, and machine-readable summaries like llms.txt.

Why it matters

A growing share of buyers now ask an AI for a recommendation instead of searching and comparing. Being absent from that answer is invisible in your analytics, because there's no click to measure.

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