Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of making your brand show up in answers written by AI assistants: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. When someone asks one of them “what's the best CRM for a small agency?”, the answer names a handful of products. GEO is about being one of them, being described accurately, and being linked to.
How AI answers are put together
Most assistants now combine two things. The first is what the model learned during training. The second is live retrieval: the assistant runs web searches, reads a few pages and writes an answer from them, often citing those pages. For commercial questions (“best”, “alternatives to”, “vs”), retrieval usually dominates, because the model needs current prices, features and reviews.
That has a practical consequence. If the pages an assistant retrieves for your category don't mention you, or describe you inaccurately, the answer is unlikely to recommend you, however good your product is.
How GEO differs from SEO
| Search engine optimization | Generative engine optimization | |
|---|---|---|
| Result | A ranked list of links | One written answer naming a few brands |
| Success | Ranking position and clicks | Being mentioned, how early, and in what tone |
| Stability | Fairly stable day to day | Varies from one run of the same question to the next |
| Where influence comes from | Your pages and links to them | The pages the assistant retrieves, which are often other sites |
| Measurement | Rank trackers | Repeated sampling across engines |
GEO doesn't replace SEO. Assistants that search the web often retrieve pages that rank well, so strong SEO helps. But ranking alone isn't enough: a page can rank and still not be the one an assistant quotes, and the pages it quotes are frequently reviews, comparisons and forum threads you don't own.
What tends to help
- Be present where assistants look. Find the sites cited for your category's questions and make sure they cover you accurately: review sites, comparison articles, community discussions and industry publications.
- Say clearly what you are and who you're for. Pages that state your category, use cases, pricing and differences from alternatives in plain language are easier for an assistant to summarize correctly.
- Keep facts consistent. Conflicting prices or feature lists across your site and third-party pages make it harder for an answer to describe you confidently.
- Answer the questions buyers actually ask. “Best X for Y”, “X vs Y” and “alternatives to X” pages match how people phrase questions to assistants.
- Don't block the crawlers you want to be read by. Check that your robots.txt and security settings allow the AI search crawlers you care about.
None of these guarantees a mention. Assistants change their retrieval and models often, which is exactly why measurement matters more than any single tactic.
How to measure GEO
Because answers vary, a single manual check tells you little. Useful measurement asks the same set of real buyer questions repeatedly, on each engine, and reports:
- Visibility: the share of answers that mention you, with a confidence interval.
- Share of voice: your mentions compared with competitors'.
- Position: how early you appear when several brands are listed.
- Citations: which domains the engines cite for your questions.
- Sentiment: whether you're recommended, merely listed or criticized.
Our guide on measuring AI visibility with confidence intervals explains why the interval matters, and how to track your brand in AI answers walks through setting up tracking.
A simple way to start
- List 20 to 50 questions a buyer might ask before choosing a product like yours.
- Track them weekly on the engines your audience uses.
- Find the questions where competitors appear and you don't.
- Look at the sources cited for those questions and work on being included there.
- Re-measure, and only act on changes that are statistically significant.