Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): What Works

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and name in their answers. Is it real, or a new label for SEO? Here is the short verdict.

TL;DR: Generative engine optimization (GEO) means making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and name in their answers. Most of it is good SEO and clear information. A few things are new: being mentioned on sources AI trusts, and checking what the assistants actually say about you. Nobody can guarantee a placement.

What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?

A generative engine is a search tool that writes an answer instead of listing ten links. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode all work this way. They read several sources and then summarize them.

GEO is the practice of improving how often, and how well, your content shows up in those answers. You will also see it called answer engine optimization (AEO), AI SEO, ChatGPT SEO or AI search engine optimization. Wikipedia lists AEO and AI SEO among the names. Different names, mostly the same job. We use GEO and AEO on our own AI search page for that reason.

The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, later presented at the KDD 2024 conference. The authors built a benchmark of 10,000 queries and tested nine ways of rewriting a page to see how much of an AI answer it earned. In their setup, adding quotations, statistics and cited sources helped most, with gains of up to 40 percent relative to the unchanged page. Keyword stuffing offered little to no improvement.

Read that with care. The main tests used a simulated engine built on one language model, and the gains are relative, not absolute. The paper shows which kinds of edits can matter. It does not show what will happen to your business in ChatGPT.

How do AI answers pick what to mention?

Each assistant finds pages first and writes second. The details differ, and the vendors publish only part of them. Here is what their own documentation says.

• Google. To be shown as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Google’s newer AI optimization guide adds that a site must also be included in Search generative AI features in Search Console. Include is the default. Exclude keeps a site’s links and content out of those features.
• ChatGPT. OpenAI uses a crawler called OAI-SearchBot to surface sites in ChatGPT’s search features. Sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. A separate bot, GPTBot, is about training, and ChatGPT-User fetches pages when a person asks it to.
• Perplexity. PerplexityBot is designed to surface and link websites in Perplexity’s search results. Perplexity-User visits pages when a person asks a question.

Two things follow. First, if you block an assistant’s search crawler, expect to drop out of its search answers. OpenAI says so directly for OAI-SearchBot, and Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot to appear in its search results. Second, getting a page found is only the entry ticket. Which sources an assistant names in the final answer is its own call, and none of these companies publish a ranking formula.

GEO vs SEO: what changes and what does not

Google’s own guidance is blunt: “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.” Forrester analyst Nikhil Lai wrote in November 2025 that AEO is “significantly, but not fundamentally, different from SEO,” and that some vendors “tend to exaggerate SEO and AEO’s differences.”

We agree with both. The foundations are the same. The checking and the off-site work are where the new effort goes.

On the unproven row, Google states that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown to appear in Google Search. It also says there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces. That covers Google only. The OpenAI and Perplexity crawler pages we read do not ask site owners for such files either.

What to do first

Work down this list in order. Each item says how sure we are, and why.

1. Let the crawlers in. Check that your pages are indexable and that your robots.txt does not block the bots you want. Confidence: documented. Google requires indexing, plus inclusion in the Search generative AI setting in Search Console, which is on by default. OpenAI says sites that opt out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, and that a robots.txt change can take about 24 hours to take effect.
2. Say who you are and what you do, plainly, on one page. Name, service, place, who it is for. An assistant cannot repeat what you never said. Confidence: our judgment. Google’s AI features page also lists keeping Merchant Center and Business Profile information up to date.
3. Answer real customer questions in self-contained paragraphs. Put the answer first, then the detail. Use the questions customers actually ask you. Confidence: our judgment. The research paper’s best edits (quotations, statistics, cited sources) point to specific, checkable writing, within the limits above.
4. Get mentioned where people look. Reviews, directories, local press, communities and partner sites describe you in words you do not control. Confidence: partly documented. Google says its AI features can show what is said about products and services across the web, but that chasing inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it might seem. Nobody publishes how much a mention counts.
5. Keep your facts the same everywhere. Name, services, locations and hours should match across your site and every profile. If sources disagree, an assistant has nothing solid to repeat. Confidence: our judgment.
6. Keep pages current. Old prices, closed offices and retired services are easy to repeat wrongly. Confidence: our judgment.

If you run a local business

If you run a local service business, start with your website and your Google Business Profile. Our local SEO page explains how we approach that.

Check what AI assistants say about you

You do not need a paid tool to see where you stand. You need a spreadsheet and ten real questions.

1. Write ten questions a customer would type or say when looking for what you sell. Use their words, not yours. Include a few that do not contain your name.
2. Run each question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and a Google search that shows an AI Overview. Use a logged-out or private window where you can, so your history does not shape the answer.
3. For each answer, note who is named and which sources are cited or linked.
4. Look for patterns. Which competitors show up again and again? Which sites do the assistants lean on? Where is your business missing, or described wrongly?

Use a table like this one.

Answers vary from one run to the next and between people, so treat one run as a sample. Run it again next month and compare. The point is the pattern: which fix would change most of the rows. For Google, Search Console has a free Generative AI performance report that shows impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode by page, country and device. Google says the report reached all websites on 31 August 2026. If you do not see it, your site may not have enough impressions in AI features yet. Use it alongside the manual check.

What is hype, or unproven

• Keyword stuffing. In the research paper above, it offered little to no improvement, and on one measure it scored below the unchanged page.
• Special files and markup for AI. Google says you do not need them, and that files like llms.txt neither help nor harm visibility in Google Search. Ordinary structured data is still worth keeping for rich results. The OpenAI and Perplexity crawler pages we read do not ask site owners for such files either.
• Bought or fake mentions. Google says seeking inauthentic mentions across the web is not as helpful as it might seem.
• Guaranteed placement. No assistant publishes a way to buy or force a spot in an organic answer. Our own AI search page says in plain words that we do not guarantee placement. Be wary of anyone who does.
• Exact formulas. If someone tells you precisely how many mentions, links or words earn a citation, ask for the method. The vendors have not published one.

GEO services and agencies: do you need one?

Maybe not. If your site is indexable, your facts are consistent and you can run the check above, you can do much of this yourself. The list in this post is not secret.

An agency or consultant can help when you are short on time. It also helps when the check shows you are missing or described wrongly and you do not know why, or when the fix touches your site, your profiles and outside sources at once.

When you talk to a GEO agency or shop for GEO services, watch for these:

• Guaranteed citations or placements. Nobody controls the answer.
• A “proprietary score” with no method. If they cannot explain how it is calculated, it is a number, not a finding.
• A report with no fixes. A good diagnosis names what is wrong, what to fix first, and why. You should be able to check each finding yourself.
• Selling the fix before looking. The first step should be a look at your situation.

That is how we work at WebThree. Our AI search optimization service starts with a free diagnosis you keep whether or not you hire us. If the diagnosis shows you do not need us, we will say so.

Request my free diagnosis

If you would rather start with a general website and search review, you can also request a free site diagnosis.

FAQ

Is GEO better than SEO?

They are not rivals. Google says optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO, so the base work is the same. GEO adds attention to being named in answers and to what other sites say about you. Start with sound SEO, then add the checks above.

Is SEO dead now that AI answers exist?

No. Google says a page must be indexed and eligible for Search to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and the other assistants rely on crawlers too. The work that gets you found is still needed. It now has one more place to be seen.

What is the difference between GEO and AEO?

Mostly the label. AEO means answer engine optimization and GEO means generative engine optimization. Both describe improving how AI answers present your business, and the Wikipedia page for GEO lists them as synonyms. Our own AI search page uses them interchangeably. Pick one label, then judge any provider by what they actually do, not the name.

Can I pay to be included in ChatGPT answers?

We found no documented way to pay for a place in an organic answer. OpenAI does show ads in ChatGPT, but it says they are labeled and kept separate from the organic answer. Treat any offer of a guaranteed mention as a red flag, and ask to see the documentation.