What is GEO?

Where does the term come from?

“Generative engines” are services that write an answer instead of showing a list of links. That covers ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, but also Google AI Overviews at the top of search results. The term GEO spread in 2023, when researchers began studying which kinds of content generative answers draw on most.

You will also see other names for the same thing: AEO (answer engine optimization), LLMO (LLM optimization) or simply AI SEO. The result you are after is what we call AI visibility: how often and how your company is named in the answers.

What does GEO cover?

• Technical access: AI crawlers are allowed to read your pages, and the content is in the HTML, so it can be fetched without JavaScript.
• Structured data: schema.org markup, Google Business Profiles and product feeds that state exactly what you offer, where and at what price.
• Answer pages: content that answers your customers’ questions directly and concretely in the first sentences.
• Mentions elsewhere: reviews, trade media, industry directories and forums. AI assistants gather information from many sources and recommend the companies those sources agree on.
• Consistency: the same facts about you everywhere, so models don’t guess or confuse you with someone else.

How is GEO different from SEO?

GEO builds on SEO. Many AI assistants search Google’s or Bing’s index, so pages that can’t be found there are rarely used in answers. The difference is in the goal and how you measure it.

• In SEO you compete for a position among ten links. An AI answer typically names three to five companies, and the rest are invisible.
• In SEO your own website counts most. In GEO, what others write about you carries a lot of weight.
• In SEO you track keyword rankings. In GEO you measure how often you are named and recommended on a fixed set of customer questions.

How do you measure GEO?

There is no ranking to track. Instead, pick 20–30 questions your customers realistically ask and test them every month in the assistants your customers use. Note whether you are named, whether you are recommended, and which competitors appear next to you. AI answers vary from one time to the next, so the trend over months is what counts.

Where should you start?

Start by seeing what AI says about you today. If the technical basics aren’t in place, fix them first, because that helps both SEO and GEO. After that, answer pages, structured data and mentions are usually what move the most.