GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimisation, is the work on how visible your business and information are in answers from AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Claude, and in the AI features of Google Search. With GEO you make sure your website answers customer questions clearly, is technically easy to read and that information about your business says the same thing everywhere.
Where does the term GEO come from?
The term comes from academic research. In November 2023, Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors published the paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, which was accepted for the KDD research conference in 2024. They describe generative search engines: systems that use a language model to summarise information from several sources into a single answer. Site owners have little say over whether and how their content ends up in such an answer. In the paper, GEO is the umbrella term for methods that increase that visibility.
The researchers built a test set of questions from many subject areas and changed source texts in nine different ways. They then measured how often and how prominently each source was used in the answer. According to the paper (2024), adding citations, quotations and statistics gave the biggest gains, up to about 40 per cent more visibility in their test setup. Repeating keywords did worse than the original text.
Those results come from an experiment with its own way of measuring. Later research is more critical: the team behind C-SEO Bench (NeurIPS 2025) found that most of these rewriting techniques achieve little and that ordinary search visibility carries more weight. Taken together, the two papers point in one direction: concrete, well-supported writing works better than tricks. They do not predict what will happen to your website.
How does an AI assistant put together an answer?
An AI assistant can answer in two ways. The language model draws on what it learned during training, or the assistant first searches the web live and builds its answer on the pages it finds. With live search, source links often appear in or below the answer.
How an AI answer with live search comes together
- QuestionSomeone types a question in everyday language, often with their circumstances included.
- SearchThe system turns the question into one or more searches and fetches matching pages.
- ReadIt reads the text on those pages. Anything a search bot may not fetch does not count.
- WriteThe language model summarises what it found into a single answer.
- SourcesThe answer sometimes names businesses and sometimes links to the pages it used.
A few examples from official documentation:
- Google uses a technique called query fan-out for AI Overviews and AI Mode: the system runs several related searches across subtopics and then shows links to supporting pages. A page is only eligible if it is indexed and allowed to show a snippet.
- Perplexity says in its Help Center that it searches the web in real time and gives every answer numbered citations.
- OpenAI states in its crawler documentation that a site which blocks its search bot, OAI-SearchBot, will not appear in ChatGPT’s search answers.
You can read more about how AI assistants select sources in How do AI assistants decide which websites to mention?
What do you actually do for GEO?
GEO is mostly work on your own website and on the information about your business that people can find elsewhere. The main parts:
| Part | What you do |
|---|---|
| Customer questions | You collect the questions customers ask before they choose: on the phone, in quote requests, in your search data. |
| Answer first | You open a page with the answer to the question and add the detail after that. |
| Support | You cite sources, put a year next to figures and show who wrote or checked the text. |
| Business information | You make sure your name, address, offer and contact details match on your website, in your Google Business Profile and on other sites. |
| Technical access | You check that the search bots of Google, Bing and AI assistants may fetch your pages and that the content is in the HTML as text. |
| Measuring | You regularly ask the same AI assistants the same questions and record what they answer. |
The full list of checks is in the GEO checklist.
Take a heat pump installer in Apeldoorn who is often asked whether a heat pump works in a house built in the 1930s. A page that answers that question in its first paragraph, explains what insulation is needed and names the subsidy scheme that applies is useful to the customer and to an AI assistant putting an answer together. A general “Heat pumps” page that mainly shows brand logos is less useful to both.
The same page, first generic and then as an answer
VoorHeat pumps. We supply and install heat pumps from a range of leading brands. Sustainable, comfortable and affordable. Get in touch for more information.
NaDoes a heat pump work in a 1930s house? Yes, if the house is well enough insulated. In a 1930s house that usually means cavity wall, roof and floor insulation plus double glazing. We first measure the heat loss in each room, then tell you which heat pump fits and which subsidy scheme applies.
An AI assistant that finds a page like this can restate the answer in its own words and name the business. Whether that happens is up to the platform. This is what it can look like:
Does a heat pump work in a 1930s house in Apeldoorn?
It can, provided the house is well insulated. Houses from that period usually need cavity wall, roof and floor insulation first. Warmhuis Apeldoorn, an installation company, explains on its website that it first measures the heat loss in each room and then advises which type of heat pump fits.
Bronnen: example.com/heat-pump-1930s-house
What is GEO not?
GEO is not a hidden technique. Google says the usual SEO basics apply to its AI features and that you need no separate AI files or special markup. The GEO research points the same way: piling up keywords did not help.
GEO comes with no guarantee. Each platform decides for itself what it shows. Google even says of ordinary search results that there is no guarantee a site will be indexed (SEO Starter Guide). Anyone who promises you a mention in ChatGPT is promising something outside their control.
GEO does not replace SEO. If you are not in the search index, or you block search bots from your pages, AI assistants that search live will also find you less easily. The difference between the terms is explained in SEO, GEO and AEO: what is the difference?
How do GEO and SEO relate to each other?
SEO focuses on visibility in search engines such as Google and Bing. GEO focuses on AI answers. Most of the work is the same: a technically accessible website, pages with a clear job and content that genuinely answers a question. Among the basics, Google lists allowing crawling, offering important content as text and making sure structured data matches the visible text.
GEO adds a few things. You look at more search bots than Google’s alone, because each AI company runs its own. You pay extra attention to questions in everyday language that include circumstances and wishes. And you measure differently, because AI mentions do not appear in a search engine’s reports.
Where SEO and GEO overlap and where they differ
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Being found in the search results of Google and Bing | Being named or used as a source in AI answers |
| Where you appear | A list of links | A written answer, sometimes with source links |
| Search bots | Mainly Googlebot and Bingbot | Also the bots of OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity and others |
| Type of question | Often short keywords | Often full questions with circumstances |
| Foundation | Technically accessible, clear pages, good content | The same foundation |
| Measuring | Search Console and web analytics | Repeating fixed questions and recording the answers, plus traffic |
Why GEO is ongoing work
AI answers are not fixed. The same question can get a different answer today than next month, and ChatGPT can say something different from Perplexity. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use different models and techniques, so the links they show can differ too. Platforms release new model versions, the search results they rely on change, and your customers’ questions change with them.
Things change on your side as well: your offer, your prices, your team. Information that was correct last year can now point an AI assistant in the wrong direction. Improving a page once is a start. After that, you keep checking whether your information is current and whether new customer questions need their own answer.
How do you measure whether GEO is working?
A reliable measurement needs repetition under the same conditions. You pick a fixed set of questions that customers really ask, put them to the same AI assistants each time, and record for each round: the date, the platform, the question, whether your business was mentioned and which pages were linked. One answer at one moment tells you little.
You can also measure traffic. Since 2026, Google Search Console has had a separate report on performance in Google’s generative AI features (Google Search Central, June 2026). Visits from other AI assistants show up in your web analytics as referral traffic. There is more on this in How do you measure your visibility in AI answers?
How Outseen approaches GEO
At Outseen, SEO and GEO are part of the same service. Atlas, the research engine developed by Outseen, investigates the public code and technical signals of your website, such as robots rules, indexing instructions, canonicals and internal links. We currently check AI answers by hand, with questions, environment and time of measurement agreed in advance. Our specialists decide which work comes first. You can read more about the approach on GEO at Outseen.
What does this mean for your business?
Start with the questions customers already ask you. Pick five to ten that come up often and check whether your website answers them in the first paragraph of a page, with the conditions and exceptions included. Then check that your robots.txt does not block the search bots of Google, Bing and the AI assistants, and that your business details match on your website, in your Google Business Profile and on other sites.
After that, put the same questions to the AI assistants your customers use, for example once a month, and write down what they say. That gives you a starting point and shows whether your work changes anything. Not sure whether GEO suits your business? Read Is GEO worth it for my business?