Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews mention and cite your brand when they answer a buyer’s question. It builds on SEO but has a different goal: not a ranking position on a results page, but a place inside the generated answer itself.
Why GEO exists now
For twenty years the deal was simple: rank on page one, earn the click. AI answer engines change the deal. The engine reads a handful of sources, writes the answer, and shows a few citations. Most users never click through.
The numbers are now well documented. Pew Research Center recorded the real searches of 900 US adults in March 2025 and found an AI summary on 18% of them. When a summary appeared, users clicked an ordinary result on 8% of visits, against 15% when it did not. Only about 1% of visits with a summary produced a click on a link inside the summary. Ahrefs, updating its study in February 2026 across 300,000 keywords, estimated that the top-ranking page’s click-through rate was 58% lower when an AI Overview sat above it. Seer Interactive, looking at 3,119 informational queries across 42 organisations, measured organic click-through on queries with an Overview falling from 1.76% in June 2024 to 0.61% in September 2025.
Two things follow. Ranking first is worth less than it was. And being one of the sources the engine quotes is worth more, because that is where the remaining attention goes.
What GEO actually covers
GEO is not a bag of tricks. It is four kinds of work, and you can score any site on them.
1. Evidence
Engines quote specifics. “Delivered in under a week”, “44 products”, “5% VAT configured with TRN invoices” are quotable. “World-class service” is not. GEO work replaces adjectives with first-party numbers, prices, timelines, named processes and dated facts, and puts them in the first sentences of a page rather than the last.
2. Structure
Engines read structure before prose. Question-led headings, a direct answer in the opening lines, lists and tables where the content is really a list or a table, and schema markup (Organization, Service, Product, FAQPage, HowTo, Person) that mirrors the visible text. Google’s AI features guidance says there are no AI-specific technical requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet; the structure is what makes a page easy to lift once it is eligible.
3. Authority
Engines weigh what others say about you: reviews, directory listings, press, expert quotes, forum discussion. A brand that is only described on its own website is a weak source. GEO includes surfacing that third-party proof on your pages and earning more of it off them.
4. Crawlability
Each engine has its own crawler: GPTBot and OAI-SearchBot for OpenAI, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended for Gemini training, Googlebot for AI Overviews. A robots.txt written in 2019 may block some of them by accident. Pages that render only through JavaScript, or that take four seconds to load, are often skipped. GEO starts with a crawl check.
GEO is making your site the best source on its subject, in a form a machine can quote.
How GEO differs from SEO and AEO
| Discipline | Goal | Main levers | Measured by |
|---|---|---|---|
| SEO | Rank in classic results | Technical health, content, links | Positions, clicks |
| AEO | Be the lifted answer | Direct answers, FAQ schema, snippets | Snippets, People Also Ask, voice results |
| GEO | Be cited in generated answers | Evidence, structure, authority, crawlability | Citation rate across a fixed prompt set |
The foundation is shared. Nothing in GEO should hurt SEO, and most GEO fixes, front-loaded answers, schema, faster pages, help classic rankings too. We wrote a longer comparison in AEO vs SEO vs GEO.
How to measure GEO
This is where most agencies hand-wave. The honest method is a fixed prompt set. Write 30 to 60 questions your buyers would type, in the markets and languages they use. Run them across the engines on a schedule. Record for each: were you cited, how were you described, which page was quoted, which competitors appeared. Score the site on the four dimensions above. Repeat monthly with the same prompts so the score is comparable.
On a multi-city law firm we audited, the baseline came out at 25 out of 100: slogans where facts should be, no schema, nothing a model could quote. The 30/60/90-day plan that followed was mostly structure and evidence work. We describe it on the work page.
A short GEO checklist
- Confirm every important page is indexed and shows a snippet in Google.
- Open the first 60 words of each page: is the question answered, with a number?
- Turn headings into the questions buyers ask.
- Add FAQPage, Service, Product and Organization schema that matches the text.
- Make your name, address, description and offer identical everywhere online.
- Check robots.txt for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended.
- Surface reviews and third-party mentions on the page.
- Publish the comparison and “best X for Y” pages the engines keep being asked for.
- Build a prompt set and measure monthly.
The full twelve-point version, with the evidence behind each item, is in How to get cited in AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity.
See how the engines describe your brand today
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Get the free checkFrequently asked questions
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. GEO depends on SEO fundamentals: a page must be indexed and eligible for a snippet before any AI feature can cite it. Think of GEO as the layer that decides whether an already-findable page gets quoted.
How long does GEO take to show results?
Engines that retrieve live pages, such as Perplexity and ChatGPT search, can reflect changes within days to weeks. Google AI Overviews follow Google’s index and authority signals and move more slowly. Expect first movement in 30 to 60 days and meaningful change over a quarter.
Can an agency guarantee AI citations?
No. The engines decide what to cite and change their methods often. What can be guaranteed is a measured baseline, fixes that ship, and honest monthly re-measurement.
Is GEO relevant for Shopify stores?
Yes. “Best [product] for [need]” questions are now answered by AI engines with named brands. Product schema, buying guides and clean canonical URLs decide whether yours is one of them.
Related services: Generative engine optimisation, Answer engine optimisation, SEO, AEO and GEO.