What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) covers the measures that make a website or brand more likely to be named or cited as a source in answers from generative search systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews. The goal is a place in the answer text, not a rank in a result list.
The term comes from a research paper by Aggarwal and colleagues, presented at KDD 2024. The authors tested how edits to a source text change whether a generative system visibly uses that source in its answer. Rewrites that added quotations, statistics and clear structure performed better than adding keywords.
The evidence matters. Content structure has a controlled study behind it. Many other tactics sold as GEO rest on correlations or on studies published by tool vendors. For llms.txt, and for Schema.org as a citation lever of its own, there is no solid proof of effect.
GEO does not replace classic search engine optimization. Most AI search systems retrieve content through a search index or their own crawlers. A page that cannot be crawled, rendered or indexed will not be cited either.
What it means for your website
In practice GEO starts with two checks: can the AI crawlers reach the site at all, and is the brand named for a typical buying question? Both can be measured. A single query shows whether the brand appears, not how often. Measuring frequency takes several runs of the same question.
Related terms
Sources
Terms help you understand. Whether AI crawlers can reach your site is something you measure.
Check your website for freefree · no signup · no credit card