Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Making your content easy for AI answer systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews to find, understand and cite.
What it is
GEO builds on technical SEO rather than replacing it: crawler access for AI user agents, content that leads with the answer, clear entities and structured data, and measurement of AI referrals and citations. No one can guarantee a citation.
Why it matters
More people now get answers from assistants before they see a results page. If your pages cannot be reached or understood, you will not be named.
Common mistakes
- Blocking AI crawlers by accident in robots.txt or a firewall
- Content that only appears after JavaScript runs
- Pages that bury the answer under long introductions
- Treating llms.txt as a guarantee
How I handle it
I check which AI crawlers can reach your site, restructure key pages answer-first, strengthen entities and schema, and set up tracking so citations and AI referrals can be measured over time.
How to check it
- Read your robots.txt and firewall rules for GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended.
- View your key pages without JavaScript to confirm the important content is in the HTML.
- Ask the AI assistants your customers use the questions they ask, and note which sources are cited.
- Track referral traffic from AI sources in your analytics.
Illustrative example
Example scenario: a guide buries its answer under three paragraphs of history. Moving a clear two-sentence answer to the top, adding a heading that matches the question and marking up the page makes it far easier for an assistant to quote.
Frequently asked questions
Is GEO different from SEO?
They overlap heavily. Crawlability, clear content and structured data matter for both. GEO adds AI crawler access, entities and answer-first formatting.
Can I guarantee a ChatGPT citation?
No one can. You can remove technical and content barriers, then measure citations and referrals over time.