More and more often, people put a question not to Google but to ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google AI Overviews. A consumer asks: which product best fits my situation? A buyer asks: which partner can help me with this? The AI model reads dozens of sources and gives one answer, with a handful of brands attached. If you’re not mentioned, at that moment you don’t exist. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the part of SEO that does something about that: making sure AI knows, trusts and cites your brand.
What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
GEO is optimising your content so that AI search engines and language models name and cite your brand in their answers. The term comes from academic research (Aggarwal et al., presented at KDD 2024), which showed that you can measurably increase your visibility in generative search engines, partly by backing up content with citations, data and a clear structure. Where the classic angle of SEO is about a click to your site, GEO is about being mentioned in the answer itself. The end goal hasn’t changed: that people find and trust you at the moment they make a choice.
SEO is not dead. But you’ll have to deploy it differently.
Giacomo Perticara, founder and SEO strategist at GRP Digital
SEO, AEO and GEO: not new fields, but a deepening
Let’s clear up a misconception: AEO and GEO are not new disciplines alongside SEO. They are deepenings of it. SEO is and remains the overarching field, namely making sure you get found. As search changes, layers are added. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on direct answers and featured snippets, GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) on being mentioned in AI-generated answers. Different terms, the same core: clear, reliable, well-structured content that people, search engines and AI understand. Do SEO well and you immediately lay the foundation for AEO and GEO.
This affects consumer and business alike
One misconception is that AI search is mainly for business, or conversely only for consumers. It’s both, and for many brands mainly consumer-focused. People increasingly use AI as an advisor: which product is best for my situation, what’s a good alternative, what should I know before I buy. For webshops and brands, that answer decides whether you’re in the running, before someone even opens a comparison site or product page. At the same time, professionals in specialised markets are also putting their question straight to an assistant more often. In both cases the same rule applies: whoever is mentioned wins trust before the first contact. Whoever is missing falls out of view without noticing.
AI is not hype, but part of the broader search ecosystem.
Giacomo Perticara, founder and SEO strategist at GRP Digital
How AI reads your content
Before you optimise, it helps to know how AI actually takes in your content. That happens in roughly three ways: from what the model once learned (training data, static and often outdated), by searching the web live (retrieval, with source attribution), and by visiting your site itself as an agent (emerging). In the last two, your findability determines whether you get picked up. So there’s ground to gain, provided your content is readable and convincing.
How to get your content chosen by AI
- Write in a clear question-and-answer structure. AI users ask specific questions; content that gives the answer directly and concisely is easier to pick up.
- Back it up with concrete data, examples, citations and source attribution. The GEO research showed that exactly these kinds of signals raise the chance of being mentioned.
- Be consistent about your entity: the same brand name, field and facts, supported by structured data, so AI knows who you are and what you stand for.
- Show real expertise and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). AI prefers sources that are demonstrably knowledgeable and up to date.
Your foundation has to be right
GEO only works if AI can read your content at all. The crawlers of many AI models don’t run JavaScript; they see only the raw HTML. If your most important content sits behind scripts or feeds, even the best GEO strategy does nothing. We wrote about it separately in why Google and AI don’t always see what’s in your CMS. Start there, because without a readable foundation the rest falls flat.
Measure whether you get mentioned
You can’t improve what you don’t measure. The biggest blind spot in GEO is that companies have no idea how often and how they appear in AI answers. By tracking your mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, you see your share of AI answers compared to competitors, and which content gets picked up. That turns GEO from a gut feeling into a steerable process: you know what works and where your content needs strengthening.
Where to start today
You don’t have to do everything at once. Start with three things: map the questions your customers really ask, put your most important content into a clear question-and-answer form with backing, and measure whether and how you appear in AI answers. From that picture you adjust deliberately, instead of guessing.
Frequently asked questions
Does GEO replace my SEO? No. GEO is a deepening of SEO, not a replacement. Strong SEO is the foundation GEO builds on.
Does GEO work for small brands too? Yes. In a niche especially, you can become the authoritative source AI cites, even without a huge budget.
How quickly do I see results? GEO is not a button but a process. By measuring and adjusting consistently, you build your AI visibility step by step.
Curious whether AI search engines already mention your brand? At GRP Digital we measure your AI visibility and turn GEO into concrete growth.
