What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization
Definition
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring and writing your content so AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews — cite your brand in their answers. Where SEO earns rankings, GEO earns citations.
AI assistants don't show ten blue links; they compose one answer from sources they trust and can parse. GEO optimises for that selection step: answer-first writing, clear headings, FAQ and definition blocks, consistent entity information (name, address, services), structured data, and being present in the indexes those engines read (Google for Gemini and AI Overviews, Bing for ChatGPT Search and Copilot).
GEO is not a replacement for SEO — it sits on top of it. The same clean architecture and authority that ranks a page also makes it citable; GEO adds the extraction layer: a quotable one-line answer near the top, evidence with real numbers, and named authors an engine can verify.
Example
A user asks Perplexity "best way to reduce Google Ads cost per lead". Perplexity pulls its answer from three pages whose opening paragraphs answer the question directly and cites them. A GEO-optimised article — TL;DR up top, a stat-backed checklist, FAQ schema — is far more likely to be one of those three than a 2,000-word essay that buries the answer.
Why it matters
A growing share of buying research now ends inside an AI answer, without a click to page one. Brands that get cited become the recommendation; brands that only rank risk becoming invisible in that layer.
They overlap heavily — both need crawlable pages, authority and clear content. The difference is the target: SEO optimises for ranking positions in search results, GEO optimises for being quoted inside AI-generated answers. Good GEO work almost always improves SEO too.
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