What is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization explained

The difference to classic search engine optimisation is not the technique, it is the outcome. SEO gets someone to a list of links where they can click your page. GEO gets a machine to summarise your offer in running text, where there is no list and often only two or three providers named at all.

How an AI answer is actually produced

Simplified, two things come together. First, what sits inside the model: knowledge from training, with no current date and no source. Second, what the system looks up at the moment of the question – a web search whose results serve as the basis for the answer. That lookup is called grounding, and it is the part you can influence.

One uncomfortable consequence: your website is not the only source. What directories, press articles, profiles and review platforms say about you feeds into the answer as well. Where those sources contradict each other, the system decides – and sometimes decides wrongly.

Why some companies get named and others do not

Four things stand out in practice.

Unambiguity. A company that can be named and classified clearly gets mentioned more readily than one that is easily confused with five similar-sounding brands. If your name is generic, you have to draw the distinction yourself.

Verifiable facts. Models prefer statements they can support: location, legal form, services, prices, contacts, numbers. Marketing language without a checkable core is worthless to a machine, because no answer can be built from it.

Consistency across sources. If your imprint gives one address, your Google business profile another and LinkedIn a third description, the chance of a system adopting your version drops.

Structure. Clear headings, short paragraphs, question-and-answer blocks and structured data make it easy to lift out a single sentence. Lifting out sentences is exactly what a generative system does.

What GEO means in practice

• Build fact pages. One page per core entity – company, person, main offer – stating key data, services, prices and boundaries in plain sentences. This website has them: see Facts.
• Add structured data. Organization, Person, Service, Offer, FAQPage. Not a ranking trick, but a machine-readable second version of what you say.
• Answer the questions people actually ask. What does it cost, how long does it take, who is it not for. Two to four sentences, directly under the question.
• Use numbers. Prices, lead times, quantities, years. A sentence with a number gets quoted more often than one without.
• State what you are not. What you do not do, who you should not be confused with. It prevents mix-ups that nobody else will correct.
• Tidy up outside sources. Business profile, industry directories, LinkedIn, trade portals. The same details everywhere.

What GEO is not

Not a hack and not a guarantee. Nobody can promise that ChatGPT will recommend you from next week – answers fluctuate, models get replaced, and two people can ask the same question and get different results.

Not a replacement for SEO either. These systems fall back on search results for their grounding. If you are not there, you are not in the answer. GEO comes on top of search engine optimisation, it does not substitute for it.

And it is not a genre of writing aimed at machines. Pages written purely for models read terribly for people – and people are the ones who buy.

How to check whether it works

Ask the questions your clients would ask, in several systems, and write down who gets named. Repeat monthly with the same questions. It is unglamorous, and it is the only solid measurement currently available.

It is also worth checking your analytics: visits from ChatGPT, Perplexity and similar services show up as their own referral sources. The numbers are usually small and the quality of those visits is often above average – someone arriving from an AI answer has already articulated their problem.

Frequently asked questions