Generative engine optimization (GEO): what it is and how it works

Generative engine optimization is the work of getting your business mentioned inside AI-written answers, such as those from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. SEO earns a place in a list of links. GEO earns a mention in the answer itself.

The name comes from a research paper. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, was first posted in November 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024, a major data science conference (Princeton University's publication record). It treated an AI answer as a new kind of search result and asked what makes a source show up in it.

Yes, but GEO is built on SEO. An AI engine can only mention pages it can find, so the basics of SEO come first. Google says there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary" (Google Search Central).

The difference is the target. A ranking is one position on one page of results. An AI answer names a few businesses and may link some of its sources. The full side-by-side, with AEO, is in AEO vs SEO vs GEO.

GEO gets your brand mentioned inside an AI-generated answer. AEO makes your page the source the answer cites. The two usually move together, but not always: an engine can name a business without linking to it, or link a page without naming the business.

That gap is measurable. Semrush's June 2026 Ghost Citations study looked at 3,981 domain appearances from 115 prompts and found 62% of AI citations linked a site without naming the brand. That's why we track mentions and links separately. The citation side is covered in our AEO guide.

In the original GEO study, pages did best when they cited sources, added quotations or added statistics. Those changes raised the paper's main visibility measure by 30 to 40%, relative to the unchanged pages. Stuffing a page with keywords did little or nothing.

That was measured on GEO-bench, a set of 10,000 queries the authors built, using a test AI engine they ran themselves. They also tested on Perplexity, where adding quotations did best, with a 22% gain, and keyword stuffing did about 10% worse than leaving the page alone. These are research results on test pages. They don't forecast what any one business will see.

A 2026 study points the same way. Zhang et al. (arXiv, April 2026) found pages carrying statistics had 61.55% higher mean influence on AI answers, while pages formatted as questions and answers had 5.74% lower. Evidence counts for more than format.

For a local business, GEO SEO means giving AI engines the same facts everywhere they look. That's your website, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and your listings. When someone asks an assistant for a plumber in Barrhaven, the answer tends to draw on those sources.

The step-by-step version is in how to optimize for AI search, and the model's side of it is in LLM SEO.

• Let crawlers in: check that the crawlers AI engines search with can read your pages.
• Put the facts on the page: your services, the areas you serve and your prices, if you publish them, each stated plainly.
• Back each claim: a named source or your own numbers, with a date.
• Match everywhere: the same name, address, phone and services on your site, your profile and your listings.
• Measure it: ask the engines your customers' questions on a fixed schedule and record who gets named.

Ask the engines. Put a fixed set of your customers' questions to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Mode on a schedule, and record whether you're named, who's named instead, and which sources are linked. In our program we re-run the same questions every two weeks.

One check tells you little, because answers move around. Semrush's 2026 AI Visibility Index (June 2026, 126 million U.S. prompts) found only 36 of more than 1,200 tracked brands stayed in the top 100 on all four AI platforms it tracked, in every month it measured. A trend over months tells you more. The tools that help are sorted by job in AEO tools.

GEO is part of Viziblty's one program, not a separate service. The program costs $2,000 a month and covers GEO, AEO, local SEO and the monthly report; the setup fee and terms are on the pricing page. Nobody can promise a mention in an AI answer, and we don't.

The first step is free: the free AI visibility check shows whether AI crawlers can read your site today.