What is GEO? Generative engine optimization, explained

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting a company named and cited in AI-generated answers. The thing it improves is AI search visibility: how often, and how favourably, AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews name and cite your company when someone asks for vendors or recommendations in your category. It is measured by running real buyer prompts repeatedly and counting mentions, positions and citations.

Key facts
  • AI answers name 3 to 5 vendors; being absent means being absent from the shortlist.
  • Engines build answers from sources they retrieve: review sites, communities, comparison articles, documentation.
  • Answers vary between runs, so visibility is a rate, not a single answer.
  • It is measured with a fixed prompt set, repeated monthly, and summarised as an AI Visibility Score.

Why it matters for B2B software

Buyers use AI assistants to build the first shortlist. A prompt like "best compliance automation software for a 200-person fintech" returns a handful of names with reasons. Vendors on that list get the demo request; the rest do not learn the deal existed. Unlike a search results page, there is no page two.

What determines whether you are named

  1. Retrieval. With web search on, the engine fetches pages for the query. If the pages that rank for "best X tools" do not list you, you are rarely named.
  2. Citations. Engines favour sources they can cite: G2, Capterra, Reddit, comparison blogs, your docs. Presence on those sources matters more than your homepage.
  3. Entity confidence. Consistent name, description and structured data across the web let the model connect "Acme" to a category. Renamed companies and inconsistent descriptions get under-counted.
  4. Extractable content. Pages with direct answers, tables and definitions are quoted; pages built from images and vague copy are not.
  5. Training data. For older or offline models, what was written about you before the training cutoff. Slow to change, but it is why consistent coverage compounds.

GEO, AEO and SEO

Generative engine optimization (GEO)
Increasing a brand's presence in generative AI answers, mainly by earning citations on the sources engines retrieve from.
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Structuring content so answer engines can quote it directly: direct answers first, definitions, structured data, consistent facts.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Earning rankings on a results page. Overlaps with GEO on technical health and content quality; differs on where the work happens (third-party sources) and what is measured (mentions and citations, not rankings).

Side-by-side detail: GEO vs SEO.

How to measure it

Write 20 to 30 prompts that match how your buyers ask. Run each on every engine three times. Record whether you and each competitor are named, in what order, with which sentence, and which URLs are cited. Compute mention rate, share of voice, average position and citation rate, then the score. Repeat monthly with the same prompts. A do-it-yourself version is in the audit checklist; the automated version is our free audit.

How to improve it

Publish the comparison and alternatives pages the prompts ask for. Get fresh reviews on the review sites engines cite. Answer in the community threads engines cite. Pitch the authors of cited listicles. Use one name and one description everywhere, with Organization and Product schema. Publish original data worth citing. Then measure again.

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