What is GEO? Generative engine optimisation explained

Short answer: GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. It covers everything that makes AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Mode name your business as a source or recommendation in their answers. GEO builds on SEO, because most AI answers draw on pages found through a web search. What it adds: content that answers a question in its first sentences, the same company facts everywhere, and confirmation from other websites.

This article explains what GEO is, how AI answers come about and what the work involves. How GEO differs from classic search engine optimisation is covered in our article SEO vs. GEO.

What does GEO mean?

The term comes from a research paper by Princeton University and other institutions, first published in November 2023 and presented at the KDD conference in 2024. The authors tested how texts have to change to be cited more often by AI search engines. Their result: targeted changes, such as adding statistics, quotes and sources, raised visibility in the generated answers by up to 40 %.

Since then, several names have been used for the same thing: AEO (answer engine optimisation), LLMO (large language model optimisation) or simply AI SEO. Google itself calls them terms “you may see used” and says that optimising for generative AI search is still SEO. Not to be confused: geomarketing, which means location-based marketing and has nothing to do with AI answers.

How does GEO work?

For most business questions, an AI does not answer from memory but searches the web while it answers. Google describes the process in its guide on generative AI search, last updated in July 2026:

1. Fan-out: The system splits the question into several related searches. “Web design agency Vienna” becomes questions about prices, references, reviews and timelines.
2. Retrieval: For each sub-question it fetches matching pages from its index. Google calls this grounding and uses its normal ranking systems for it.
3. Answer: The model writes an answer from the passages it found and links some of the pages as sources.

That is where GEO starts. Your page has to be in the index, be found for one of the sub-questions and contain a passage that answers it clearly. A page does not have to rank first for the main search term: it is enough to be the best answer to one of the sub-questions.

How these systems differ in everyday use is shown in our comparison of AI search engines. How Google's own version works is explained in our article on Google AI Mode.

What does GEO involve?

In practice GEO consists of five building blocks. The order matters, because each one builds on the one before.

1. Access for crawlers

What a crawler cannot read is never quoted. That means robots.txt, firewall and CDN must let search and AI crawlers through, and the text must be in the HTML. The large AI crawlers do not run JavaScript; content that only loads afterwards stays invisible to them.

2. Answer-first content

Every page and every section starts with one or two sentences that fully answer the question. Then come details: prices or price ranges, timelines, service area, process, references. Google asks for “non-commodity” content: expert views and experience that go beyond common knowledge.

3. Consistent company facts

Name, address, services and prices must be the same on your website, your Google Business Profile, WKO Firmen A–Z and in directories. Contradictions make a model unsure whom it should recommend. Our Google Business Profile guide shows how to keep the profile in order.

4. Mentions on other websites

Reviews with text, press reports, industry directories and lists such as “agencies in Vienna” are exactly the pages AI answers like to draw on for recommendations. How the systems weigh these signals is explained in How AI search decides which businesses to recommend.

5. Measuring

Ask the same customer questions every month and note who is named. Since 31 August 2026, Google Search Console has shown impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode for every website. Visits from chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai show up in your web analytics. How to set this up without expensive tools is explained in Measuring AI visibility.

What is GEO not?

• Not a special file: According to Google, an llms.txt file “will neither harm nor help” visibility in Google Search. We create it anyway because it costs nothing, but it is not a lever. More in our article on llms.txt.
• Not special markup: Google says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or markup to appear in its AI features. Structured data still helps search engines understand your facts.
• Not text chopped into tiny pieces: Google explicitly says there is no requirement to break content into small chunks for AI.
• Not a guarantee: AI answers vary with wording, location and time. Anyone promising “number one in ChatGPT” is selling a myth.

Is GEO worth it for your business?

The audience is already there. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT had 900 million weekly users in February 2026. Google reported at I/O in May 2026 that AI Mode had passed one billion monthly users. At the same time, fewer people click: Pew Research found that people clicked a normal result in 8 % of Google searches with an AI summary, compared with 15 % without.

GEO pays off most where customers compare before they buy: services, B2B, health, real estate, shops. It is less urgent for a business whose customers come almost entirely through personal recommendation, or whose website is not indexed properly yet. In that case the SEO groundwork comes first.

How long does GEO take and what does it cost?

Changes to your own website usually show within a few weeks, once the systems crawl again. Reviews and mentions on other sites build up over two to three months. Because answers vary, judge the trend over several months, not from a single test.

That is why we do not quote a flat rate without looking first. After a free check you get a fixed quote, so you know in advance what you get and what it costs.

How does a GEO agency work?

1. Baseline: Our free GEO report asks ChatGPT with web search and location Austria, shows whether you are named and whom the AI recommends instead.
2. Audit: crawler access, indexing, page structure, company facts and mentions, with a list sorted by effect.
3. Pages: one page per service and location, the answer first, concrete facts, text in the HTML.
4. Facts and profiles: website, Google Business Profile and directories aligned.
5. Mentions: reviews with text, articles and listings in relevant directories.
6. Monthly report: a fixed set of customer questions, Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools and AI referrals.

Written byChristoph SpeiserProject lead & sales

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