What is GEO? How to get recommended by ChatGPT and AI search

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of improving how your business appears inside answers written by AI systems: ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. The goal is not only a click. It is to be named, cited as a source and described accurately when someone asks an assistant for a recommendation.

You will also see it called answer engine optimization (AEO) or AI SEO. The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, presented at the KDD 2024 conference.

Put simply, SEO gets you into the pool of pages an AI system reads; GEO is about what it takes from them and whether it names you. See our glossary entry on generative engine optimization for the short definition.

How do AI assistants choose which sources to cite?

Most AI search tools don't answer from memory alone. They retrieve pages and write an answer grounded in them, a technique called retrieval-augmented generation. So the first filter is the same as search: can the system find and read your page?

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. Google's guide for site owners, last updated in July 2026, says its generative AI features are "rooted in our core Search ranking and quality systems." It names two techniques. Retrieval-augmented generation (Google also calls it grounding) pulls relevant pages from the Search index. Query fan-out runs several related searches at once to gather more results. In Google's own example, a question about fixing a weedy lawn fans out into searches about herbicides, chemical-free removal and prevention. That is why a page that answers one sub-question well can be cited even if it would not rank for the main query.

To be eligible as a supporting link, Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet. There are no extra technical requirements, and meeting them does not guarantee inclusion. Google also notes AI Overviews appear only when its systems judge them useful, so they "often don't trigger."

ChatGPT search. OpenAI documents a separate crawler, OAI-SearchBot, used to surface websites in ChatGPT's search features. OpenAI says sites that block it won't appear in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. A different crawler, GPTBot, collects content that may be used for model training, and you can block one without blocking the other.

Microsoft Copilot and Bing. Microsoft launched an AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools in February 2026. Its announcement says pages cited for a topic "often reflect clear subject focus and domain expertise," and recommends clear headings, tables and FAQ sections, supporting evidence and cited sources, regular updates, and consistent facts across text, images and video. For local businesses, it points to Bing Places for Business.

What does the research say about GEO?

The paper that named GEO tested whether editing a web page changes how visible it is in AI answers. It found that some edits helped a lot, some did nothing and one made things worse. It is the best-known study on the subject, and it has real limits.

What the authors tested. Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors built GEO-bench, a set of about 10,000 queries drawn from nine sources across many topics. For each query, a simulated AI search engine built on GPT-3.5 Turbo took the top five Google results and wrote an answer citing them. The researchers then rewrote one source at a time using nine methods and measured how much of the answer came from that source, weighted by where its citation appeared, plus a second score judged by a language model. They repeated a smaller test, 200 queries, on Perplexity.

What they found.

• Adding quotations from relevant sources, adding statistics, improving fluency and citing sources were the strongest methods. The paper reports gains of up to about 40% in visibility over the unedited page.
• Keyword stuffing scored below the unedited baseline. Old SEO tricks did not carry over.
• Lower-ranked sources gained the most. Citing sources raised visibility by about 115% for the fifth-ranked source while lowering it by about 30% for the top-ranked one. Clear evidence gave smaller sites a way to compete.
• Results varied by topic, so no single method won everywhere.

Where it falls short. The engine was a simulation built on a 2023 model, not the production systems people use today, and the main experiments used one model. Part of the scoring relied on a language model's judgment, which the authors note was poorly calibrated and had to be normalized. The study held the five retrieved sources fixed, so it says nothing about whether an edit helps a page get retrieved in the first place. AI products have changed a great deal since.

The practical lesson holds anyway: pages that quote credible sources and show real numbers are easier for an AI system to use. The lesson is not "add statistics." Invented or unsourced figures are exactly what you should never publish.

Is GEO different from SEO?

For Google, no. Its guide states that "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." It adds that creating unique, useful content "will likely influence your website's presence in generative AI search in the long run more than any of the other suggestions in this guide."

Where GEO does add something is in three places:

1. Assistants outside Google. ChatGPT, Copilot and others use their own crawlers and indexes, so you need to allow them and check how they describe you.
2. Entity accuracy. An answer may describe your business without anyone visiting your site. If your hours, services or location differ across the web, the assistant may repeat the wrong version.
3. Measurement. Rankings don't tell you how often you are named in answers. You need new reports and a prompt-testing routine, covered below.

How do you get recommended by ChatGPT and AI search?

Seven steps cover most of the work. They apply to a dental clinic, a law firm, an online store and a software agency alike.

1. Let the right crawlers in

Check robots.txt, your CDN and any firewall rules. Googlebot and Bingbot must reach your pages. If you want to appear in ChatGPT search, allow OAI-SearchBot. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot is a separate decision. On Google, AI features are part of Search, so Googlebot access in robots.txt is the control for crawling. The Google-Extended token limits training and grounding in some of Google's other AI systems, not AI Overviews.

2. Make your entity facts identical everywhere

Your name, address, phone number, hours, service areas and services should read the same on your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, social profiles and directories. Google's guide says Business Profiles and Merchant Center feeds can help your products and services show in AI responses. Add Organization structured data to your home page or about page. Google says it helps it understand your organization's administrative details and tell it apart from similar names. For multi-location or service-area businesses, our local SEO guide covers this in depth.

3. Answer first, then explain

Start each section with a direct answer of one or two sentences, then add detail. Use headings phrased the way customers ask, short paragraphs, comparison tables and an FAQ where it helps. Google says you don't need to write in a special way for AI. This is simply good writing for busy readers, and it happens to be easy to quote.

4. Publish what only you can say

Google's guide separates "commodity" content, the generic tips anyone could write, from first-hand content that goes beyond common knowledge. A plumbing company's real checklist for a no-hot-water call, a clinic's plain explanation of its own booking and cancellation process, a tutor's worked exam example, or a hotel's honest guide to arriving late at night all qualify. A rewritten top-10 list does not.

5. Cite your sources and show evidence

Link to the regulator, standard, manufacturer document or study behind each claim, and name it in the text. That matches the strongest methods in the GEO paper and Microsoft's advice on evidence. Use your own data where you have it (response times, service areas, years in business), and never invent numbers.

6. Earn genuine mentions

Google says its AI features can show what is being said about products and services across the web, including blogs, videos and forum discussions. Reviews, local press, trade associations and partner pages all count. Google also warns that "seeking inauthentic 'mentions' across the web isn't as helpful as it might seem," because the same spam systems apply. Earn mentions by being worth mentioning: publish a useful guide, speak at an event, answer questions where your customers ask them.

7. Keep pages fresh and dated

Show an honest "updated" date, and change prices, policies and team details when they change. Microsoft recommends IndexNow, a protocol that tells participating search engines when a page changes, so updates reach Bing's answers faster.

What GEO myths should you ignore?

Google has now addressed the most common "AI hacks" directly. Here is what its July 2026 guide says you can skip for Google Search.

• "You need an llms.txt file." Google says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files, markup or Markdown, and that Google Search ignores llms.txt. Publishing one for other services is fine; it neither helps nor harms you on Google.
• "Chop content into small chunks for AI." Google says there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces and no ideal page length.
• "Rewrite everything for AI." Not needed. AI systems understand synonyms and meaning, so you don't have to chase every long-tail phrasing.
• "Special AI schema will get you cited." Structured data isn't required for generative AI search, and there is no special schema for it. Keep using it for rich results, and make sure it matches the visible page.
• "Mass-produce pages for every possible question." Google says creating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse spam policy.
• "This tool sees Google's AI data." Google says no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.

One honest caveat: this is Google's guidance for Google. Other assistants publish less about how they choose sources. That is why the measurement routine below includes testing them directly.

How do you measure your AI answer share?

Measure four things every month: AI impressions in Google, citations in Bing and Copilot, visits from AI assistants, and how often a fixed set of prompts mentions you. Together they show whether you are visible and whether that visibility brings customers.

• Google Search Console, generative AI performance report. Google introduced it on June 3, 2026, and says it reached all websites worldwide by August 31, 2026. It shows impressions from generative AI features in Search (such as AI Overviews and AI Mode) and Discover, by page, country, device and date. The launch post lists impressions, pages, countries, devices and dates, not clicks or queries, so pair it with the main Performance report.
• Bing Webmaster Tools, AI Performance. It reports total citations, average cited pages per day, sample "grounding queries" (the phrases the AI used when it retrieved your page) and page-level citation counts across Copilot, Bing's AI summaries and some partners. Microsoft notes the citation count does not indicate placement or importance.
• Google Analytics, AI Assistant channel. Google Analytics now has a default channel for visits from assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, DeepSeek and Grok. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted under Organic Search instead. Track leads from this channel, not just sessions. Our guide to marketing attribution shows how to carry the source into your CRM.
• A fixed prompt panel. Choose 20 to 30 questions a customer might really ask, and run the same ones every month in each assistant you care about. Record whether you are mentioned, whether you are cited with a link, whether the facts are right, and who else is named. Your AI answer share is prompts that mention you divided by prompts tested.

Build your prompt panel from five patterns, filled in for your own business:

Monthly AI-visibility tracking template

Expect noise: answers vary between runs and models change, so read the three-month trend, not one result.

What should a GEO audit check?

Run this checklist once, fix what fails, then repeat it quarterly. It takes a few hours for a small site.

If you want this done for you, Worcia's SEO & GEO service covers the audit, the entity cleanup, answer-first service pages and the monthly AI-visibility report. See how it works in practice on our AI answer visibility use case, and why service landing pages are usually the first build.