Generative engine optimization (GEO): what it is and how to do it for a business site

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting your pages read, quoted and cited when an AI system writes an answer, in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude or Google's AI Overviews. Where SEO earns a ranked link, GEO earns a place among the sources the AI names under its answer.

Most of it is careful SEO with a few additions. This guide covers where the idea came from, why each AI engine cites different pages, and the changes we would make on a business website, in order.

Where the term comes from

The name comes from a 2023 paper by Aggarwal et al., "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization". The authors took a set of search queries, rewrote the source pages in different ways, and measured how visible each version was in the answer a generative system wrote from those sources.

Their headline result: adding quotations, statistics and cited sources raised a page's visibility in generated answers by up to about 40% on their benchmark. Keyword stuffing, the old SEO habit, did little.

Two cautions before you build a strategy on that number. First, it was measured on the authors' benchmark, not on today's ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews. Second, "up to about 40%" is the best case across their tests, not an average you can expect. What carries over is the direction: specific, sourced content is easier for a model to quote than vague content.

Why engines cite different pages

There is no single AI ranking to win. Profound, which tracks AI answers at scale, has published an analysis of 680 million citations across AI platforms. In a later post it reported that the half-life of an AI citation is about 11 days, and that how long a page stays cited on one engine says almost nothing about how long it stays cited on another, with correlations of 0.03 to 0.09; in its words, "The engines decide independently."

Our own small check points the same way. On 13 October 2026 we asked ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity four questions about SEO platforms. The 12 answers cited 93 different domains. semrush.com was cited 11 times and appeared on all three engines. xeorank.com was cited zero times, which is one reason we write pages like this one.

Two practical consequences follow. Measure each engine on its own, because a page that ChatGPT cites may be absent from Perplexity. And expect results to move week to week, so a single check tells you little.

The engines also differ in reach. Google AI Overviews appear on ordinary Google searches with no action from the user, so they reach the most people. AI Mode is a tab the user chooses. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude are separate products people open on purpose, so they reach fewer people, but often people further along in a decision. Overviews do not appear on every run or every device, so track how often they show for your queries.

The GEO playbook for a business site

These are the steps we would take, in this order. Each one is useful for ordinary search too.

1. Let the AI crawlers in

An engine cannot cite what it cannot fetch. Check robots.txt for the user agents that matter:

Note the last row. Google-Extended does not control AI Overviews; Googlebot governs Search, including Overviews. Blocking Google-Extended will not remove you from Overviews, and allowing it will not add you. You can run your domain through our free AI crawler checker to see what your robots.txt allows.

Also make sure the main text is in the HTML the server sends, not only drawn in by JavaScript after the page loads.

On llms.txt: the format was proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024 at llmstxt.org, and Google's AI features guidance says you do not need special AI text files to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. If you want one anyway, our llms.txt generator writes it in a minute. Spend your real effort on the steps below.

2. Make it clear who you are

A model has to connect your site, your brand name and the things said about you elsewhere. Add Organization structured data on the homepage with your legal name, logo, and sameAs links to the profiles that describe you: LinkedIn, Crunchbase, G2, Wikipedia if you have a page, and your social accounts. Use the same company name and one-line description everywhere. For a product, add Product or SoftwareApplication markup with real offers.

3. Replace general claims with specific, sourced facts

This is the part the 2023 paper supports most directly. "Plans start at $19 a month for one site" can be quoted. "Affordable pricing" cannot. Put prices, limits, dates and numbers on the page, link the source in the same paragraph, and answer the question in the first two sentences under a heading that matches how people ask it.

4. Get named on the pages the engines already cite

For commercial questions, AI answers often cite third-party pages: "best X tools" roundups, comparison sites, review platforms and forums. Ask the engines your buyers' questions, list the domains they cite, and check whether each one mentions you. If every cited roundup lists your competitors and not you, that list is your outreach plan.

5. Keep pages current

Given a citation half-life measured in days in Profound's data, stale pages lose ground. Date your pages, show when they were last updated, and keep prices and product details correct. Re-check the questions that matter after each change.

How to measure GEO

• Use the questions buyers ask, not your brand name. "What is [your brand]?" will name you and proves nothing.
• Keep the question set fixed so the trend means something.
• Record mentions and citations separately. Being named without a link still counts.
• Record which domains are cited instead of you. That is your content and outreach list.
• Report each engine separately. A blended score hides the engine where you are missing.

XeoRank runs the question set for you when you start a scan. It asks ChatGPT, Gemini (grounded in Google Search) and Perplexity, records the sources each answer cites, and reports each engine on its own, next to an overall rate, your technical SEO audit and Search Console data. Pro is $49 per site a month, and the pricing page lists what each plan includes. XeoRank covers fewer engines than some specialist tools and does not offer prompt-volume estimates.

GEO tools

GEO tools fall into three groups: trackers that only measure AI answers, SEO suites that have added an AI module, and tools that also audit or change your site. They differ widely on price and on how many engines they cover. Rather than repeat it here, we compared nine of them, with prices checked on each vendor's page on 13 October 2026, in the best AI visibility tools.

If you want to see where your own site stands first, start with a free site analysis. For how GEO relates to SEO and AEO, read AEO vs GEO vs SEO.