What is GEO (generative engine optimization)?
GEO means making your site easy for generative AI like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini to find, trust and cite when it writes an answer.
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GEO (generative engine optimization) is the practice of making your site easy for generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI features to find, understand and cite when they write an answer. The goal is to be the source an AI names or links, not only a result in a list.
Where does the term come from?
It was popularized by a 2023 research paper, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” (Aggarwal and others, from Princeton University, Georgia Tech, the Allen Institute for AI and IIT Delhi), which tested how changes to content affect visibility in AI-written answers. In that study, adding citations, quotations and statistics tended to raise a source’s visibility, while keyword stuffing did not help.
What does GEO involve?
- Access: let AI search crawlers read your pages, such as OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot. Check yours with the AI crawler checker.
- Being in the index they search: many assistants search the web live, so ordinary crawling and indexing still matter.
- Quotable content: clear claims, specific numbers with their sources, and direct answers near the top of each section.
- Entity clarity: consistent facts about your business on your site and on the places that describe you (see entity SEO).
Example
Someone asks ChatGPT for the best invoicing app for freelancers in Canada. ChatGPT searches, reads several pages and names a few products with links. GEO is everything that makes your page one of the ones it reads, believes and cites.
Related: AEO, LLM visibility and the GEO guide. SEO Rank Fixer checks whether ChatGPT and Claude cite or name your site for your customers’ questions.