Your customers are asking AI instead of scrolling Google. When they ask for the best business in your category, you are either named in the answer or you are invisible. Generative engine optimization is how you get named.
GEO is the work of getting your business cited in AI-generated answers, across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini. You will also see it called AEO, answer engine optimization, AI SEO or LLM SEO. The term GEO comes from a 2023 research paper out of Princeton, Georgia Tech and IIT Delhi. Whatever you call it, the job is the same. Traditional SEO competes for a position in a list. GEO competes to be the answer.
Google returns ten results. ChatGPT returns one recommendation. Ranking on page one means nothing if the answer sitting above it names your competitor.
ChatGPT uses OpenAI's own crawler plus Bing. Google AI Overviews pull from Google's index. Perplexity crawls independently. You can rank well on Google and still be invisible in ChatGPT.
This is where most GEO pitches fall apart. If your site has no schema, no clear answers and nothing linking to it, no AI tool is going to cite it. The fundamentals come first, always.
Google Search Console now has a Generative AI features report showing which of your pages appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. Real impression data instead of guesswork.
AI tools do not pull from the same places for every industry. Ask about B2B software and the answer is built from G2, Capterra, Reddit threads and comparison articles. Ask for a local chiropractor and it leans on Google Business Profiles, review sites and directory listings. Ask about a healthcare provider and it weighs verified professional directories far more heavily than anything else. Which means the work changes completely depending on what you sell. Building a Reddit presence will do nothing for a cleaning company, and perfecting your Google Business Profile will do nothing for a SaaS product. The first job is finding out which sources the AI tools actually use for questions in your category.
AI tools only recommend businesses they can read and trust. I start by checking where you actually appear, fix the basics that are holding you back, then build the signals that get you cited.
I run the real prompts your buyers use through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot, and document where you show up, where you do not, and which competitors get recommended instead. Then I pull your Search Console Generative AI report for hard impression data on AI Overviews.
Almost every business that wants AI visibility is missing basics. No schema markup, titles never written properly, content with no direct answers in it, zero backlinks. AI tools will not cite a site they cannot read or have no reason to trust. This step is not glamorous and it is not optional.
AI tools lift short, direct answers. I restructure your pages so the answer comes first and the explanation follows, add proper FAQ sections, and implement the schema types that matter for your business. Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, FAQ, Product.
I identify which sources the AI tools pull from for your industry and build your presence there. Entity optimization comes in here too, making sure your business name, services and location are consistent everywhere so AI models recognise you as a real, specific business. Then monthly AI citation tracking across every platform.
Most GEO advice online jumps straight to clever tactics. The reality is less exciting and more effective. AI visibility is built in layers, each one depending on the one underneath it, and skipping to the top never works.
If your site already ranks, has schema in place and has links pointing at it, we start at the content and citation layers and you will see movement quickly. If your site has none of that, we start at the bottom. There is no version of this where we skip the foundation, because an AI tool that cannot crawl your site or find a clear answer on it has nothing to cite. Anyone selling you GEO without checking your SEO first is selling you the roof without the walls.
Crawlable site, schema markup, titles and meta descriptions written properly, internal linking, and enough authority that an AI has a reason to trust you.
Answers written first and explanations second, FAQ sections, clear headings. The formats AI tools actually lift, rather than long unbroken articles nobody can quote from.
Your business name, services and location consistent everywhere so AI models recognise you as one specific, real business rather than an unknown.
Presence on the directories, review platforms, forums and publications that AI tools pull from for questions in your industry.
You will usually need all four, but rarely in equal measure. The audit tells us where the gap is. Sometimes a business ranks well and simply has no FAQ content for an AI to quote, which is a quick fix. More often the site has never had schema, the titles say “Home,” nothing links to it, and the Google Business Profile has been untouched for three years. None of that is advanced work. It is just work nobody has done yet, and it is the reason the business is invisible to AI despite having a perfectly good website.
Send me your website and I will run your real buyer prompts through ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, then tell you exactly what is blocking you.
GEO is the practice of getting your business cited in AI-generated answers on ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Copilot and Gemini. The term comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton, Georgia Tech and IIT Delhi. Unlike SEO, which competes for a ranking position, GEO competes to be the answer the AI gives.
No, but it does not work without SEO. The overlap is real, since both need crawlable pages, clear content and authority signals. What is genuinely different is that each AI platform runs its own index and its own citation behaviour, so visibility has to be built and measured per platform. Traditional SEO does not cover that.
No. ChatGPT uses OpenAI’s own crawler and index along with Bing. Google AI Overviews use Google’s index. Perplexity crawls the web itself. That is why a business can rank well on Google and still never appear in ChatGPT, and why this has to be done per platform rather than once.
Google Search Console now includes a Generative AI features report under Performance. It shows impressions for pages appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode, broken out by country and device. It does not show clicks or query data yet, so you cross-reference it with your normal Performance report. Here is how to read it.
No, and nobody honestly can. There is no paid placement and no submission process, so nobody controls the outcome. What I can do is build the signals that make citation likely and show you the data every month. Anyone guaranteeing placement is guaranteeing something they do not control.
AEO is optimizing content so search and AI tools can lift a clean, direct answer from it, targeting featured snippets, voice search and AI Overviews. It is narrower than GEO, which also covers standalone platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity. They share the same foundation and most of the same work, so I treat them as one service rather than two invoices.
Yes, and this is the part most agencies skip. AI tools cannot cite a site they cannot crawl, cannot parse, or have no reason to trust. If your pages have no schema, no clear answers and no inbound links, GEO work will not stick. I check your SEO foundation first and fix it before anything else.
There is no submission form and no way to pay for it. Citation comes from a combination of things: a site AI crawlers can read, content structured so answers are easy to lift, schema defining who you are, mentions on the third-party sources ChatGPT draws from, and consistent business details across the web. The audit identifies which of those you are missing.
Both, but be realistic about the mix. AI Overviews often answer the question on the results page, so some citations generate awareness rather than a click. What they do generate is consideration. Someone who sees your business named as the answer tends to arrive later by searching your name or going straight to your site, so I report on AI impressions alongside branded search and direct traffic, because that is where the effect usually shows up.
Technical and structural work can show results in 4 to 8 weeks. Authority and citation building takes 3 to 6 months. It is often faster than traditional SEO right now because far fewer businesses are competing. Cost depends on how much foundation work is needed first, and I will give you a real number after the audit.
