What Is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)? How Brands Get Named in AI Answers

Ask a chat assistant which accountant, software or supplier to pick, and it will name a few.

Generative engine optimisation is about making sure your business is one of them.

That sounds like SEO.

It overlaps, but the goal is different.

SEO asks whether your page ranks.

GEO asks whether the assistant mentions you by name, and whether what it says about you is right.

In this guide you will learn:

• What generative engine optimisation means, and where the term came from
• How chat assistants decide which brands to mention
• How GEO differs from AEO and SEO
• Six steps to start

What Is Generative Engine Optimisation?

Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of increasing how often, and how accurately, AI chat assistants name, recommend or cite your brand when they answer questions in your market.

Here's what that looks like in practice.

Say a buyer asks Perplexity for "the best project management tools for small architecture practices". The answer names four products, with a sentence on each and links to the sources behind it.

If your product is not on that list, the buyer may never visit your site, however well it ranks on Google.

Where the term comes from

The term was introduced in a research paper titled "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization", first posted to arXiv in November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference.

The authors built a benchmark of queries and tested ways content creators could raise their visibility in generative answers.

They reported visibility gains of up to 40 per cent in their tests, and found the best tactics varied by subject area.

That is a lab result, not a promise for your site.

But it shows the idea has a research base, not just a marketing one.

What GEO is not

• It is not AEO. Answer engine optimisation is about your text being quoted as the answer on a results page. GEO is about your brand being named in a chat answer.
• It is not a trick. Hidden text aimed at AI, fake reviews and keyword-stuffed brand mentions are manipulation, and they tend to backfire.
• It is not a separate channel from SEO. Assistants that search the web still need to reach and read your pages.

If you want to see where AEO fits, read what answer engine optimisation is.

How Do Chat Assistants Decide Which Brands to Name?

No vendor publishes the full method.

But there are two broad routes into an answer.

Most assistants mix both. In my testing, a question about current prices or "best in 2026" is more likely to trigger a live search.

Retrieval depends on crawler access. OpenAI's crawler documentation says OAI-SearchBot is the crawler for ChatGPT's search features, and sites that opt out of it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot, a separate crawler, is used for model training.

So you can block training and still allow search.

In my audits, plenty of sites get this backwards.

From what I see in client prompt tracking, the brands named most often share three traits: they are described the same way everywhere, they appear on the sources the assistant cites, and their own pages state plainly what they do.

GEO vs AEO vs SEO: Three Different Questions

The simplest way to separate them is by the question each one answers:

• SEO: Does my page rank for this query?
• AEO: Is my text the answer Google quotes?
• GEO: Does the assistant name my brand, and describe it correctly?

All three sit under the wider umbrella of AI search optimisation.

They share foundations, but the work and the measurement differ.

My comparison of AI search vs traditional SEO covers how the pieces fit, and my AI search optimisation service runs them as one programme.

Why Does GEO Matter?

Three reasons, all from patterns I see in client work.

Shortlist questions end before the click

When a buyer asks for recommendations, the answer is the shortlist.

Unlike a results page, there are no ten blue links to scroll.

If you are not named, you are not considered.

Other sites speak for you

Assistants often lean on review platforms, directories, comparison articles and forums.

That means what other sites say about you can matter as much as your own pages.

Your off-page SEO and reputation work now feed straight into AI answers.

Wrong descriptions spread

If an assistant describes your business wrongly, every buyer who asks gets the same mistake.

Out-of-date services, wrong locations and old pricing usually trace back to a source that still says it.

GEO includes finding and correcting those sources.

How to Do Generative Engine Optimisation: 6 Steps

Here's the process I follow.

Step 1: Build a fixed prompt set

List 30 to 100 questions your buyers ask an assistant, in their own words.

Mix the stages: "what is", "how much does", "which is better" and "best provider for". Keep the list fixed so later runs compare like with like.

Step 2: Take a baseline across assistants

Run every prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.

Run each more than once, because answers change between sessions.

Record who is named, how you are described, and which sources are linked.

My guide on tracking brand visibility in AI search covers the setup.

Step 3: Make your entity description consistent

Write one plain description of your business: what you do, for whom, and where.

Then make your site, Business Profile, LinkedIn, directories and review profiles all say the same thing.

Organization schema can state it in machine-readable form, and my schema markup generator builds it.

Step 4: Open the doors to retrieval

Check robots.txt for each AI crawler you care about, crawler by crawler.

Make sure Bing indexes your key pages, because Copilot draws on Bing.

Hidden pages get no citations.

I saw this first-hand in the language services case study, where one setting kept a whole batch of pages out of search.

Step 5: Earn mentions on the sources assistants cite

Use your baseline to list the domains that keep appearing behind answers in your category.

Then go after realistic placements: directory listings, reviews, expert quotes in articles, and inclusion in honest comparisons.

This overlaps heavily with link building, with mentions counting even when they carry no link.

Step 6: Measure share of mentions and accuracy

Rerun the prompt set monthly.

Track how often you are named, how accurately you are described and which of your pages get cited.

Add assistant referral traffic and a "how did you hear about us" field. For hundreds of prompts with screenshots, use AI search visibility tracking.

GEO Tactics to Avoid

The category is young, so shortcuts are everywhere:

• Hidden instructions for AI. Text meant only for machines is manipulation and can damage trust in your site.
• Fake or incentivised reviews. These breach most review platforms' rules.
• Hundreds of thin AI pages. Volume without substance gives assistants nothing worth citing.
• Paid list placements. Buying a spot on a "top 10" article that exists to be scraped is a short-term bet.
• Single-screenshot reporting. One answer from one session tells you almost nothing.

The durable work is slower, and it compounds.

Get Your Brand Onto the Shortlist

GEO comes down to being the obvious, well-described choice in the sources assistants read.

Your first action: ask ChatGPT and Perplexity to recommend a provider in your field, and check whether you are named and described correctly.

Note which sources they link.

That list tells you where to focus.

My guide on how to get mentioned by ChatGPT is the practical next step.

If you want the baseline, entity work and mention building handled for you, my generative engine optimisation service covers each stage.

You can also read how I approach getting brands recommended by chat assistants in more detail.