In one sentence: GEO is the work of getting your brand to appear, well described, in the answers of ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI answers, measuring prompt by prompt and changing the sources these engines use.
What GEO is
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) covers the practices that raise the chance of a brand being cited, recommended and well described when someone asks a generative AI a question. The term also appears as AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and as LLM optimization. In practice, they describe the same thing.
The change in behavior is simple to describe. The buyer who used to type keywords and open ten links now asks, in a full sentence, which option is best for their situation. The AI answers with names. If your brand is not among them, the buyer may never reach your site.
How an AI engine chooses what to cite
AI engines answer from two sources. The first is what the model learned in training, a snapshot of the web at a past date. The second is a live search run when the question is asked: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI answers look up current pages before answering and, in many cases, show the links they used.
So the answer depends on three things:
- Which pages the AI finds for that question: comparison sites, editorial guides, brand sites, videos, forums.
- What those pages say about your brand, if they say anything.
- How well your own site answers the question, in a way that is clear, current and easy for a machine to read.
The same question asked twice can produce different answers. That is why a measurement only works when it repeats the same questions, in the same AI engines, over time.
GEO and SEO
SEO is still the foundation: a page Google cannot find rarely becomes a source for an AI engine. GEO adds a layer on top, and the difference lies in what gets measured and what gets optimized.
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit | Keyword and position on the results page | Buyer prompt and presence in the answer |
| Outcome | Click to the site | Citation, recommendation and description of the brand |
| Sources that matter | Your site and the links pointing to it | Your site and the third-party pages the AI chooses to cite |
| Measurement | Ranking, organic traffic | Visibility per prompt, position against competitors, sources cited |
What to measure
A GEO program needs a baseline before any action. These are the measures we use in Opivoty Lens:
- Visibility: the share of answers the brand appears in, by AI engine and by topic.
- Share of voice: the brand's presence divided by the presence of all brands cited in the same answers.
- Position: whether the brand appears first, in the middle or as an alternative.
- Perception: the attributes and tone the AI uses to describe the brand.
- Sources: the pages the AI cites and whether they mention the brand.
In our experience, the most stable measure from one round to the next is the brand's own share of voice. Small week-to-week changes are usually noise. What counts is the trend, measured against the baseline.
What to do on your site
- Answer the buyer's questions on dedicated pages. One page per product or service, with what it is, who it is for, what it costs or how it is priced, and how to start.
- Write to be cited. Short definitions up front, numbers with a source and a date, FAQs with direct answers.
- Use structured data. Schema.org markup for organization, service, product and FAQ helps machines understand the page.
- Let AI search crawlers in. Check that robots.txt and the firewall allow OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot. Blocking these crawlers takes the site out of the answers.
- Publish an llms.txt. A plain-text summary of what the company does and which pages matter, at the root of the domain.
What to do off your site
For many buying questions, AI engines cite third-party pages more than brand sites. Off-site work starts by finding out which sources appear in your category's answers and whether they talk about your brand:
- Comparison sites and category rankings.
- Editorial guides and trade press.
- YouTube videos that answer the question.
- Forums and communities where buyers ask for recommendations.
Presence in these sources is built over quarters. That is why prioritization matters: Opivoty Lens ranks the sources by estimated gain for the brand.
Ads in AI answers
ChatGPT now shows ads in its answers. Ads and organic presence are different things: an ad buys a labeled space in the conversation, while organic presence is the AI citing the brand on its own. The two should be measured separately. An ad can cover a question where the brand does not yet appear. Organic work moves forward in the meantime.
Where to start
- List 50 to 150 prompts your buyers use before they buy.
- Measure the visibility of your brand and your competitors on those prompts, in more than one AI engine.
- See which sources the AI engines cite and which of them talk about you.
- Fix your own site first: it is what you control and what changes fastest.
- Repeat the measurement every month, with the same prompts.
If you want to start with data, Opivoty Lens runs an AI visibility audit of your brand and your competitors within 48 hours of onboarding.