The short answer
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making a business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity to find, understand and name when they write an answer.
It covers clear answers on your own pages, consistent facts about the business across the web, and pages that crawlers can read. It improves the odds of being named; it cannot guarantee it.
Why the term exists
For twenty years, being found online mostly meant appearing in a list of search results. A person typed a few words, scanned ten links and chose one. Search engine optimisation (SEO) grew up around that list.
AI assistants change the shape of the result:
- A full question. A person asks something like "which accountant in Leicester is good with small charities?", and gets a written answer.
- A short list of names. That answer may name two or three businesses, sometimes only one, and may link to the pages it relied on.
- Missing means unseen. If a business is not in the answer, the person may never see it.
GEO is the name that stuck for the work of being in that answer. Other names, such as AEO and LLMO, describe much the same thing; our page on GEO, AEO and LLMO sets out where they differ.
What the work involves
- Answering questions plainly. Pages that state the answer to a customer's question in the first lines, in words a customer would use, are easier for an assistant to quote than pages that circle around it.
- Consistent facts. Name, services, area, prices and contact details should match on your site, your Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles. Conflicting facts make an assistant less sure, or lead it to repeat the wrong one.
- Readable pages. Crawlers need to be allowed in and need to find the text without running complicated scripts. Clear headings and schema markup help machines read the facts correctly.
- Mentions elsewhere. Assistants often lean on what other sites say: reviews, trade bodies, local press, comparison articles. Earning genuine mentions is slow but matters.
- Measuring. Asking a fixed set of customer questions repeatedly, and recording who is named, is the practical way to see whether anything has changed.
How GEO relates to SEO
- GEO does not replace SEO. Many assistants search the web before answering, so a page that is hard to find in search is often hard for an assistant to find too.
- The difference is the aim and the measure: being named and described correctly, rather than a position in a list.
Our guide to GEO vs SEO goes through what stays the same and what changes.
What GEO cannot do
- It cannot make an assistant say a particular thing. Answers are generated fresh each time, vary with wording, location and date, and differ between assistants.
- It cannot quickly change what a model learned during training.
- It cannot make up for a business that customers do not talk about, or a service it does not really offer.
Anyone selling GEO should be able to explain these limits plainly. If a term on this page is unfamiliar, the GEO glossary explains each one in a few sentences.
Where to start
- Write down the questions your customers actually ask. The question set builder gives you a first draft.
- Check how assistants answer them today, several times each.
- Fix the page that should answer each question, starting with the questions that bring your best work.
- Re-check the same questions the same way each month.
Honest limits
GEO Agency's tools run on Google Gemini. Page scores and answer simulations are estimates of how an assistant might treat a page, not a record of what ChatGPT or any other assistant said to a customer. We do not promise rankings or a place in AI answers, because nobody can.
Common questions
Is GEO just a new name for SEO?
Partly. Much of the groundwork is the same: useful pages, clear structure, a site crawlers can read. What is new is the goal. Instead of a position in a list of links, you want to be named, described correctly and linked as a source inside a written answer.
Which assistants does GEO apply to?
Any tool that writes an answer instead of, or as well as, showing links: ChatGPT, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and others. Each works differently, so the same page can be used by one and ignored by another.
How long does GEO take to work?
Nobody can say for certain. Assistants that look things up on the web at the time of asking may pick up a change once your page is recrawled. Changes to what a model learned during training take far longer and are outside your control.
Can someone guarantee my business appears in AI answers?
No. Nobody controls what an assistant writes. Treat any guarantee of placement as a warning sign. What can be promised is the work: checking, fixing the likely causes and measuring the change honestly.
Do I need a specialist to do GEO?
Not always. A marketer who can edit pages and keep a simple record can do a lot of it. Tools save time on checking and scoring, and a specialist helps when there are many pages or many clients.