Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Generative engine optimization (GEO) refers to practices meant to get a brand or page mentioned or cited in answers written by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews.

The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Aggarwal and colleagues, later presented at KDD 2024. The researchers built a benchmark of queries and tested content changes on a simulated generative engine. Adding citations, quotations from relevant sources, and statistics raised a source’s visibility in the generated answers, by up to around 40% in their tests, with the largest gains for sources that started lower in the rankings. That is the proven part, and it comes with limits: it was measured on their own test setup, not on live ChatGPT or Google.

Much of what is sold as GEO goes beyond that evidence. Claims about specific prompts, special files, or guaranteed citations are unverified. The practices with the most support are ones that also help SEO: clear facts, original data, named sources, and being mentioned on other trusted sites.

Two outcomes are worth separating. An AI mention is your brand named in the answer text. An AI citation is a link to your page as a source. Tracking both across a fixed set of prompts over time, sometimes called AI share of voice, is how teams measure GEO today.