Generative engine optimization: getting cited by AI, not just ranked by Google.

Generative Engine Optimization (also called AEO, answer engine optimization) is the practice of structuring content so AI systems — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity — choose it as a source when generating an answer. It is a genuinely new discipline, but it builds directly on good SEO rather than replacing it.

How AI answer engines actually pick sources

These systems favour content that states a clear claim plainly, backs it with specifics rather than vague marketing language, and is structured so a passage can be lifted cleanly — a direct answer near the top of a section, not buried three paragraphs into a preamble. Authority signals still matter: sites that are already well-linked, well-established and topically consistent get cited more than a new, thin page saying the same thing.

Freshness matters more than in classic SEO for anything time-sensitive — an answer engine is more likely to surface and cite a recently updated page on a topic that changes, like pricing or compliance requirements.

What GEO shares with traditional SEO

Technical fundamentals do not change: fast pages, clean semantic HTML, proper heading structure and schema markup all help both a classic crawler and an AI system understand and trust a page. If your SEO foundation is weak, GEO will not fix it — the two are additive, not alternatives.

What GEO adds on top

Structured data becomes more directly consequential — FAQ schema, HowTo schema and clear Organization/Article markup give an AI system an unambiguous way to extract facts. Content that directly answers a specific, narrow question tends to outperform broad, generic pages, because it is easier for a model to lift a clean passage from it.

Being mentioned elsewhere — press, directories, industry roundups, comparison articles — feeds AI training and retrieval indirectly, in a way that is harder to measure than a backlink but real. Consistency of facts about your business across the web (name, offering, pricing tier) also matters more than it used to, since AI systems cross-reference sources rather than trusting one.

How to measure whether it is working

This is the honest weak point of GEO right now: measurement tooling is immature compared to classic search analytics. Manually testing your target queries against ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and tracking whether your site gets cited, is currently the most reliable method available, alongside watching for referral traffic from AI platforms in your analytics.