What is generative engine optimisation?
It's making your business easy for AI tools to find, understand and quote, so you're named when someone asks for a recommendation or an answer.
The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Princeton, IIT Delhi and others, which looked at how websites can show up in answers that AI writes from search results. Since then it has picked up a few other names: AI SEO, answer engine optimisation (AEO), LLM SEO and ChatGPT SEO. The labels differ. The job is much the same.
What changes is how you measure it. SEO counts rankings and clicks. GEO counts whether you're mentioned, whether you're cited as a source, and how the answer describes you.
How is GEO different from SEO?
SEO aims for a high ranking in a list of results. GEO aims for a mention inside a single written answer. The foundations are the same, but three things shift.
- The goal: being quoted or recommended, not just ranked. A buyer may never click through, so the answer itself has to describe you well.
- The sources: AI tools read comparison lists, directories, reviews, forum threads and press as well as your site. What others say about you carries real weight.
- The measure: mentions, citations and the reason given, checked across several assistants, alongside your rankings and traffic.
What does the research say works?
The 2023 GEO paper tested different ways of rewriting web pages and measured how often each version appeared in AI-generated answers. Three changes did best: citing credible sources, adding quotations from experts, and adding relevant statistics. Together they lifted visibility by up to 40%.
Keyword stuffing, the old trick of repeating a phrase, did little or nothing. AI tools are looking for content that's specific, sourced and easy to quote.
Those were tests under research conditions, so treat them as a guide rather than a rule. But they match what we see: pages with clear facts, real figures and named sources get quoted more than pages full of general claims.
How do you do generative engine optimisation?
These are the eight steps we work through, in order.
- List the questions your buyers ask AI tools, run them in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google, and note who gets cited and why.
- Put a clear answer or definition in the first sentences of each page, and straight after each heading.
- Publish specific facts: prices, timings, locations, what's included and how to start.
- Make content worth quoting: your own figures, named sources and quotes from the people who do the work.
- Add structured data that matches the words on the page.
- Check search and AI crawlers can read your site, with the key copy in the HTML rather than loaded by scripts.
- Keep your name, address, phone number and description identical on your site, Google Business Profile, Bing Places and every directory.
- Earn mentions where AI tools look: comparison lists, reviews, forum threads and press coverage. Then run the same questions every month.
What doesn't work?
Five habits waste time or make things worse.
- Keyword stuffing. The research found it does little or nothing for AI answers.
- Pages of AI-written filler. If there's nothing specific to quote, nothing gets quoted.
- Hiding facts behind "contact us for a quote". AI tools compare what they can read.
- Blocking AI crawlers by accident, through an old robots.txt rule or aggressive bot protection.
- Treating GEO as separate from SEO. AI tools lean on search results, so weak SEO means weak GEO.
How long does generative engine optimisation take?
There's no fixed timeline. Changes to your own pages can be picked up as soon as they're crawled again. Mentions, reviews and coverage elsewhere build up over months.
BidScript, a UK bid management software company, went from about 10 to about 400 Google AI answers a day in 3 months. The work behind it was clear facts, comparison pages, structured data and digital PR, including a feature in The Times.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. AI tools build many of their answers from search results, so the businesses that rank well have a head start. GEO is a layer on top of SEO, not a replacement for it.
What has changed is that ranking alone isn't the finish line. A buyer who asks an assistant may only ever see the names in its answer. So it's worth doing both, and checking both every month.