What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the discipline of making your website visible in AI-generated responses. When a user searches on Google and receives an AI Overview, or asks Perplexity a question, the AI generates a response citing sources. GEO is the practice of ensuring your website is one of those sources.
GEO is used interchangeably with AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) and AI Search Optimisation (AISO). The term GEO is most commonly used in the context of Google AI Overviews and Gemini, while AEO is more often used for ChatGPT and Perplexity.
"GEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is the next layer — optimising for the AI-generated summaries that now appear above the blue links your SEO has been targeting."
GEO vs. AEO: Is there a difference?
In practice, GEO and AEO are the same discipline. Both describe the process of optimising for AI-generated responses. The distinction is primarily terminological:
| Term | Primary context | Platforms |
|---|---|---|
| GEO | Generative AI responses | Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Copilot |
| AEO | AI answer engines | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude |
| AISO | AI search broadly | All of the above |
For practical purposes, optimising for GEO means optimising for all of the above. The signals that make a page more likely to appear in Google AI Overviews are the same signals that improve visibility in ChatGPT and Perplexity responses.
Google AI Overviews
Google AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience, or SGE) is Google's AI-generated summary that appears at the top of search results for certain queries. It is the most commercially significant GEO target for most businesses, because it appears on the world's most-used search engine.
AI Overviews are generated for informational queries — questions, comparisons, how-to requests, and definition searches. They cite 3–8 sources, displayed as cards beneath the AI-generated text.
What Google AI Overviews cite
Google's AI Overviews tend to cite pages that:
- Rank in the top 10 organic results for the query
- Have strong structured data (FAQPage, HowTo, Article schema)
- Directly answer the question in the first 100 words
- Have high domain authority and quality backlinks
- Load quickly and have clean, semantic HTML
GEO ranking signals
Research into GEO citation patterns has identified the following signals as most predictive of appearing in AI-generated responses:
Answer-ready content structure
High impactPages that directly answer the query in the opening paragraph, with supporting detail below, are significantly more likely to be cited.
FAQPage schema markup
High impactFAQ schema tells AI models that your page contains structured question-answer pairs — exactly the format AI responses are built from.
Domain authority
High impactAI models weight authoritative sources heavily. A strong backlink profile and third-party citations are critical.
Content freshness
Medium impactFor current-events queries, recently updated content is preferred. For evergreen queries, freshness matters less.
Page load speed
Medium impactSlow pages are less likely to be crawled and indexed by AI crawlers. LCP under 2.5 seconds is the target.
llms.txt presence
Medium impactA well-structured llms.txt file helps AI models understand your site's purpose and key facts without crawling every page.
How to optimise for GEO
GEO optimisation follows the same three-phase approach as AEO. See the full guide on What is AEO? for the complete implementation checklist. In summary:
- Allow AI crawlers in robots.txt (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, Google-Extended)
- Publish llms.txt at your domain root
- Add Organization, WebSite, and FAQPage schema markup
- Fix Core Web Vitals
- Rewrite key pages to answer the target query in the first paragraph
- Add FAQ sections with direct, concise answers
- Create definition pages for key terms in your industry
- Add HowTo schema to process-oriented content
- Build citations on Wikipedia, Wikidata, and Crunchbase
- Submit to G2, Capterra, Trustpilot, and industry directories
- Pursue press mentions and third-party reviews
- Optimise Google Business Profile
Frequently asked questions about GEO
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?
GEO, or Generative Engine Optimisation, is the practice of optimising a website to appear in AI-generated responses from tools like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. It is used interchangeably with AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) — both describe the same discipline.
Is GEO the same as AEO?
Yes, in practice. GEO emphasizes the generative AI aspect (AI generates a response), while AEO emphasizes the answer engine aspect (AI acts as an answer engine). The optimisation strategies are identical. Some practitioners prefer GEO when discussing Google AI Overviews specifically, and AEO when discussing ChatGPT and Perplexity.
How does Google AI Overviews work?
Google AI Overviews (formerly Search Generative Experience) generates an AI-written summary at the top of search results for certain queries. It draws from pages that Google's algorithms consider authoritative and well-structured. Pages with strong schema markup, clear answer-ready content, and high domain authority are most likely to be cited.
Does GEO affect my Google rankings?
GEO optimisation does not directly affect traditional Google rankings, but the two are highly correlated. The factors that make a page more likely to be cited in AI Overviews — strong schema, clear content, authority signals — also tend to improve traditional rankings. Investing in GEO is therefore complementary to SEO.
How do I know if my website appears in Google AI Overviews?
You can check manually by searching for your target queries in Google and looking for AI Overview citations. Kaistone's audit includes a Platform Presence score that assesses your likelihood of appearing in AI Overviews based on technical and content signals.
What is the difference between GEO and traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO targets ranked links in Google's blue-link results. GEO targets the AI-generated summaries that increasingly appear above those links. The underlying signals overlap significantly, but GEO places greater emphasis on structured data, answer-ready content, and third-party authority signals.