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What Is Generative Engine Optimisation? A Plain Guide to GEO, AEO and SEO

Generative engine optimisation (GEO), also called answer engine optimisation (AEO), is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants to find, read and cite when they answer a question. It overlaps heavily with SEO. Nobody outside the platforms knows the exact mechanics, so nobody can honestly promise citations.

Prabhu SolutionsPublished 8 October 2026Last reviewed 8 October 202613 min read

On this page

What is generative engine optimisation?
GEO vs SEO: what is actually different?
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
What do we know about how AI answers choose their sources?
What can you do on a page to be easier to cite?
Should you let AI crawlers read your site?
How do you tell whether GEO is working?
SEO or AEO agency: which do you need?
How do you judge an agency selling GEO?
When should you ignore GEO?
Can anyone promise you a citation in an AI answer?
What is a sensible order of work?

What is generative engine optimisation?

Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of making your content and your business easy for AI products to find, understand and cite when they write an answer. Answer engine optimisation, or AEO, is the older and closely related name. Neither is a separate technology: both describe SEO work aimed at a different kind of reader.

The phrase was popularised by an academic paper posted to arXiv in 2023, which tested ways of rewriting content to see whether generative systems cited it more often. Its abstract reports visibility gains of up to 40 per cent on the authors' own benchmark and says effectiveness varies by domain. That is a ceiling under test conditions, not a result to expect on a real site.

The rest of this article is the plain version, written for someone deciding whether to spend money on it. For what the work involves when we do it, see our AI search optimisation page. Here the aim is narrower: what the terms mean, what is actually known, what to do on a page, and when to walk away.

The point
The rest of this article is the plain version, written for someone deciding whether to spend money on it.

GEO vs SEO: what is actually different?

SEO tries to rank pages in a results list and win the click. GEO tries to get your business named or cited inside an answer an AI writes. The foundations are shared: pages that can be crawled, indexed and trusted. The differences are in what you can observe, how much you control and how thin the evidence is.

Question	SEO	GEO and AEO
What are you trying to win?	A position in a list of results, and the click that follows.	A mention or citation inside a written answer, and sometimes a click.
Can you see the result?	Largely yes: impressions, clicks and positions in Search Console.	Only in part. Answers vary by run, account and product, and most assistants offer no reporting.
What does it depend on?	Pages that are crawlable, indexed, relevant and trusted.	The same, plus being understood as one specific, consistently described business.
How good is the evidence?	Years of practitioner testing and published search guidance.	Thin: platform documentation, a few academic papers and vendor studies of varying quality.
What do you control?	Your pages, your links and your technical set-up.	The same, but not which sources an assistant retrieves or how it words the answer.
Where does the work start?	Crawling, rendering and indexing, which is the ground technical SEO covers.	The same checks first, then entity clarity and answer-first pages.

Is GEO just SEO with a new name?

Mostly, yes, with real differences at the edges. The work that seems to earn citations, being crawlable, clear, specific and consistent, is work a competent SEO would do anyway. What is new is a wider set of places where you are described, answers that change from run to run, and reporting that is far weaker than a rankings report.

That is why “do I need GEO?” is often the wrong question. A site that cannot be crawled, or that describes itself differently on every profile, has an SEO problem first. Buying a GEO retainer on top of it means paying for a label. The order we would follow is the one on our SEO service page: foundations, then content, then authority.

There is one genuine shift in emphasis. Ranking asks whether your page is better than the others. Citation also asks whether a machine can lift a clean, correct statement out of your page without misreading it. That rewards plain writing and specific facts, which readers also prefer.

The point
Citation also asks whether a machine can lift a clean, correct statement out of your page without misreading it.

What do we know about how AI answers choose their sources?

Less than most sellers imply. Providers publish crawler names and some guidance, but not how sources are weighted. Treat anything claiming a precise formula as marketing. The table separates what providers have said from what is inference and what nobody outside the platforms can see.

Question	What providers say, or is reasonably established	What is inference or unknown
Do you need special markup or files?	Google's guidance on AI Overviews and AI Mode says no extra requirements, no special optimisations, no new machine-readable or AI text files and no special schema.org markup are needed. A page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet.	Whether other assistants read structured data or an llms.txt file is not confirmed by any provider we know of. Treat it as unproven.
Do assistants search the web first?	Many do, and show links. Google says its AI features may run several related searches across subtopics, which it calls query fan-out.	Which questions trigger a search, and how pages are chosen from the results, differs by product and is not fully published.
Does Google ranking decide who is cited?	For Google's features, being indexed and eligible for a snippet is a precondition.	How closely citations follow ordinary rankings varies between products and between studies. Distrust any single percentage.
Do AI crawlers need access?	OpenAI documents separate crawlers for search, training and user-initiated visits. Its documentation says a site that opts out of the search crawler will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though it can still appear as a link.	Other providers' rules differ and change. Check each provider's own documentation, not a reseller's summary.
Does the same question return the same sources?	Not reliably. Answers differ between runs, accounts, locations and over time.	How much of that variation is by design is invisible from outside.
Do mentions on other sites matter?	Assistants read more than your own pages, so contradictory descriptions across sources give them more to contradict.	The weight given to reviews, directories and third-party mentions is not published.
Do the research papers settle it?	The 2023 GEO paper tested rewriting tactics on a benchmark and reported gains of up to 40 per cent, varying by domain.	A benchmark result is not a result on your site, and the products it tested have changed since.

What can you do on a page to be easier to cite?

Make each page answer one question clearly, describe the business consistently, mark up only what is visible and let crawlers read the page. These steps are cheap and good for readers and ordinary search too. None promises a citation; they remove reasons for being passed over.

Make the entity clear. Name the business, its people, products and location the same way every time, with a real About page and organisation structured data. A model deciding whether two mentions are the same company should not have to guess.
Answer the question first. Write the heading as the question a buyer would type, then give the answer in the first forty to sixty words, then the argument. The writing discipline behind that is much of what content marketing should deliver.
Use real tables and lists. A paragraph saying that options vary gives a machine nothing to lift. A table with three columns and six rows can be quoted intact, and a reader can scan it.
Say what only you know. Describe how a decision is actually made in your business, what a job involves from first message to last, and what goes wrong most often. Generic advice can be paraphrased from a thousand sources; first-hand detail cannot.
Make structured data match the page. Google's guidance asks only that markup matches the visible text. Mark up what a person can see, validate it, and remove anything the page does not show.
Keep facts consistent everywhere. The same name, address, description and dates on your site, your profiles and your listings. The same discipline underpins local SEO citations, and for the same reason.
Show dates and authors honestly. A visible last-reviewed date and a named author, such as the people on our about page, help a reader and a machine judge whether a page is current. Refreshing the date without changing anything does neither.
Keep the page readable without scripts. Important text should be in the HTML the server returns, not assembled in the browser afterwards.

Should you let AI crawlers read your site?

Usually yes, if you want to be cited, but the choice is yours and it is more granular than yes or no. Some providers separate the crawler that powers search from the one used for training, so you can allow one and block the other. The common failure is blocking everything by accident.

OpenAI's documentation is a clear example: it lists one crawler for search results, one for training and one for visits a user triggers, each controlled separately in robots.txt. Google's guidance says its AI features follow the same controls as Search, such as noindex and snippet limits, and that a separate control, Google-Extended, governs use of content for training and grounding in some of its other systems.

Check three things. First, read your robots.txt as a crawler would. Second, check that a firewall or bot-protection setting is not turning away crawlers you want. Third, look at what the server returns before any script runs, because some crawlers may not render JavaScript. If the fix sits in the build, that is website development work rather than a content change.

The point
Second, check that a firewall or bot-protection setting is not turning away crawlers you want.

How do you tell whether GEO is working?

Imperfectly. Pick the questions your buyers really ask, run them on each product you care about on set dates, and record whether you are mentioned, how you are described and who else appears. Add assistant referrals in analytics and branded search in Search Console. Treat movement over repeated rounds as a signal, not proof.

The limits are structural. Google says clicks and impressions from its AI features are included in the Web search type in Search Console, so they cannot be separated out. Some assistant traffic arrives without a referrer and is filed as direct. Answers vary between runs, so one test says little.

Be careful with tools that report a visibility score. They usually sample a set of prompts, and the score is only as good as that sample. Ask which prompts, how many and how often, and keep a dated baseline of your own. A one-off SEO audit is a reasonable place to record where you stand before any work starts.

The point
A one-off SEO audit is a reasonable place to record where you stand before any work starts.

SEO or AEO agency: which do you need?

For most businesses, an SEO agency that treats AI search as part of the work is the better buy, because the foundations are shared. A specialist AEO or GEO agency makes sense mainly once those foundations are sound and you want structured testing of citations. GEO bought on top of a broken site is paying twice.

Your situation	Better fit	Why
The site has indexing, rendering or structure problems	An SEO agency, technical work first	An assistant cannot cite what it cannot find or read. Specialist AI work on top does not fix that.
You rank acceptably but are never named in AI answers	An SEO agency that can diagnose the cause	The cause may be access, an unclear entity or content that cannot be lifted. Diagnose before buying a label.
An advice-led B2B business whose buyers research with assistants	SEO with an explicit AI search workstream	Research-heavy purchases are likelier candidates. See how we think about B2B and SaaS search, then test your own market.
A local trade found through the map and reviews	Local SEO first	Map results and reviews drive most of the finding. Local search work comes before anything AI-specific.
You want one person's judgement before spending	An SEO consultant	Advice on order and priorities is cheaper than a retainer you may not need. An SEO consultant fits that shape.
You have not decided search is worth paying for	Neither yet	Decide the channel first. Our comparison of SEO and PPC is the place to start.

How do you judge an agency selling GEO?

Ask what they will change on your site, how they will measure it and what they refuse to promise. A credible agency describes the mechanism in plain words, admits what is unknown and ties the work to fixes you can inspect. Anyone selling a promised citation or a secret method is selling confidence, not method.

Ask for the changes page by page. A list of fixes you can inspect, such as rendering, markup, entity details and content structure, is evidence. A line item called “AI optimisation” with no contents is not.
Ask what they check first. If they never look at what a crawler receives from your pages, they are skipping the commonest blocker.
Ask for a dated baseline. How do assistants answer your buyers' questions today, and who do they cite? Without one, no later change can be shown to be a change.
Ask what the reporting cannot show. A good answer names the limits above. A weak one promises a dashboard that tracks every mention.
Treat promised placement as a reason to leave. There is no submission form for an organic AI answer, and hidden text or other shortcuts risk the same reception that manipulation has always had from search providers.
Ask why it is sold separately. Most of the work is the same ground as SEO. A premium bolt-on to an unfixed site is hard to justify.
Ask who supplies the original information. An agency can structure what you know. It cannot invent your expertise, and mass-produced pages written without your input read as generic.
Run the general checks too. Everything in how to choose an SEO agency, from named people to account ownership, applies to a GEO pitch at least as strongly.

When should you ignore GEO?

Ignore it when your basics are broken, when your customers do not use assistants for this purchase, or when it is sold as a separate premium product with no list of changes. Fix crawling, indexing and plain usefulness first. Each of those also improves ordinary search, so nothing is lost by waiting.

Whether your buyers use assistants is cheap to test. Ask the main assistants the questions a customer would ask and see what they say and cite. Advice-led purchases, such as B2B technology or legal and financial services, are more plausible candidates than a trade found on the map. We cannot tell from here which sector is ready, so check your own market rather than trusting a generalisation.

It is also reasonable to ignore it if you have not yet answered the earlier question of whether you need an SEO agency at all. If you cannot tell which situation you are in, tell us what you sell and to whom and we will say honestly whether this is the right next step.

The point
If you cannot tell which situation you are in, tell us what you sell and to whom and we will say honestly whether this is the right next step.

Can anyone promise you a citation in an AI answer?

No. There is no submission form for an organic AI answer, no ranking to buy and no stable result between runs. An agency promising a citation, or a position inside an answer, is promising something it does not control. Ask it to explain the mechanism; the explanation will tell you what you need to know.

What is a sensible order of work?

Start with access and rendering, then make the business unambiguous, then restructure the pages that matter around real questions, and measure on a schedule throughout. None of the steps waits for AI search to mature, because each also helps ordinary search. That is why the work normally sits inside an SEO engagement.

In practice that means checking indexing and what a crawler receives, fixing the entity details and structured data, rewriting key pages answer-first with specifics only you have, and recording a dated baseline of how assistants answer. Our own approach is set out on the AI search page, and it is deliberately the dull version.

If that sounds like less than the pitch you were given, good. The honest summary is that GEO is mostly good SEO with a clearer eye on how a machine reads you, and the part that is genuinely new is measured badly and understood partially. Spend in proportion to that.

The point
The honest summary is that GEO is mostly good SEO with a clearer eye on how a machine reads you, and the part that is genuinely new is measured badly and understood partially.

Questions people ask about this

What is the difference between GEO and AEO?

In practice very little. Answer engine optimisation is the older term, often about being the answer in snippets, voice results and AI summaries. Generative engine optimisation is newer and about being cited in text a model writes. Agencies use them interchangeably, so ask what will change on your site rather than which label is used.

Is generative engine optimisation worth paying for?

As part of SEO, often yes; as a standalone product, rarely. The checks that matter, crawl access, clear entities, direct answers and accurate markup, also help ordinary search. Paying a premium for the label while the basics are unfixed is poor value, and nobody can honestly promise the outcome.

Does llms.txt help me appear in AI answers?

There is no good evidence that it does. Google's guidance on its AI features says you do not need new machine-readable files or AI text files to appear, and we know of no major provider publishing that it relies on llms.txt. It is harmless to add, but do not pay for it as a ranking lever.

Should I block AI crawlers in robots.txt?

It depends on what you want. Blocking a provider's search crawler can keep you out of its answers, while blocking its training crawler is a separate choice. OpenAI, for example, documents separate crawlers and controls. Decide provider by provider from their own documentation, and check a firewall is not blocking everything by accident.

Does structured data get me cited by ChatGPT or Gemini?

That is unproven. Google says no special schema.org markup is needed for its AI features, only that markup matches the visible text. Structured data still helps ordinary search and reduces ambiguity about who you are, so do it correctly, but not as a promised route to citations.

How can I check whether AI assistants mention my business?

Ask the questions your buyers ask, in their wording, on each assistant you care about, and record the answer, the sources and the date. Repeat on a schedule, because answers vary between runs. Also watch assistant referrals in analytics and branded search in Search Console. No tool sees everything.

Do I need an SEO agency or an AEO agency?

Usually an SEO agency that treats AI search as part of the work, because the foundations are shared. A specialist makes sense once crawling, indexing and content basics are sound and you want structured testing of citations. If you are unsure, ask each what exactly it would change on your site.

Can an agency promise I will be cited in AI answers?

No. Retrieval varies by product, question wording and run, and nobody outside the platforms controls it. An agency can improve the conditions for being cited and measure the result honestly. A promise of citations signals confusion or sales pressure; treat it as a reason to look elsewhere.