Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

What GEO actually is

Generative Engine Optimization is the layer of marketing work that targets answers, not links. Where SEO optimises a URL for a SERP position, and AEO optimises a passage for inclusion in an answer, GEO optimises the entire brand surface that generative systems learn from — your own content, third-party reviews, listicles, structured data, and the prompts your buyers actually use.

How generative engines pick what to say

Every major engine (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude) runs a similar four-stage loop:

1. Retrieve — fetch a working set of documents from search and embedded indexes.
2. Rerank — score documents for relevance, freshness, authority and citation-worthiness.
3. Synthesise — compose an answer, often naming 2–5 brands.
4. Cite — attach source URLs (always in Perplexity, increasingly in ChatGPT and Gemini).

GEO influences each stage: retrieval (indexability, entity coverage), rerank (authority signals, recency), synthesis (clear claim language, structured comparisons) and citation (earning third-party mentions).

The GEO playbook

• Entity coverage — make sure your brand, products, founders and locations have explicit, structured presence (Wikipedia, Wikidata, Crunchbase, schema.org).
• Comparison surface — own or be present in "best X", "X vs Y", "X alternatives" pages. These are the listicles AI engines quote.
• Evidence-led pages — publish pages with explicit claims, numbers and citations. AI synthesisers prefer extractable facts.
• Citation supply — get cited by trusted third parties in your category. Source influence compounds.
• Prompt-level monitoring — sample the prompts your buyers actually use, weekly, across all four engines.

How to measure GEO

Forget keyword rankings. The right metrics are:

• AI Visibility Score — share of sampled answers that mention you (see how it's calculated).
• Share of Answer — your mention count vs. tracked competitors on the same prompt set.
• Citation coverage — share of answers that cite a URL you own or influence.
• Source Influence Score — which third-party URLs drive your visibility.

GEO vs SEO vs AEO

SEO targets a position on a results page. AEO targets a passage inside an answer. GEO is the umbrella — it owns retrieval, rerank, synthesis and citation across every generative surface. In practice you do all three, but the strategy, success metric and reporting cadence are different.