Guides

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

By Josh Goldberg. Published November 2, 2026.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of making a business's website and listings easy for AI assistants to find, read and cite when they write an answer. The name comes from a 2023 research paper. Google says optimizing for its own AI features is still SEO, and Microsoft's Bing guidelines say Copilot relies on the same core crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as traditional search. No one can promise that an AI will name your business.

Owners meet the term on sales calls and in proposals, often priced as its own line next to SEO. It is also where our name comes from. Every claim below about Google, Microsoft, OpenAI or Perplexity comes from that company's own documentation, listed under Sources.

Where does the term come from?

From a paper titled "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization," first posted to arXiv, an open research archive, on November 16, 2023. It was accepted to KDD 2024, a computer science conference. Its six authors include three researchers at Princeton University.

The paper called tools such as Bing Chat, Google's Search Generative Experience and Perplexity "generative engines": search tools that use large language models (AI systems trained on very large amounts of text) to gather and summarize information from several sources into one answer. GEO was its name for helping a source show up more inside those answers.

What the researchers tested

They built a set of 10,000 questions and called it GEO-bench. For each question they took the top five Google results as sources and had OpenAI's GPT-3.5 write an answer from them. Then they rewrote one of the five sources with an AI model, nine different ways, from adding quotations and statistics to stuffing in keywords. They measured how much of the new answer came from the rewritten source and how near the top it appeared.

Adding quotations, statistics and citations did best, raising one of the paper's two visibility scores by 30% to 40% over the unchanged source. That is where the "up to 40%" in the paper's summary comes from. Keyword stuffing, an old SEO habit, did not help. The authors report similar gains in a smaller test of 200 questions on Perplexity, where they uploaded the source text as files because Perplexity does not let users choose which pages it reads.

What it did not test

It is one lab study with a fixed setup.

Every source was already in the set the AI was reading. The study measured how much of an answer a page got, not whether an AI would find the page in the first place.
It did not test local businesses, phone calls or website traffic.
It did not measure live answers from ChatGPT or from Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode.
The authors say their methods may need to change as AI engines change, and that they did not test the effect on search rankings.

What later research found

A 2026 survey by Olivier Martinez reviewed 45 GEO studies published from November 2023 to July 2026. It found that the original paper's gains hold within its own setup, which assumes the source is already in front of the AI, and that they show neither that a page gets found nor any lasting effect on traffic. The most repeatable effects it found came from how relevant a source is to the question and where it falls among the sources the AI reads. It found no technique with a stable effect across platforms.

A 2025 paper by Mahe Chen and three colleagues compared AI search tools with Google. It found that the AI tools leaned heavily on earned media, meaning independent third-party sources, over brands' own sites and social media. Google's mix was more balanced.

None of these papers is platform documentation.

Is GEO different from SEO?

Google says no. Its guide to optimizing for generative AI features, added in May 2026, names both terms, AEO (answer engine optimization) and GEO. It says optimizing for generative AI search "is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO." The same guide says Google's AI features are rooted in its core Search ranking and quality systems.

Those features are AI Overviews (an AI-written summary that Google shows in some search results, with links to the pages it drew on) and AI Mode (Google's AI search mode, where a person can keep asking follow-up questions). Google's page on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in either one.

Microsoft's answer is close. Bing's Webmaster Guidelines cover Copilot together with Bing search and say both rely on the same core crawling, indexing and ranking foundation as traditional search. They still describe two jobs. SEO improves a site's technical quality, clarity and accessibility. GEO focuses on whether content is eligible for grounding and reference in AI answers. Grounding means having an AI pull in outside sources, such as current search results, and base its answer on them instead of only on what it learned in training. Bing adds that SEO comes with no guarantee of rankings or traffic, and GEO comes with no guarantee of grounding or citations.

ChatGPT and Perplexity, though, gather the web their own way. OpenAI's help center says ChatGPT search sometimes sends rewritten queries to partner search providers, and that a site has to let OpenAI's crawler, OAI-SearchBot, in to be eligible. Perplexity runs its own crawler, PerplexityBot. A crawler is a program that search engines and AI companies send out to read web pages. A site Google reads without trouble can still be closed to these.

So GEO is SEO done carefully, with more places to check. We use the word because owners use it. We do not sell it as a separate service.

What does an AI assistant need before it names a business?

Three things, at the level the platforms themselves describe.

A way in. For Google, a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. The site also has to be switched on under Search generative AI control, a Search Console setting that includes or excludes a site's links and content from AI Overviews, AI Mode and the generative AI features in Discover. Include is the default. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot. One robots.txt line or firewall setting can shut these crawlers out. Here is how to check yours.

Facts it can read and check. Bing's guidelines ask for facts and definitions stated explicitly, important information visible on the page itself and near the top, and the same clear names for people, organizations and places throughout. Google's AI guide contrasts commodity content, based on common knowledge, with content that "provides unique expert or experienced takes that go beyond common knowledge." When a client's AI chose Insight Investigative Group, Josh's own agency, from an 11-firm shortlist, its memo showed it confirming his license numbers in the state licensing database. What that AI wrote shows the checking step by step.

The same facts elsewhere. Google's AI guide says a Business Profile can help a business be visible in AI responses. Google's local ranking help says more reviews and positive ratings can help a business's local ranking. The Chen paper found AI search leaning on independent sources over a brand's own pages. When your site, your profile and your listings agree, an assistant has one set of facts to repeat.

Which facts, in what form and where on the page is the detailed part, and that is what the Tune-Up is for.

What does GEO work involve for a local business?

We review five areas. These are their public one-line descriptions:

Access: can Google, Bing and the AI assistants get into your site at all?
Fact Layer: once they are in, does the site tell them what they need to recommend you?
Consistency: do your name, address and phone match everywhere they appear?
Structure: can people and search engines find their way to the right page?
Trust: does the site show that you are current, well reviewed and worth the call?

Most of that list is SEO any careful vendor would recognize, checked with an AI reader in mind. If you wonder whether your customers use these tools at all, we collected the 2026 numbers with their sources.

What is not GEO?

Each of these gets sold as GEO, and each has a platform page against it.

An llms.txt file, for Google. llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file at the root of a website that gives AI tools a short summary of the site and links to its main pages. Google says Google Search ignores these files, so creating one neither helps nor hurts visibility there. Our llms.txt post covers what to spend the money on instead.
Chunking. Cutting pages into tiny pieces for AI. Google says there is no requirement to break content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it. Bing's guidelines ask that key facts make sense without outside context, which is plain writing, not chopped pages.
AI rewrites. Google says you don't need to write in a specific way just for generative AI search. Its spam policies list using generative AI to produce many pages without adding value for users as scaled content abuse. Its guidance on AI content says to fact-check and review everything an AI drafts before publishing.
Guaranteed placement. Google says indexing and serving aren't guaranteed. OpenAI says placement in ChatGPT search is not guaranteed. Bing says GEO comes with no guarantee of grounding or citations. We list nine signs a proposal is selling vapor.
A page for every town. Google's doorway abuse policy names multiple domains or pages aimed at specific regions or cities that funnel visitors to one page. Google says sites that break its spam policies may rank lower or not appear in results at all. That lands on your domain, not the vendor's.

How do you know if it is working?

Look in three places.

Google. Search Console's Generative AI performance report counts how many times links to your site were shown in Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode. Impressions are its only measure. Google says it reached all websites worldwide on August 31, 2026.
Bing. The AI Performance report in Bing Webmaster Tools counts how often your pages are cited in Microsoft Copilot and Bing's AI summaries. Microsoft says those numbers do not show ranking or placement inside an answer.
The answers themselves. A dated record of which businesses ChatGPT, Google, Perplexity and Copilot name when you ask the questions your customers ask. Neither report tells you who was named instead of you. Asking is the only way to see it, and our post on checking which businesses AI names shows how.

The GEO Audit reviews all five areas and records which businesses the AI assistants name for your service in your town today, with screenshots and the date. It costs $500, credited in full toward any package bought within 30 days.

Sources. Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization," arXiv, first posted November 16, 2023, version 3 June 28, 2024, accepted to KDD 2024, arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735. Olivier Martinez, "Optimizing Visibility in Generative Engines: A Critical Survey of Generative Engine Optimization (2023-2026)," arXiv, July 15, 2026, arxiv.org/abs/2607.14035. Mahe Chen, Xiaoxuan Wang, Kaiwen Chen and Nick Koudas, arXiv paper 2509.08919, September 10, 2025, arxiv.org/abs/2509.08919. Google Search Central, "Google's Guide to Optimizing for Generative AI Features on Google Search," published May 15, 2026, last updated July 10, 2026, developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide. Google Search Central, "AI Features and Your Website," last updated December 10, 2025, developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features. Google Search Central, "Google Search's Guidance on Using Generative AI Content on Your Website," last updated October 1, 2026, developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/using-gen-ai-content. Google Search Central, "Spam Policies for Google Web Search," doorway abuse and scaled content abuse, last updated August 28, 2026, developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies. Search Console Help, "Generative AI Performance Report (Search)," support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16984139. Search Console Help, "Search Generative AI Control," support.google.com/webmasters/answer/16908024. Google Business Profile Help, "Tips to Improve Your Local Ranking on Google," support.google.com/business/answer/7091. Bing Webmaster Tools, "Webmaster Guidelines," bing.com/webmasters/help/webmaster-guidelines-30fba23a. Bing Webmaster Blog, "Introducing AI Performance in Bing Webmaster Tools Public Preview," February 10, 2026, blogs.bing.com/webmaster/2026/2/Introducing-AI-Performance-in-Bing-Webmaster-Tools-Public-Preview. OpenAI, "Overview of OpenAI Crawlers," developers.openai.com/api/docs/bots. OpenAI Help Center, "Searching the Web with ChatGPT," help.openai.com/en/articles/9237897-searching-the-web-with-chatgpt. Perplexity, "Perplexity Crawlers," docs.perplexity.ai/docs/resources/perplexity-crawlers. Jeremy Howard, "The /llms.txt File," September 3, 2024, modified August 10, 2026, llmstxt.org.