What is GEO?

Also called generative engine optimization.

In short

GEO, or generative engine optimization, is another name for optimizing content to appear in answers written by generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. It means much the same as AEO.

The term comes from a 2023 research paper that tested how changes to web pages affected whether generative search engines cited them. It is now used loosely, and interchangeably with AEO, for any work aimed at visibility in AI answers.

Whichever name you use, the fundamentals are the same: let the right crawlers in, serve content in the HTML, and write pages that answer questions directly.

Updated October 30, 2026

Guides that cover this

Writing pages AI assistants can quote
2 min read
Put a direct answer to the page's main question in the first few sentences, give each section a heading that says what it answers, and back claims with specifics you can stand behind. That's ordinary good writing, and it's what assistants quote.

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What is GEO?

Guides that cover this

Writing pages AI assistants can quote

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