What is GEO? How to get found in ChatGPT and AI search

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization: optimising your online presence so that AI search engines and chatbots know your business, describe it correctly and recommend it. Think of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and the AI Overviews at the top of Google. You will also hear terms like AI SEO, LLM SEO or answer engine optimisation (AEO); they largely describe the same thing.

Why GEO matters now

An AI assistant doesn't return a list of ten links but one composed answer. Ask ‘Which accountant in Leeds is good for freelancers?’ and the model names a handful of firms. If yours isn't one of them, you're out of the picture, however good your website is. At the same time, people click through less often when the answer already appears in the results. Visibility is shifting from ‘being clicked’ to ‘being mentioned’.

How does an AI model decide which businesses to mention?

Language models base their answers on two sources: what they learned during training and, increasingly, what they look up live on the web when the question is asked. In both cases these factors matter:

• Clarity: does your website state clearly and factually who you are, what you do, for whom and where?
• Consistency: are your business details the same everywhere, on your site, your Google Business Profile, LinkedIn and industry directories?
• Mentions: is your business named in reviews, comparisons, news articles and specialist websites that AI models trust?
• Crawler access: can AI crawlers reach your pages, and is the content readable directly in the HTML?
• Quotability: do your pages contain short, concrete answers, figures and definitions a model can easily reuse?

Getting found in ChatGPT: where to start

1. Measure where you stand. Ask several AI assistants the questions your customers ask, and record who gets mentioned and which sources are cited.
2. Make your own information indispensable. Publish clear about, service and FAQ pages with concrete facts, and add structured data (schema markup).
3. Build your reputation beyond your own site. Reviews, mentions in comparisons and coverage on relevant websites are strong signals for AI.
4. Get the technical basics right. Fast pages, content that is readable without JavaScript and a robots.txt that lets the right crawlers in.
5. Keep measuring. AI answers change constantly; regular measurement shows whether your visibility is growing.

SEO vs AEO vs GEO: what's the difference?

Term	Focus	Example
SEO	Ranking high in classic search results	Position 1 on Google for ‘accountant leeds’
AEO	Providing direct answers in search features such as featured snippets and voice assistants	Your definition appears as a featured snippet
GEO	Being mentioned and cited in generative AI answers	ChatGPT recommends your firm

Does GEO replace SEO? Is SEO dead?

No, and no. Google remains by far the largest search engine, and AI search engines rely on search results as a source for their answers. What is changing is what visibility looks like: fewer clicks on the ten blue links, more mentions inside summarised answers. Google's own guidance on generative AI features in Search also states that established SEO best practices still apply.

Which tools measure GEO?

A growing number of tools track how often your brand appears in AI answers. They're useful, but no substitute for judgement. The foundation is a fixed set of realistic questions your customers ask, repeated regularly across several assistants. Because AI answers vary, the trend over time matters more than any single measurement. Want help with this? See AI SEO services.

GEO and SEO: rivals or allies?

Allies. Google's AI Overviews draw largely on pages that already rank well, and other AI search engines also use search results as a source. A strong SEO foundation is therefore the best starting point for GEO, which is why I work with one combined approach: GEO/SEO.

My advice: don't treat GEO as a separate trick, but as an extra layer on top of good SEO. Businesses that communicate clearly and build a trustworthy reputation are rewarded by people, search engines and AI models alike.