Generative engine optimization (GEO)

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is a set of practices for getting a brand mentioned and recommended accurately in AI-generated answers. Its concern is not where a page ranks on a results page, but whether a large language model mentions you when it answers directly, and whether what it says is right.

The “generative engines” are AI assistants and answer features such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude, and, in China, Doubao, Tencent Yuanbao, Kimi and DeepSeek (see AI search platform). You’ll also hear the field called AI search optimization, LLM SEO or AI visibility work; the terms overlap heavily.

How GEO differs from SEO

SEO optimizes which link a user clicks. GEO optimizes how an AI describes you.

	SEO	GEO
What you compete for	A position in a list of links	Being named, and named correctly, in a generated answer
Success metrics	Rankings, clicks	Mention rate, first recommendation rate, description accuracy
Unit of output	A results page	An answer that changes from one ask to the next

The two are not opposites. Crawlable, well-structured, accurate pages help both. See GEO vs. SEO for a fuller comparison, and AEO for the closely related content-side discipline.

Where a company can start

Pick one real buying scenario — for example, “how a manufacturing team chooses in-house AI training.” List the questions customers ask at each stage: learning about the concept, comparing vendors and deciding to buy. Then check whether your website has a page that answers each one. Cramming every question onto the homepage makes it hard to find what a specific service covers and what it delivers.

Put together three documents first:

• A fact sheet for the company and its products. It standardizes the brand name, the scope of services and the current entry points.
• A customer question list. It separates customer types and decision stages (see question set).
• A file of public evidence. It records each source, its publication date and the conditions under which it applies (see third-party evidence).

Results figures with no measurement behind them should not be presented as client outcomes.

How to tell whether things have improved

Hold the platforms, the question set, the test dates and the test conditions constant, and save the raw answers along with the cited URLs. Record separately:

• whether the brand was mentioned;
• whether the description was correct;
• whether the cited sources support what the answer says.

Recommendation order in any single answer fluctuates. A single screenshot is not a stable ranking, and a failed test shouldn’t be recorded as “not mentioned.”

For example, if a question ran successfully and the answer didn’t include the brand, count it as not mentioned. If the platform returned nothing, mark the sample as missing and retest. Report the number of valid samples alongside the results so readers know how many real answers a conclusion rests on. This is the logic of a baseline retest.

Does GEO need a separate website?

Usually not. Start by improving the site you have: say clearly who each service is for, what problem it solves, what is delivered and what evidence backs it up, and make sure important pages are reachable from navigation and related content.

Google’s guidance on its AI search features still treats basic SEO and indexable content as the foundation and does not require any special AI markup. That describes Google’s requirements only; it can’t be assumed that other platforms work the same way.

What GEO can and can’t promise

GEO improves the odds that AI systems find, understand and correctly describe your brand. No one controls how a model answers, so no honest provider can guarantee citations, recommendations or a fixed position. What can be promised is a measurable method: a fixed baseline, a list of verifiable problems and a retest under the same conditions.

Next steps

To take stock of where you are today, start with the free GEO audit. To see how Moments delivers this as a service — positioning, content and execution order — see generative engine optimization services. Neither implies guaranteed inclusion or recommendation.