What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting your brand named and cited inside AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini — rather than only ranked in a list of blue links. When a buyer asks an assistant "what's the best tool for X," GEO is what determines whether your name is in the answer.

Here's why it's suddenly urgent. Search is splitting in two. The classic path — type a query, scan ten links, click one — still exists. But a fast-growing share of buyers now ask an AI assistant for a recommendation and act on the shortlist it gives them, without ever scrolling a page of links. On that path there's no page two, no "position four." You're either named in the answer or you're not in the running at all.

How you get named

It comes down to three things:

• →Machine-readability — the AI can cleanly parse your site: structured data, an llms.txt file, and clear entity signals about who you are and what you do.
• →Answer-shaped content — pages that directly answer the questions buyers ask, in plain, quotable prose the model can lift.
• →Trusted sources — you appear in the third-party places those models already read and cite: roundups, directories (G2, Capterra, Clutch), reputable communities.

Miss any one and you stay out of the answer. It's rarely a single broken switch; it's a discoverability gap across your content and where you show up online.

The first honest step is to look: ask the questions your buyers ask, across the assistants, and see whether you're named and who's cited instead. Most companies have never done this and are quietly surprised. That's what an AI-visibility check is for — and it's free to find out.