GEO — Generative Engine Optimization
GEO isn't a hype discipline — it's whether AI systems name you as a source.
Classic rankings now answer only half the question. More and more purchase and vendor research ends inside ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews — in a synthesised answer that names a handful of sources and leaves out everything else. Generative Engine Optimization makes sure you're among those sources. Not everywhere — where the mention actually pays off.
Position
Being found and being recommended are two different things.
Classic SEO gets you into the results list. GEO decides whether an AI names you in its answer — and that follows different rules. An AI doesn't rank ten blue links; it builds an answer from a few sources it considers trustworthy. If you're not among them, you're not on page two. You're invisible.
The market has responded to this shift with promises that don't hold up to scrutiny. Guaranteed placements in AI answers don't exist: which sources a system cites changes from month to month and from prompt to prompt. Anyone selling guarantees is selling an illusion.
Our position is the same as it is for everything we do. GEO is not an end in itself. Not every industry and not every question runs through AI systems — and where it doesn't, GEO is wasted budget. We first establish whether and where AI visibility creates real commercial leverage for your business, and we invest only there. We make the outcome measurable: your share of the AI answers to commercially relevant questions — not a metric that looks good and means nothing.
Visibility in AI answers is only valuable when the question behind it leads to your business.
Approach
Four phases that make AI visibility steerable.
- 01Baseline: where does AI name you, where the competition?
We measure the starting point. For which commercially relevant questions does your brand currently appear in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews — and at what share relative to competitors. Only this share-of-answer baseline shows where you stand and where the gaps are.
- 02Commercial prioritisation, not scattergun
Not all AI visibility is valuable. We prioritise question clusters by commercial relevance: where do users prepare purchase or engagement decisions, and where is the AI answer the moment the choice is made. Topics without commercial impact, we deliberately leave out.
- 03Entities, structure and citability
AI systems cite sources they can clearly understand and place. We sharpen your entity — consistent naming across all channels, structured data per Schema.org, verifiable facts, author and source attribution — and build content so it's extractable as clearly delineated answer blocks. Plus the technical side: crawlability for AI bots, clean markup, llms.txt.
- 04Measurement and iteration, without guarantees
AI answers change constantly. We track your share of answer over time, keep content current and adjust. What we report is your real share of the relevant answers and how it develops — not a placement we couldn't guarantee in the first place.
Optional building block
Being recommended means being named elsewhere
LLMs don't draw their answers from your website alone. They learn from what third parties write about you: trade media, industry directories, comparison portals, community platforms. A substantial part of GEO therefore happens off your own pages — consistent entity signals across the open web, targeted digital PR, and presence where your category is discussed. This work is slower than on-page optimisation, but it decides whether an AI names you on its own.
GEO doesn't replace SEO. It builds on the same technical foundation — and goes one step further.
Capabilities & Stack
What makes AI visibility steerable.
Stack
REFERENCES
Companies we work with
Our work is rarely loud, but measurable. A selection of companies we have supported in recent years:
Engagements range from operational execution to strategic sparring and coordination of external partners.
Go deeper
Related services
These disciplines work in interplay.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about GEO.
- What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
- GEO is the systematic optimisation of content and digital presence so that AI systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews cite or recommend a brand as a source. Unlike classic SEO, GEO doesn't target a ranking position but a mention in the synthesised answer.
- How does GEO differ from classic SEO?
- SEO gets you into the results list, GEO into the AI answer. SEO optimises for rankings, GEO for selection as a cited source. Both share the technical foundation — clean structure, structured data, authority — but they're measured differently.
- Can a placement in AI answers be guaranteed?
- No. Which sources an AI system names changes from prompt to prompt and month to month. Serious work raises the probability of a mention and makes it measurable — it cannot guarantee one.
- Which companies is GEO worth it for?
- Above all where audiences prepare purchase or engagement decisions through AI assistants — typically explanation-heavy B2B services, e-commerce, and providers competing for information-driven queries. Where the audience doesn't research via AI, GEO is not a sensible investment.
- How is GEO success measured?
- By share of answer: the share with which a brand is named in AI answers to defined, commercially relevant questions, relative to competitors and over time. Not by classic rankings or click counts.
- Does GEO replace classic SEO?
- No. GEO builds on SEO. Without a clean technical foundation, structured data and authority, durable AI visibility isn't possible. The two disciplines work together, not against each other.
Engagement
Get named in AI answers — where it counts.
Want to know whether and where AI systems already recommend you — and which topics create the leverage?
Glossary — related terms
Definitions and depth on the recurring concepts of this service.
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)Generative Engine Optimization is the discipline of systematic optimization of web content for AI search systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI search products — the counterpart to SEO for the AI search era.
- AI OverviewsAI Overviews is Google's AI-generated answer block that appears above the classical organic search results and presents content from multiple sources in summarized form.
- AI ModeAI Mode is Google's fully-featured conversational AI search experience as a separate tab in search results — structurally distinct from AI Overviews through multi-turn conversation and deeper answer structures.
- Snippet SuitabilitySnippet suitability refers to the structural property of content to be usable in the form of short fragment citations in search engine answers, featured snippets, and AI-generated answers.
- E-E-A-TE-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) is Google's official evaluation framework for content quality — central in the Search Quality Rater Guidelines and bound into ranking via algorithms.
- Pillar ContentPillar content refers to particularly extensive, deeply researched articles that comprehensively cover a topic — a strategic format with significantly better visibility in classical search and AI search systems than short standard posts.