Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the set of changes that make a brand more likely to be named and cited when an AI engine answers a buyer's question. The term comes from a 2023 Princeton paper that tested which edits to a page raised its visibility in generated answers. In practice GEO covers three areas: pages that are easy to quote (a direct answer under a heading that is the question, facts in plain text, sources and dates), access for AI search bots such as OAI-SearchBot and ClaudeBot in robots.txt, and presence on the third-party sites the engines consult, from review platforms to Reddit.
GEO differs from SEO in what it optimises for. SEO targets a position in a list of links; GEO targets a mention inside a written answer that names a handful of brands and is often read without a click. The two overlap heavily, because most AI engines search the web before answering and read the pages that rank. A page that is well structured for Google is usually easier for an engine to quote, but GEO adds its own checks: is the bot allowed in, does the page state the fact the question asks for, and is the brand mentioned on the sites the engine trusts for that topic.
GEO is measured as AI visibility: the share of relevant answers in which the brand appears, tracked across repeated scans because answers vary from run to run. Since November 2026, a business can also claim its profile in ChatGPT through Business Hub, which corrects what ChatGPT shows about the business but, by OpenAI's own account, does not change what ChatGPT recommends. That part remains GEO work. See what is GEO for how SEOmatic does it.
