Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of increasing how often and how favorably AI assistants - ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity - mention and recommend your brand in their generated answers. Where SEO optimizes for ranked links on a results page, GEO optimizes for being part of the answer itself.
AI assistants answer questions directly instead of listing ten blue links, and they name specific products, businesses and sources when they do. GEO asks: when a potential customer asks an AI 'what's the best X near me' or 'which tool should I use for Y', does your brand appear - and is it described accurately and positively?
GEO tactics overlap with classic SEO (authoritative content, structured data, consistent entity information across the web) but add new ones: publishing clear, citable definitions and comparisons, earning mentions in the sources LLMs weigh, keeping business data consistent where AI crawlers read it, and monitoring the answers themselves.
Measurement is the newest piece: unlike rank trackers, GEO measurement runs real prompts across the AI models and records whether your brand is mentioned, recommended, or beaten by a competitor - producing a presence score you can move over time.
Why it matters
A growing share of buying research now happens inside AI chats where there is no page-two to be found on - you are either in the answer or invisible. Brands that measure and improve AI visibility early compound an advantage the same way early SEO adopters did.
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