USE CASE
Generative engine optimization,
start to finish.
GEO is the work of getting your brand named and cited when someone asks an AI engine a question. People talk about it as a new discipline, but most of it is SEO you already know, plus one new habit: checking what the engines say. This guide covers the whole thing, and SEORCE handles every part of it.
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of making a brand and its content more likely to be named, cited and described accurately in answers written by AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. It builds on SEO and shares most of its foundations. What it adds is a focus on being used inside an answer, where there are no positions and often no click. The same work is also called answer engine optimisation (AEO) and LLM optimisation.
Key facts
- GEO and SEO overlap heavily. Clear structure, demonstrated expertise and valid schema help with both
- The goal is presence inside the answer: being named, being cited and being described accurately
- It has four parts: measuring visibility, being readable to AI crawlers, writing content worth quoting, and earning a place in the sources engines trust
- Results cannot be guaranteed. No tool controls what an AI engine says
- Change takes weeks, and the pace differs from one engine to the next
- SEORCE tracks 7 AI engines + Google AI Overview, AI Mode & Search, and connects that tracking to content and technical fixes
Last reviewed 15 October 2026 by the SEORCE team.
Ranking well doesn't put you in the answer.
Someone who asks an assistant gets one answer with a few brands in it. Your rankings still matter, since engines read the pages that rank. They just don't decide whether you're one of those few brands.
SEO alone works towards
- –A position in a list of links
- –A click through to your page
- –One search engine's index
- –Keywords with known volume
GEO adds
- ✓A place inside the answer itself
- ✓Being a source the answer draws on
- ✓Several engines, each reading different sources
- ✓Buyer questions that have no volume data
GEO has four parts.
Most teams do one or two of them well. The results come when all four are pointed at the same buyer questions.
Know where you stand.
Start by finding out whether engines name you, what they say and which sources they used. Without that, everything else is guesswork.
- Mentions and citationsWhether you are named, and whether your pages are used as a source.
- By engine and by promptEach engine and each buyer question counted separately.
- A baseline before any changeSo that later results can be compared with something.
Make sure AI bots can read you.
An engine can't cite a page its crawler couldn't reach or parse. This part is pure technical work, and it comes before content.
- Access for each botSearch bots and training bots are separate crawlers with separate rules.
- Content in the raw HTMLMany AI crawlers don't run JavaScript.
- Valid schema and clear headingsSo a machine can tell what the page is about.
Write pages worth quoting.
Engines use content that answers a question directly, shows expertise and can be lifted cleanly out of the page.
- The answer near the topState it plainly before you expand on it.
- EvidenceFigures, named sources and first-hand experience give an engine something to cite.
- A GEO score before you publishContent Studio scores every article for SEO, readability, E-E-A-T, GEO and intent.
- Your own voiceLearned from your documents, URLs and files.
Earn a place in what engines read.
Engines lean on sources beyond your site: directories, reviews, forums and publications. If those mention rivals and not you, your own pages can only do so much.
- The exact sources behind answersCitation tracking shows the page, thread or video, marked as cited or consulted.
- Links that carry Citation PotentialLink Impact Score shows which linking domains help rankings, AI citations or both.
- A clear identityThe same facts about who you are, on your site and on the profiles you own.
How to do GEO, in six steps.
The order matters. Measure first, fix access second, then content, then sources. Work done out of order is often wasted.
Choose the questions that matter
Twenty to fifty buyer questions, weighted towards comparing and choosing. These are what you measure against.
Prompt coverage →Record where you stand
Run each question on each engine, more than once. Note mentions, citations and sentiment. Keep it as your baseline.
AI Beacon →Find the sources behind each answer
The pages, threads and videos an engine used tell you what it trusts for that question.
Citation tracking →Name the cause of each lost question
There are four usual causes: the page can't be read, it doesn't answer the question, the trusted sources leave you out, or the engine is unsure who you are.
Prompt diagnosis →Free: GEO-friendly content checker →Fix the cause, in order
Access first, then content, then sources. Each fix is a different kind of work, often for a different person.
GEO content →AutoFix →Measure against the baseline
Keep the same questions running, and watch whether visits from AI tools follow.
Attribution →GEO checks you can run today.
Each covers a different part of the job: how citable a page's text is, which AI bots you let in, whether the knowledge bases know your brand, and whether you want an llms.txt file.
Six numbers, at least one from each part.
Put together, they tell you whether the work is reaching the answers or just keeping people busy.
| Metric | Part it counts | What it tells you | Read it with care |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mention rate | Measure | The share of tracked answers that name your brand. | It depends on which prompts you track. |
| Citation rate | Measure | The share of answers that used one of your pages as a source. | A page can be read without being credited. Count both. |
| Pages reachable, per bot | Be readable | The share of important pages each AI bot may fetch. | A deliberate block is a choice. Count the unintended ones. |
| GEO score | Be quotable | How ready an article is to be used in AI answers, before you publish. | It is a guide. AI Beacon shows whether engines quote the page. |
| Priority-zone links | Be in the sources | Linking domains that help both rankings and AI citations. | Citation Potential is an estimate, never a promise of a citation. |
| AI referral visits | Measure | People arriving on your site from AI tools. | It undercounts. Visits with no referrer land in direct. |
One lost question, through all four parts.
Ledgerly is our demo account, a B2B accounting tool for agencies. The team picked one buyer question it kept losing and worked through every part of GEO on it.
The question was a choosing one
It came from sales calls, at the stage where a missing mention costs most.
One mention in twenty runs
ChatGPT named Ledgerly once in ten runs. Gemini never did. That became the baseline.
Three sources carried the answer
A directory listing, a Reddit thread and a competitor's guide.
Two causes, no access problem
The page didn't answer the question, and the directory didn't list Ledgerly.
Content first, then the source
A multi-currency section was written in Content Studio. AutoFix repaired the schema. The directory went on the outreach list.
The same twenty runs, repeated
New runs are set against the baseline, and Web Analytics shows whether AI visits follow.
No result is shown. Nobody controls what an engine says next, and we'd rather not pretend otherwise.
Four jobs, on one set of data.
A tracker measures, a writing tool writes and a crawler audits, and each of them stops there. The trouble is that a lost question needs all of them: you find it in the tracker and fix it somewhere else. SEORCE runs the four parts in one project, so finding the problem and fixing it happen in the same place.
Prompt figure from SEORCE's own data, as of October 2026: 33.9M prompts on ChatGPT and 407.5M on Google AI Overviews. The 7 AI engines are ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok, DeepSeek and Llama.
Every module talks to the others.
GEO fails when the parts sit in different tools. The tracker finds a lost question, and nobody can tell whether the cause is the page, the crawl or the sources.
That's the reason the parts share a project in SEORCE. You can start at the lost question and check the page, the crawl and the sources in turn until you find the cause.
Ask SEORCE sits on top. It is your AI agent, in the app and on WhatsApp. Ask it a question in plain language and it answers from your project's data.
To start, sign up, link your WhatsApp number and text "Hi" to +1 (363) 200-3169.
Meet Ask SEORCE →How SEORCE handles each part of the job.
This page covers the subject as a whole. The pages below are product pages and related guides. Each goes deeper into one part.
AI Beacon
The SEORCE module that tracks what AI says about your brand.
See AI Beacon →Prompt coverage
The buyer questions you appear on, by stage.
See prompt coverage →Citation tracking
The exact sources behind each AI answer.
See citation tracking →Prompt diagnosis
Why an answer named someone else, and what to change.
See prompt diagnosis →Crawlability
Access checked for each AI bot.
See crawlability →GEO content
Write pages that are ready to be quoted in AI answers.
See GEO content →Content score
Five scores on every article, with fixes.
See content score →Link Impact Score
Which linking domains help rankings, AI citations or both.
See Link Impact Score →AI visibility tracking
The guide to the measuring part.
Read the tracking guide →AI crawler optimization
The guide to the readable part.
Read the AI crawler guide →AI content optimization
The guide to the quotable part.
Read the content guide →AI brand monitoring
The guide to checking what AI says about you.
Read the monitoring guide →Frequently asked questions.
Generative engine optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of making a brand and its content more likely to be named, cited and described accurately in answers written by AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews.
They overlap a lot. Clear structure, demonstrated expertise and valid schema help with both. GEO adds a focus on whether your content can be used inside an AI answer, and on the outside sources engines draw on.
Largely, yes. Answer engine optimisation and LLM optimisation are other names for the same work. The differences are in emphasis, and the method on this page applies to all three.
Yes. AI engines that search the web draw on pages that rank, and Google's AI Overviews are built on Google Search. Good SEO is part of the foundation of GEO.
Measure first. List twenty to fifty buyer questions, run them on each engine and record who is named. The AI visibility tracking guide covers that step in detail.
Weeks more often than days, and it differs by engine. Engines that browse the web live can pick up a change quickly. Those that rely on a periodically refreshed index take longer.
No. No tool controls what an AI engine says. What can be done is to find where you are missing, fix the cause and measure what happened.
A score on each article that shows how ready it is to be used in AI answers. In Content Studio it is one of five scores, beside SEO, readability, E-E-A-T and intent.
Not necessarily. The GEO score shows where an article stands before you publish. Whether engines quote it is something only tracking can tell you, which is what AI Beacon is for.
Content that answers the question directly, backs it with evidence and can be lifted cleanly. Pages from sources an engine already trusts for that subject are used more readily.
Yes, as a parsing aid. Valid structured data states plainly what a page is about. It does not earn a citation by itself.
No. llms.txt is a proposed convention and publishing one is optional. Access for AI bots and readable HTML matter far more.
With mention rate and citation rate for visibility, bot access for readability, a GEO score for content, and visits from AI tools for the outcome. Report them against a recorded baseline.
Ask SEORCE is SEORCE's AI agent, currently in beta. It works in the app and on WhatsApp, and answers plain-language questions from your project's data, such as which buyer questions you gained or lost this month. It is included for every user, with no usage limit. To use it on WhatsApp, link your number and text Hi to +1 (363) 200-3169.
Yes. SEORCE's free tools cover AI crawler rules, citable content, entity presence, schema and llms.txt, and the browser extension audits any page you're on.
Start with where you stand today.
Add your site and a handful of buyer questions. You'll find out who AI names for them, and where to start.
Not ready for an account? Use the free browser extension or any of the free tools.