Get Cited by ChatGPT,
Perplexity & Gemini —
Not Just Ranked on Google.

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring your content, brand entity signals, and technical setup so generative AI engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude cite and recommend your brand when users ask questions. The term was formalised in a peer-reviewed paper by Aggarwal et al. (Princeton, Georgia Tech, IIT Delhi, Allen Institute) published at ACM SIGKDD 2024, which showed targeted GEO tactics can lift a source's visibility in AI answers by up to 40 percent.

SEO optimises a page for its position among ten blue links on a results page — the unit of success is a rank. GEO optimises a passage for its likelihood of being extracted and quoted inside an AI-generated answer — the unit of success is a citation. The signals that drive them are related but not identical: SEO rewards backlinks and keyword coverage; GEO additionally rewards fluency, named citations, statistics, and unique wording. You need both, because AI engines still weight sources that already rank well in traditional search.

GEO is the broader discipline covering visibility across all generative AI surfaces. AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) is the narrower slice focused specifically on becoming the extracted, quoted answer inside an AI response. Every AEO engagement is a GEO engagement; not every GEO engagement is purely AEO. We run them together and cover AEO in depth on our Answer Engine Optimization service page.

ChatGPT (including SearchGPT), Perplexity AI, Google Gemini and AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude. Each engine draws from a different source pool with different weighting rules, so we build a multi-surface citation strategy rather than optimising for a single platform.

Most clients see their first measurable citation lift within 45 to 60 days. Meaningful, compounding citation share across multiple engines usually arrives between months 3 and 6. GEO often moves faster than traditional SEO because AI engines re-index and re-rank their preferred sources more frequently than Google's core ranking system.

We track (1) Citation Share of Voice — how often your brand is quoted in AI answers for target queries versus competitors, (2) Query Coverage — the share of buyer questions where you are cited, (3) Sentiment and Position — whether you are named first or listed as an alternative, and (4) Attributed Traffic — clicks and conversions from AI referral sources. We also track branded search volume and direct traffic as indirect indicators, since a large share of AI mentions never generate a click.

No. GEO usually starts with a targeted subset of your highest-intent pages — pillar articles, product and service pages, comparison content — restructured at the passage level. The Princeton research showed that AI engines extract small chunks of text, not whole pages, so passage-level rewrites deliver most of the value without a site-wide overhaul.

The Princeton study tested nine tactics on around 10,000 queries. The strongest gains came from three: adding named citations (author or institution plus source), inserting relevant statistics with attribution, and rewriting passages for fluency without changing the underlying claims. Keyword stuffing was the only tactic that reduced visibility, dropping it 8 to 10 percent. Our engagements are built around the tactics with published evidence, not folklore.