What Is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?
GEO is the practice of structuring and promoting content so it’s more likely to be cited or referenced by generative AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Microsoft Copilot — when they generate an answer to a user’s question.
How GEO Differs from Traditional SEO
Traditional SEO optimises to rank in a list of links a user then clicks through. GEO optimises for a different outcome entirely: being the source an AI system pulls from and cites when it writes a direct answer, often without the user clicking anywhere at all. That shifts the success metric from rankings and clicks toward being mentioned, cited, and represented accurately inside AI-generated responses.
How GEO Relates to AEO and AIO
The terminology here hasn’t fully settled industry-wide. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) and artificial intelligence optimisation (AIO) describe closely related ideas — optimising for direct-answer and AI-driven search respectively — and in practice, GEO is often used as the umbrella term for all of it: getting cited by generative AI, regardless of which specific product or engine is doing the generating.
