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GEO & AI search

GEO: How your business shows up in ChatGPT, Gemini and co.

SERP TOWN Editorial · · 9 min read

Illustration: A red radio tower at the edge of a colorful cartoon city sends yellow signal waves to empty speech bubbles above the houses; one speech bubble glows and stands out.

GEO, short for Generative Engine Optimization, means preparing your website so that AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, mention and link to your business in their answers. Some people also call it "geo seo". It is not a replacement for classic SEO; it builds on it. For Google's AI Overviews in particular, if you want to appear there as a source, you need the same foundations as in normal Google Search. What is mainly new is that the result is no longer one link among ten others, but a sentence in which your name either appears or does not.

In this guide you will learn where the term comes from, what Google and OpenAI officially say about it, what a study on GEO found, and which seven steps you can take today.

What is GEO?

The term "Generative Engine Optimization" was coined by a research team around Pranjal Aggarwal. The study "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" first appeared in November 2023 and was presented in 2024 at the KDD research conference in Barcelona. The researchers call search systems that write answers with language models "generative engines". Such systems fetch suitable sources and summarize them into one answer. For website owners this is a new situation: they have little influence over when and how their content shows up in these answers. GEO is meant to help with exactly that.

In everyday use you hear many names for it: GEO, "geo seo", AI SEO, LLM SEO or Answer Engine Optimization. They almost always mean the same thing: becoming visible when the answer no longer comes from a list of results, but from an AI.

How AI answers come about

Every provider works differently, and none of them fully discloses its exact methods. A few things, however, are officially described.

Google: According to Google's page "AI features and your website" (as of December 2025), AI Overviews and AI Mode show links to websites that support the answer. Both can use a technique called "query fan-out": in the background they run several related searches on subtopics and so find more suitable pages. According to Google, AI Overviews only appear when they add value compared with normal search, and so they often do not appear at all.

ChatGPT: In its overview of crawlers, OpenAI describes how the OAI-SearchBot crawler crawls websites for ChatGPT's search feature. Pages that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT's search answers, except at most as a simple link that takes people to the website (a navigational link).

Perplexity: In its crawler documentation, Perplexity explains that PerplexityBot crawls websites for Perplexity's search results and links to them.

For its experiments, the GEO study built a simplified model of such systems: it fetches suitable sources and has a language model write an answer with source citations from them. The study also checked its results on Perplexity.

GEO and SEO: what stays the same, what is new

The most important news comes from Google itself: according to Google, there are no additional requirements and no special optimizations for AI Overviews and AI Mode. The familiar SEO foundations remain valid. A page has to be in the index and be eligible to be shown with a text excerpt (snippet); then it can appear as a source. You do not need new machine-readable files, separate "AI text files" or special schema markup (extra code that tells search engines facts such as your address or opening hours in machine-readable form) for this. Even so, there is never a guarantee that Google will include a page.

What the GEO study shows is still interesting. The research team tested nine ways of revising a text and measured how visible the source was in the AI answers afterwards. The results apply to their own test setup with a collection of many search queries. They are not a promise for every website:

For you this means: good, well-supported and clearly written content is the foundation, for Google as well as for AI answers. According to the study, keyword stuffing hardly helps in AI answers.

Seven steps for GEO SEO

The following steps are based on the official guidance from Google, OpenAI and Perplexity and on the GEO study. Where a step is a recommendation rather than a proven effect, we say so.

1. Let the right crawlers onto your website

For AI search to use and link your pages as a source, its crawlers must be allowed to read them. Check your robots.txt, the file that sets which programs may visit your website.

Separate from these are the crawlers used to train AI models. If you block GPTBot, you signal to OpenAI that your content should not be used for training. According to OpenAI, this is independent of OAI-SearchBot. Google has the token Google-Extended. According to Google's overview of its crawlers, it controls whether your content is used to train the Gemini models and for what is called grounding, meaning looking up content while Gemini writes an answer. It has no effect on Google Search. So if you block Google-Extended, that can affect whether Gemini uses your content.

A tip if your website runs through Cloudflare: on July 1, 2025, Cloudflare announced that it would block AI crawlers by default unless they pay for the content. Check in your Cloudflare account which AI crawlers are blocked. Google points out that crawling must be allowed not only in robots.txt but also by your host or network service (CDN).

2. Make sure Google includes your pages

For AI Overviews and AI Mode, a page has to be in the index and be eligible to be shown with a text excerpt. Verify your website in Google Search Console. There you can see which pages are included and spot technical problems early. Google explicitly recommends this.

3. Put the important things on the page as text

Google itself names this as a foundation: important content should be on the page as text, not only in images, videos or graphics. This applies especially to what sets you apart. What do you offer, for whom, where, on what terms? If a program cannot find that in the text, it cannot mention you for it either.

What this means for your business in practice depends on its type. One example is the Local Business district for businesses with a fixed address.

4. Answer your customers' questions directly

Collect the questions customers ask you in conversation or by email and answer them on your website. It helps to give the answer first and the explanation after. This is our recommendation, not an effect measured in the study. We assume that a clear answer also makes it easier for an AI to find the right passage. That is not proven.

5. Back up your statements with numbers, quotations and sources

This is the step with the strongest evidence from the GEO study. Citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics brought the biggest gains there. For you this means: instead of "many satisfied customers", write what can actually be counted, and link to where a number comes from. But never make up numbers or quotations. A false claim does more harm than good.

6. Write clearly and understandably

Simple, fluent language also increased visibility in the study. Short sentences, clear terms, one idea per paragraph: this helps people read, and in the study it also helped visibility in the AI answers.

7. Keep your details consistent and up to date everywhere

Google recommends that structured data (the code mentioned above) matches the visible text and that the details in your Google Business Profile and in Merchant Center (Google's tool for managing online shops' product data) are up to date. Name, address, opening hours, services and prices should read the same on your website, in your Google Business Profile and in directories. That AI assistants prefer businesses with consistent details is plausible, but not officially proven.

Getting mentioned in ChatGPT and co.

Many people want to know how to get named or cited directly in ChatGPT or in AI answers. So far, what is officially confirmed is mainly the technical foundation. OpenAI recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot so that your site can appear in ChatGPT's search answers. Everything beyond that, such as how often a brand appears in AI answers and why, the providers do not disclose. Our guide Get found in ChatGPT: What OpenAI officially says in the SERP TOWN Library covers this in detail.

How to tell whether it works

GEO cannot yet be measured as precisely as classic SEO. But there are a few indicators:

What GEO is not

GEO is not a trick and not a guarantee. No provider promises to mention a particular website. For Google's AI features you need neither a separate AI file nor special markup. And GEO does not replace the work on good content: the methods that performed best in the study mainly make content more credible and clearer.

Your next step

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