Generative engine optimization: how to show up in AI answers

A growing share of questions no longer ends in a list of links. People ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or the AI overview at the top of Google, and they get a written answer with a few sources. Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the work of becoming one of those sources.

What is generative engine optimization?

GEO is the set of practices that help AI assistants find, understand and cite a brand when they answer a question. It is also called answer engine optimization (AEO). It does not replace SEO. It extends it to a place where the result is a paragraph instead of a ranking.

How is GEO different from SEO?

How do AI assistants choose their sources?

Assistants combine two things: what the model learned during training and what it retrieves from the web at the moment of the question. When they search, they rely on search indexes. That is why a site that cannot be crawled, or that does not rank for anything, is rarely cited.

From the pages they retrieve, they favor passages that answer the question directly, facts that appear in more than one reliable source and brands that are described consistently across the web.

Seven changes that improve visibility in AI answers

1. Answer the question in the first lines

Each page opens with a direct answer of two or three sentences. Context and nuance come after. A passage that makes sense on its own is easier to cite.

2. Organize content around real questions

Headings written as the questions customers ask, short paragraphs, lists for steps and tables for comparisons. Sales calls, support emails and the search terms in Search Console are the best sources for those questions.

3. Publish specific information

Generic text is interchangeable. Prices or price ranges, timelines, service areas, processes, first-hand data and real cases give an assistant something only this brand can provide.

4. Describe the brand the same way everywhere

Name, description, services, address and contact details match on the site, on Google Business Profile, on LinkedIn and in directories. Structured data for the organization makes that identity explicit to machines.

5. Earn mentions outside the site

Reviews, industry directories, press, partners and client case studies. Assistants trust what several independent sources confirm.

6. Keep the content accessible

• The main content is present in the HTML and does not depend on scripts to appear.
• robots.txt does not block the crawlers of the assistants where the brand wants to appear.
• Pages load fast and each one has a single, clear topic.

7. Keep the information up to date

Old dates, prices and figures reduce trust. Reviewing the key pages every few months and showing the date of the last update helps readers and machines alike.

What does not work?

• Publishing dozens of automatically generated articles with nothing new to say.
• Repeating keywords or hiding text for machines.
• Blocking every AI crawler and expecting to be recommended.

How is GEO measured?

Measurement is still less precise than in SEO, but three practices give a reliable picture:

1. A fixed list of questions. Twenty to thirty questions a customer would ask, tested every month in the main assistants. The record shows whether the brand is mentioned, how it is described and which sources are cited.
2. Referral traffic. Analytics shows the visits that arrive from assistants. The volume is small, but these visitors usually arrive with a clear intention.
3. Branded searches. People who discover a brand in an answer often search for its name afterward.

Where to start

Start with the pages that already bring visits from search engines. They are indexed, they have history, and improving how they answer is the shortest path to being cited.

At TersLab, SEO and AI positioning are part of the same growth work: one content plan, measured in both places.