Generative engine optimization (GEO): how to get your business cited by AI search
AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity now answer many questions before anyone clicks. What Google actually says about appearing in AI features, and the practical steps that get a business cited.
- Category
- SEO
- Published
- 31 Oct 2026
- Reading time
- 9 min
- Author
- Techsion team
Short answer: generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of making your business the source AI search tools quote — Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity and others. Google states plainly that there are no special requirements or tricks to appear in its AI features: the same SEO fundamentals apply, and a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet. What changes is emphasis — clear, quotable answers, consistent facts about your business across the web, and evidence that you know your subject.
What Google actually says
Google's Search Central guidance on AI features makes three points worth knowing before buying any “AI SEO” service:
- There are no additional requirements or special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode.
- Pages need to be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet in normal search.
- You do not need new machine-readable files or special markup to appear.
Visits from AI features are counted in your normal Search Console traffic. Other AI search tools have their own crawlers and rules, which is where the extra work lies.
1. Answer the question in the first paragraph
AI systems and featured snippets lift concise, self-contained answers. Start important pages with a two- or three-sentence answer, then expand. Use headings phrased the way people ask. Every article in this series opens this way — including this one.
2. Make your facts consistent everywhere
AI tools assemble answers from many sources. If your address, services or founding year differ between your website, Google Business Profile, directories and social profiles, the answer about you gets muddled. Keep one version of the truth, and mark it up with Organization and LocalBusiness structured data. Our guides to Google Business Profile and multi-location local SEO cover the listings side.
3. Publish things only you can say
Generic advice is everywhere, so models have no reason to cite you for it. Original information gets quoted: your own pricing ranges, process, data, case studies with specifics, and plain comparisons from experience. A page that says “here is what happened when we did this” is more citable than one that repeats what everyone says.
4. Earn mentions, not just links
AI tools lean on what other sites say about you: reviews, industry directories, press, partner pages and forums. Being named in the right places matters, even without a link.
5. Let the right crawlers in
Check your robots.txt. Many sites block AI crawlers by accident, through a security plugin or a copied template. Decide deliberately which you allow — for example OpenAI's search crawler, PerplexityBot or Anthropic's crawler — and make sure Googlebot is never blocked from pages you want in AI Overviews. Some sites also publish an llms.txt summary for AI tools; we do, but Google says it is not needed for its features, so treat it as optional.
6. Keep pages fast, clean and current
Pages that render content in plain HTML, load quickly and show a visible updated date are easier to crawl and quote. Out-of-date prices or services are worse than no answer.
7. Measure what you can
- Search Console for queries, impressions and clicks, including traffic from AI features.
- Analytics referrals from AI tools such as chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai.
- Regularly asking the main AI tools the questions your customers ask, and noting who gets cited.
- Enquiry forms that ask “how did you hear about us?” — more people now answer “ChatGPT”.
GEO is SEO with sharper edges
None of this replaces the fundamentals of SEO; it rewards doing them well. For the tooling side, see AI SEO tools for agencies and our own AI SEO Platform.
Want to know what AI search says about your business today? Ask us for a check — we will show you the questions where you are cited, and the ones where a competitor is.
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