Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of increasing how often generative AI engines include your content in their answers. A generative engine is an AI tool that writes an answer from web sources. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews are examples. Researchers introduced the term GEO in 2023.
Where the term GEO came from
The term comes from a research paper with the title GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. Researchers from Princeton University and the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi wrote it with two independent researchers. They published it in November 2023. The paper appeared at the KDD 2024 conference in August 2024.
The authors define GEO as a framework that helps content creators improve the visibility of their content in generative engine answers. They also built GEO-bench. GEO-bench is a large set of user questions from many subject areas, with web sources for each question.
What the GEO research found
The researchers tested different changes to web content. Then they measured how visible the content was in the generated answers. The paper reports that GEO methods increased visibility by up to 40% in their tests.
| Change to the content | Result in the study |
|---|---|
| Add quotations | One of the best results. |
| Add statistics | One of the best results. |
| Cite sources | A strong result. |
| Keyword stuffing | Worse than the unchanged content. |
Note: The study used a test setup and its own benchmark. Live AI tools change often. Use these results as a guide, not as a promise.
GEO and AEO
GEO and answer engine optimization (AEO) have the same goal. Both try to get a brand into AI answers. Many marketing teams use the two terms as one practice.
AEMFix uses both terms. Our tools track visibility and publish content for all the major AI engines. Read What is AEO.
How to apply GEO to your website
- Let AI crawlers in. Allow OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot in your robots.txt file.
- Answer first. Put a two-sentence to three-sentence answer at the top of each key page.
- Add evidence. Add statistics, quotations and links to your sources.
- Add structured data. Describe your business, offers and FAQs in JSON-LD.
- Keep facts consistent. Use the same name, prices and claims everywhere.
- Measure. Ask AI engines your customers' questions every week. Record which brands they mention.
GEO questions and answers
What is the difference between GEO and AEO?
The goal is the same: to appear in AI answers. Answer engine optimization (AEO) is the more common term in marketing. GEO is the research term for AI tools that generate answers from web sources. Read What is AEO for the full practice.
Who created the term GEO?
Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande. They published the paper in November 2023. The KDD 2024 conference accepted it.
Does keyword stuffing help GEO?
No. In the GEO study, keyword stuffing did worse than the unchanged content. Clear facts, quotations and cited sources did better.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. A generative engine must find your page before it can use it. So crawlable, indexed pages are still necessary. Read AEO vs SEO to see how the two work together.
How do I start with GEO?
Let AI crawlers read your site. Add a direct answer at the top of each key page. Add sources, quotations and specific facts. Add structured data. Then track how often AI engines mention you.
See how often AI mentions your brand
AEMFix tracks your brand in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and Claude.
Related guides
Sources
- Aggarwal, P., Murahari, V., Rajpurohit, T., Kalyan, A., Narasimhan, K. and Deshpande, A. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. arXiv:2311.09735, 2023.
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. Proceedings of the 30th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, 2024.