What is Generative Engine Optimization?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing content so that generative AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and other LLM-powered search experiences — include and cite it when synthesizing answers. GEO and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) are two names for substantially the same discipline.
The term comes from the research literature: the 2023 paper that coined GEO measured how content changes (citing sources, adding statistics, clearer structure) affect how often generative engines include a page in their synthesized answers. Industry usage has since converged with AEO — some teams say GEO when they emphasize the generative synthesis step, and AEO when they emphasize the question-answering surface, but audits, tactics, and measurements are shared.
Whichever name you use, the work is the same: let AI crawlers in, publish machine-readable structured data, write answer-first extractable content, and build the entity and trust signals engines corroborate before citing. If your organization already has an SEO function, GEO/AEO extends it rather than replacing it.