What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative engines produce written answers instead of a list of links. Some, such as Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, retrieve web pages in real time and cite them, while others also rely on what a model learned during training. GEO aims to make your business and content easy for these systems to find, interpret correctly, and reference.

Common GEO practices include writing clear, self-contained answers, using structured data, keeping business information consistent across the web, earning reviews and mentions on reputable third-party sites, and making sure AI crawlers are not unintentionally blocked in robots.txt. Many of these overlap with good SEO and AEO.

For small businesses, GEO matters because customers increasingly ask AI assistants for recommendations and explanations. It is an evolving field: AI providers change how they select sources, results vary between users and sessions, and no one can guarantee placement. Measuring AI referral traffic and periodically checking how AI tools describe your business helps track progress.