GEO & AEO: how to get recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews
GEO (generative engine optimisation) and AEO (answer engine optimisation) make sure AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google AI Overviews know your brand, trust it and mention it in their answers. The key levers are unambiguous facts about your company, content that answers questions directly, mentions on credible third-party sites and a website AI crawlers can read easily.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
- SEO optimises for classic, unpaid search results.
- AEO optimises content to be served directly as an answer, for example as a featured snippet or in voice assistants.
- GEO optimises for generative AI systems to mention your brand in the answers they write and link to you as a source.
The three build on each other. Without solid SEO there is rarely good AI visibility, because many AI systems rely on Google or Bing search indexes for current questions.
How do AI systems choose their sources?
Providers do not disclose the exact methods. But public documentation, studies and our own tests show clear patterns:
- Web retrieval: For current questions many assistants search the web live and summarise what they find. If you are hard to find there, you are not read.
- Training knowledge: What is written about a brand often, consistently and on trustworthy sites flows into the models’ base knowledge.
- Quotability: Short, unambiguous statements are easier to adopt than long sales copy.
- Consensus: When several independent sources name a brand for a topic, the chance of a recommendation rises.
8 actions for more AI visibility
1. Write the answer first
Start every important page with two or three sentences that fully answer the core question. Details follow. These paragraphs are the ones AI systems adopt most often.
2. Make your brand an unambiguous entity
Name, location, services, founders, founding year: these facts should be identical on your website, LinkedIn, Google Business Profile and in industry directories. Schema.org structured data (Organization, Person, Service) connects them in a machine-readable way.
3. Answer your customers’ real questions
Collect the questions from sales conversations and build FAQ sections, comparison pages and guides for them. A glossary with clear definitions is an especially quotable source.
4. Show expertise with names and evidence
Articles with real authors, traceable experience, case studies and concrete numbers are more credible to people and machines than anonymous copy.
5. Get mentioned on other sites
Review platforms, directories, trade articles, podcasts, interviews and LinkedIn: AI systems trust what others say about you more than your own website.
6. Let AI crawlers in
Check your robots.txt and firewall settings. Some hosting and CDN providers now block AI crawlers by default. Important content should live in HTML, not only in images or JavaScript.
7. Register with Bing too
Besides Google, Bing is an important search index that AI assistants can rely on. Bing Webmaster Tools are free, and IndexNow lets you submit new content quickly.
8. Measure your AI visibility regularly
Create a fixed list of 20 to 30 questions your customers would ask and check them monthly across several assistants. Document whether you are named, how you are described and which sources are linked.
What is an llms.txt and do I need one?
An llms.txt is a text file in your website’s root that gives AI systems a compact overview of your most important content. It is a voluntary proposal, not an official standard. It replaces none of the actions above, but takes minutes to create and does no harm.
How long does GEO take?
Technical foundations and clear answer pages often work within a few weeks once pages are recrawled. Mentions on other sites and a consolidated brand picture usually take several months. There are no guarantees of being named in ChatGPT, but the factors can be improved and measured systematically.
The best GEO strategy is a brand that people write about clearly, consistently and often.
If you want to know what AI assistants say about your company today, we are happy to run a free quick check in the intro call.
