# What is GEO? Generative engine optimization explained for business owners

Source: https://trustcited.com/what-is-geo/
Last updated: 2026-11-04
Author: Raghav Rana, founder of TrustCited

*A plain-English guide for business owners: what GEO is, how it differs from SEO and AEO, how AI assistants decide which businesses to name, and what you can do about it.*

**Short answer:** GEO (generative engine optimization) is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Grok to find, understand and recommend. It covers the facts on your website, your Google Business Profile and listings, your reviews, and what other sites say about you.

## What does GEO mean?

A **generative engine** is an AI system that writes an answer instead of showing a list of links. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Grok and Google's AI Mode and AI Overviews all work this way. **Generative engine optimization** is the practice of getting your business into those written answers, described correctly.

The term comes from a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues at Princeton University, IIT Delhi and other institutions, presented at KDD 2024. In their tests, adding citations, quotations and statistics to a page raised its visibility in AI-generated answers by up to about 40%. Stuffing pages with keywords did not help.

## GEO vs SEO vs AEO: what's the difference?

All three try to put your business in front of people who are searching. They differ in where the answer appears and how success is measured.

|  | SEO | AEO | GEO |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Goal | Rank your pages in search results | Be the direct answer to a question | Be named, cited and recommended in AI-written answers |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results pages | Answer boxes, voice assistants, AI Overviews | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Claude, Grok, Copilot |
| How it's measured | Rankings and clicks | Which page owns the answer | Share of AI answers that name you, and how you're described |
| Main levers | Technical health, relevance, links | Question-led headings, short direct answers, structured data | Consistent facts across your site and listings, reviews, third-party mentions |

**Bottom line:** these are not three separate jobs. Google says its AI features are built on its core search systems, and that "the best practices for SEO continue to be relevant." GEO is SEO plus the work of making sure AI assistants have consistent, quotable facts about you.

## Why does GEO matter now?

- 45% of US consumers used an AI tool to find a local business in the past year, up from 6% the year before, according to BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US adults. That made AI the third most used source of local recommendations.
- 2.37 brands is the average number ChatGPT names per answer in BrightEdge's analysis of tens of thousands of identical prompts. Google AI Overviews named 6.02 and Google AI Mode 1.59. The three platforms disagreed on which brands to recommend 61.9% of the time.
- 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking Google result when an AI Overview appears, according to Ahrefs' study of 300,000 keywords (December 2023 vs December 2025).

Most published research is from the US. There is no comparable large study of Indian or UAE buyers yet, so treat these numbers as the direction of travel, not a forecast for your market.

## How do AI assistants decide which businesses to name?

An AI assistant answering "best dental clinic in Dubai Marina" searches the web or draws on what it learned in training, reads a handful of sources, and repeats what those sources agree on. Five things shape what it says about you:

1. **Your own website.** Services, prices, locations and credentials written as plain text. Facts locked in images, PDFs or "call us for details" are hard for AI to quote.
2. **Your Google Business Profile and map listings.** Category, reviews, hours and photos. In October 2026 we found a school in the UAE whose Google listing was categorised as a "Swim club".
3. **Directories and review sites** for your sector. AI often quotes fees and ratings from these rather than from your own site.
4. **Third-party mentions:** news, comparison articles, forums, LinkedIn and YouTube.
5. **Consistency.** When sources disagree, AI hedges or picks the wrong fact. One assistant told parents a school was "typically" rated Good, while the regulator's own listing showed Very Good.

Each assistant also searches a different index. Gemini and Google AI Mode use Google Search. Microsoft Copilot uses Bing. Claude's web search uses Brave Search. ChatGPT search uses OpenAI's own crawler alongside third-party search providers. Being findable in Google alone is not enough.

## What does GEO work involve?

1. **Measure first.** Ask a fixed set of real buyer questions, several times, across the main assistants, and record who gets named. See [how TrustCited measures this](https://trustcited.com/methodology/).
2. **Fix the facts on your site.** One plain page with the facts buyers ask about: what you do, where, prices or price ranges, credentials, results. Answer common questions in text, near the top.
3. **Fix your listings.** Correct the Google Business Profile category, hours and description. Use the same name, address and phone everywhere.
4. **Make your site readable by AI crawlers.** Content in the HTML (not only loaded by JavaScript), a robots.txt that allows search crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot and Bingbot, a sitemap, Bing Webmaster Tools, and structured data for your organisation and FAQs.
5. **Earn real third-party mentions.** Reviews from real customers, accurate directory profiles, partner pages and genuine press. Never fake reviews or self-made "best of" lists.
6. **Re-check monthly** with the same questions, so you can see what changed.

## What can't GEO do?

- **It can't guarantee a mention.** AI answers change from run to run, and nobody controls them.
- **Being cited is not the same as being recommended.** An assistant may quote your page and still recommend a competitor. Recommendations follow what the wider web says about you.
- **It isn't instant.** Expect weeks to months, not days.
- **Tricks don't last.** Keyword stuffing performed poorly in the GEO research, and fake reviews can break consumer protection rules.

## Do you need llms.txt or special markup for AI?

Not for Google. Google says you don't need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in its AI features, and that Google Search ignores llms.txt. Structured data is still recommended for normal SEO. Other assistants and AI agents may read an llms.txt file, so it is cheap to add, but don't expect it to change much on its own. [Ours is here](https://trustcited.com/llms.txt).

Want this done for you? The [free one-page check](https://trustcited.com/#check) shows what six AI assistants say about your business, who they name instead, and the three fixes that matter most. Sent within 48 hours.

## Frequently asked questions

### Is GEO replacing SEO?

No. GEO builds on SEO. Google says its AI features are rooted in its core ranking systems, so a site that is crawlable, fast and clearly written is still the starting point. GEO adds the parts SEO often skips: consistent facts across listings, third-party mentions, and measuring what AI assistants actually say.

### How long does GEO take to work?

The fixes themselves usually take 2 to 4 weeks. Assistants then need to re-crawl your site and listings, so answers tend to change over weeks to months. In TrustCited's two case studies the gains took about 3 and about 5 months.

### Can I do GEO myself?

Yes, the basics. Measure with a fixed set of questions, fix the facts on your own site and Google Business Profile, and make sure AI crawlers can read your pages. The [step-by-step check](https://trustcited.com/check-if-chatgpt-recommends-your-business/) shows how to measure. Earning third-party mentions takes longer.

### How much does GEO cost?

Prices vary widely. TrustCited publishes its prices: a free one-page check, a fix sprint from ₹45,000 in India or $1,000 elsewhere, and a monthly re-check at ₹29,000 or $500. See [pricing](https://trustcited.com/pricing/) for what each includes.

## Sources

- [Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (KDD 2024)](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735)
- [Google Search Central, AI features and your website (updated 10 Jul 2026)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)
- [BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey 2026 (1,002 US adults, published 11 Feb 2026)](https://www.brightlocal.com/research/consumer-review-survey/)
- [BrightEdge, ChatGPT vs Google AI: 62% brand recommendation disagreement (2025)](https://www.brightedge.com/resources/weekly-ai-search-insights/chatgpt-vs-google-ai-62-brand-recommendation-disagreement)
- [Ahrefs, Update: AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% (4 Feb 2026)](https://ahrefs.com/blog/ai-overviews-reduce-clicks-update/)