What is Generative Engine Optimisation?
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of structuring your website content so that AI-powered search engines — like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — cite your brand when answering questions in your industry.
Why It Matters
Google is no longer the only place people search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google's own AI Overviews now answer questions directly — often without the user clicking through to a website.
If your content isn't structured for these AI engines, you're invisible to a growing share of your audience. GEO is how you fix that. It's not a replacement for traditional SEO — it's the next layer on top of it.
How It Works
AI search engines work differently from Google's traditional index. They don't just match keywords — they synthesise answers from multiple sources and cite the ones they trust most.
GEO focuses on three things:
- Structured content — Clear headings, definitions, and factual claims that an LLM can extract cleanly
- Schema markup — JSON-LD that tells AI crawlers exactly what your page is about and who wrote it
- Citability — Writing in a way that makes your content easy to quote as a source (specific claims, data, clear attribution)
The term comes from a 2023 Princeton research paper that demonstrated these techniques measurably increase citation rates in generative search results.
Common Mistakes
The biggest mistake is treating GEO as a separate channel. It isn't. GEO builds on your existing SEO foundation. If your site has poor technical health, broken schema, or thin content, AI engines won't cite you either.
The second mistake is over-optimising for one model. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini all work differently. A solid GEO strategy works across all of them — not by gaming one algorithm, but by making your content genuinely useful and well-structured.
How I Use This
I built an AI visibility assessment that measures exactly where your brand appears across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, and Gemini. The AI search optimisation service then fixes the gaps — structured content, schema-for-AI, and citation-ready formatting.
Related Services
How BrightIQ uses Generative Engine Optimisation
This concept is central to the following services:
Related Terms
AI Overview
AI Overviews are AI-generated summary answers displayed at the top of Google search results — synthesising information from multiple web sources to provide direct answers to queries, fundamentally changing how users interact with search and how websites earn traffic.
Answer Engine Optimisation
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of formatting your content to directly answer specific questions, so that search engines and AI platforms use your site as the source in featured snippets, AI Overviews, and conversational search results.
Citable Content
Citable content is content structured so that AI systems and large language models can extract specific claims, definitions, or data points and reference them directly in generated answers — making your site the source they cite.
Schema Markup
Schema markup is structured data code (typically JSON-LD) added to web pages that helps search engines understand the content — identifying entities like products, businesses, articles, and FAQs so Google can display rich results with star ratings, prices, and other enhanced features.
Share of Model
Share of model is a metric that measures how often a brand is mentioned or cited by AI language models compared to its competitors — the AI equivalent of share of voice in traditional marketing.