What is GEO? How to become findable in AI assistants

From search engine to answer engine

For years findability was about one thing: as high as possible in a list of blue links. That playing field is tilting. ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity summarise the web into one answer — and whoever does not appear in that answer simply does not exist for that user. There is no page two left to fall back on.

Behaviour shifts along: fewer clicks, more questions in plain language, and more often a decision based on the answer itself. For brands that means a new question: are you cited?

What exactly is GEO?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the whole set of choices — technical, content and structural — that increases the chance that AI systems find, understand and use your content as a source. Where SEO is about positions in a list, GEO is about presence in the answer.

How AI assistants choose sources

The systems differ, but the patterns are recognisable. Content that gets cited usually has this in common:

• Clear structure — headings that answer real questions, not woolly titles.
• Citable passages — standalone paragraphs with one clear claim per paragraph.
• Structured data — schema.org markup that lets machines understand context.
• Authority and consistency — mentions in trusted places, and exactly the same company details everywhere.
• Recency — visibly maintained content beats dusty pages.

Five steps to start today

• Rewrite your core pages as answers to real customer questions.
• Add structured data to organisation, services and FAQs.
• Give each page one summarising paragraph that stands on its own.
• Build mentions on sources that AI systems trust.
• Measure AI traffic separately, so you actually see the effect.

SEO and GEO: not either/or, but both

The foundation largely overlaps: fast tech, clear structure, strong content. Whoever has that in order wins on both boards. The difference is in the finishing — writing and structuring to be cited cited, not just to rank.

Curious where you stand? A baseline measurement makes visible in one go what tech, content and authority are doing now — and where the fastest gains are.