GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — is SEO for AI answer engines. When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for a recommendation, a short list of sources gets cited. GEO is the work of making sure you're one of them.
Key takeaways
- Answer engines cite a few sources — off the list means invisible.
- They favor pages they can crawl, parse and corroborate.
- Three levers move it: crawler access, structured data, and citations.
- Measure your current visibility before and after you change anything.
GEO vs classic SEO
Classic SEO competes for ten blue links. GEO competes to be synthesized into the answer itself. The ranking signals overlap but aren't identical — an answer engine needs to read you cleanly and trust you enough to repeat you.
How answer engines choose who to cite
- Crawlability. GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot must be allowed to read your pages.
- Legibility. Clean structured data (schema.org) lets a model extract who you are and what you do without guessing.
- Corroboration. The sources a model already trusts for your category should mention you.
Blocking AI crawlers to "protect content" also deletes you from every AI answer. For most businesses that trade goes the wrong way — see why answer engines ignore your brand.
The three levers
- Open the doors. Confirm the AI crawlers aren't blocked in robots.txt. The free Crawler & Robots check shows exactly what each bot can reach.
- Be machine-legible. Structured data so your name, location, services and reviews extract cleanly.
- Earn mentions. Get cited on the sources models already trust for your category — that's what tips a shortlist.
Measure, change, re-measure
You can't improve what you can't see.
The free AI Visibility Audit shows whether the major models recommend you today. Fix the three levers, run it again, and watch your citations move.
The AI front door is already open for your competitors. See where you stand — free.