Right now, millions of people are asking AI tools questions that your website was built to answer. Are you showing up?
For the last 20 years, digital marketing strategies the world over have been built around one goal: rank highly on Google. But things have changed. As digital consumers, we’re aren’t just searching — we’re asking. What's more, we want answers that are quick and concise, so a long list of links simply no longer cuts it.
That shift, powered by tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity, is giving rise to a new discipline: Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
So, what exactly is GEO?
How GEO differs from SEO and AEO
In simple terms, GEO is about making sure your organisation’s information, products, and expertise are accurately represented in AI-generated answers.
Instead of optimising for page rank on a search engine, GEO is about optimising for visibility and inclusion in generative responses — the kind that users see when they ask an AI assistant a question requiring a longer form, nuanced or more creative response like:
“What are the best project management tools for startups?”
If your brand doesn’t appear in that generated summary or recommendation, you are effectively invisible to those users — even if your website is technically 'ranked' highly in Google.
Here’s the quick breakdown:
- SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): Optimising your website to rank higher in traditional search results.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation): Optimising content to be presented as a direct answer.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation): Optimising your content and digital footprint so AI engines understand, trust, and surface it in longer-form, synthesised answers.
In this article, we’re interested in GEO specifically. So we’ll take a closer look at this emerging discipline and how you can harness its potential for your business or organisation.
Why GEO matters now
AI-driven discovery isn’t a future concept. It’s here. Millions of people now use ChatGPT or Perplexity instead of Google for everything from quick answers to research, and purchasing advice to full decision-making. This applies whether they’re choosing products, solving problems, or learning new skills. That means:
- Fewer clicks on traditional web results
- More reliance on AI-generated summaries and responses
- Less control over how your brand is presented, unless you start shaping it now
What this means for organisations
If you’re building or managing a digital product, GEO needs to be part of your thinking from the ground up.
The aim for business and organisations with GEO is to ensure that AI systems use your content as an ingredient in longer, synthesised, creative, or comparative outputs. Ideally, this should be supported by interactive tooling that can be referenced in answers, but incentivises click-through to your product in an otherwise zero-click scenario.
This goes beyond providing quick answers to simple questions. The aim is for the AI system to recognise you as a qualified authority on your subject and therefore a source of reliable information. Getting this right will mean the AI system is more likely to:
- Mention your brand
- Recommend your product or interactive content
- Reference your insights
- Include you in 'top picks' lists
Many of the techniques used in GEO mirror those of SEO, it's simply that the stakes are now higher. So what do you need to do?
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Design with machine understanding in mind
Use structured data, schema markup, and clear metadata. Human readability remains vital, but your content should make sense to algorithms too.
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Be consistent and authoritative
Generative engines draw from multiple sources to check facts. If your messaging or data is inconsistent across platforms, the AI won’t trust it, and it might leave you out entirely.
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Focus on clarity, not just keywords
Generative models don’t rely on keyword matching. They interpret meaning. Write content that clearly explains concepts and relationships rather than stuffing search phrases.
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Audit your content ecosystem
Review where your Information lives. Are your websites, APIs, documentation and third-party listings all structured, up-to-date, and easily discoverable? If not, generative models will struggle to interpret it.
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If AI answers the question, you must own the next step
Consider what tools you can provide to encourage engagement beyond simply providing Information. Build high-value interactive and decision-support tools, both to incentivise customers to click through and to reinforce authority.
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Track 'model visibility', not just web traffic
In the future, digital performance metrics will evolve beyond page views and SERP rankings. We’ll be measuring AI citations — how often a model references or summarises your content in its outputs.
The broader impact
Generative engines will change not just how people find information, but how they behave.
- Users will consume AI summaries more than individual sources
- Discovery will become more curated and less serendipitous.
- Brand authority will depend on how clearly and consistently you communicate across digital platforms
For businesses, that means less emphasis on being found and more emphasis on being understood.
For those that embrace this shift in content positioning, the rewards can be significant. Business and organisations that optimise now, set themselves up to gain a longer-term strategic advantage by becoming an early authority, deeply embedded and trusted by AI for years. This in turn will increase brand presence and awareness, connect new prospects with your services and products, and forge faster paths to conversion.
The takeaway
Generative Engine Optimisation isn’t just another marketing buzzword — it’s the next evolution of digital visibility, and it’s happening right now.
Organisations that prioritise GEO now, by building trustworthy, machine-readable, and semantically clear digital experiences, will be the ones that continue to show up as users increasingly stop searching and start asking.
