In shortGenerative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making a website understandable and quotable by generative AI tools such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Where traditional SEO aims to rank a page in a list of links, GEO aims to make a page's content the kind an AI system extracts when it writes an answer.
It's sometimes called Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO). Despite the label, it isn't a plugin or a one-time setting — it's a standard of content and structure that, done properly, also strengthens ordinary search.
A plain-English definition
Generative Engine Optimisation is the work of making a website easy for AI answer engines to use. When a tool like ChatGPT or Google's AI Overview answers a question, it draws on content it can read, understand and trust, and cites some of it. GEO is about being that content.
The term is new, but the idea is intuitive: as AI tools become how people find answers, a firm's website needs to be built so those tools can quote it. What GEO is not is a trick, a plugin, or a setting — a distinction worth holding on to when someone offers a one-click version.
How GEO differs from SEO
Traditional SEO optimises for a ranking position — getting a page higher in Google's list of links. GEO optimises for inclusion in a synthesised answer, which an AI may assemble from several sources regardless of their exact ranking.
In practice they overlap heavily; both reward useful, well-structured, trustworthy content. GEO simply puts more weight on things classic SEO sometimes neglected — answering directly, plain definitions, clear structure, and strong signals about who published the content and why they can be trusted.
Why it's not a box a firm can tick
Because GEO is a standard of content and structure rather than a feature, it can't be switched on. It depends on how well a firm's expertise is turned into clear, extractable, trustworthy answers across the questions its clients ask — sustained as the AI tools change.
That's genuine editorial and technical work, which is why GEO is delivered as a service rather than sold as software, and why any 'instant GEO' product deserves scepticism. The reassuring part is that doing it properly tends to strengthen a firm's ordinary Google performance too.