# Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

> GEO is the practice of improving how often and how accurately content is surfaced and cited in AI-generated answers. The term comes from a 2023 research paper; Google's position is that optimizing for its generative AI features is still SEO.

- URL: https://geo.casa/foundations/geo/
- Concept · Officially documented
- Reviewed: 2026-10-24

## Definition

**Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)** is work aimed at visibility inside answers from generative systems. These include Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Copilot. The goal reaches beyond ranked lists of links. "Answer engine optimization" (AEO) is used for roughly the same idea.

## Where the term comes from

> **Research-backed:**
> The term was introduced by Aggarwal et al. in *GEO: Generative Engine Optimization* (arXiv, Nov 2023; KDD 2024). The paper proposes a benchmark, GEO-bench. It reports that some content changes, such as adding citations, quotations and statistics, increased source visibility in the generated answers of the systems tested.
>
> Sources: [Aggarwal et al., arXiv:2311.09735 (KDD 2024): GEO: Generative Engine Optimization](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735)

Those results come from the authors' benchmark and engine setup. They do not by themselves show the same effect in production systems such as [Google AI Overviews](https://geo.casa/ai-search/google-ai-overviews/), whose retrieval and ranking are not public.

## How Google frames it

> **Officially documented:**
> Google's guide for site owners says that, for Google Search, optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, "and thus still SEO". It points readers weighing third-party AEO or GEO services to its guidance on evaluating SEO advice.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)

> **Officially documented:**
> Google states there are no extra technical requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page needs only to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. No special machine-readable files or schema.org markup are needed.
>
> Sources: [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)

Google's later AI optimization guide adds one site-level condition: the site must be included in Search's generative AI features in Search Console, which it is by default ([Search generative AI control](https://geo.casa/ai-search/search-generative-ai-control/)).

## What is not established

- That any single on-page technique reliably increases citations across engines. Engines differ, and change often.
- That citation counts measure influence or traffic. See [Claim: llms.txt improves AI search visibility](https://geo.casa/tools-protocols/llms-txt/) for one widely repeated claim checked against sources.

## Related

- [Google AI Overviews](https://geo.casa/ai-search/google-ai-overviews/)
- [robots.txt](https://geo.casa/crawling-indexing/robots-txt/) — access is a precondition for any visibility.

## Sources

- [Aggarwal et al., arXiv:2311.09735 (KDD 2024): GEO: Generative Engine Optimization](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735)
- [Google Search Central: Optimizing your website for generative AI features on Google Search](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide)
- [Google Search Central: AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features)