SEO and GEO: getting found in AI answers too
What GEO is, how it differs from SEO and what you can do on your website to be cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and Google’s AI-generated answers.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) is the set of practices that help a website be understood, cited and recommended by AI-powered answer engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s generated answers. It does not replace SEO, it builds on it: SEO gets you found in search results, while GEO improves the chances that your site becomes a source in AI answers.
More and more people ask an AI assistant directly instead of scrolling through a list of links. For a business, the question shifts from “am I on page one?” to “when someone asks about my sector, does the answer mention me?”. Here is what that means in practice and what you can do on your website.
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO and GEO share the same foundations: a technically sound site, useful content and a clear structure. What changes is the goal and how results are measured.
| Aspect | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in search results | Be cited or summarised in generated answers |
| What the user sees | A list of pages to open | A ready-made answer, sometimes with sources |
| Unit of value | The whole page | A single clear, quotable passage |
| Measurement | Rankings, clicks, organic traffic | Mentions, citations, visits from AI tools |
In practice, solid SEO remains the starting point: many AI assistants draw on search indexes, so a site that is poorly indexed is unlikely to be cited.
How do AI engines choose their sources?
Some caution is needed here: AI systems do not publish precise rules, and they change often. Anyone claiming to know exactly how they work is overstating it. Observation and the providers’ public documentation do suggest a few reasonable trends:
- Relevance to the question: passages that answer the query directly tend to be preferred.
- Clarity: well-structured text with explicit definitions and lists is easier to extract and summarise.
- Perceived reliability: consistent, up-to-date sources with verifiable information about who publishes them.
- Technical accessibility: pages that load without obstacles and whose main content is readable in the HTML, not only after complex scripts run.
What to do on your website for GEO
The useful actions are practical and, in most cases, also improve the experience for people and traditional SEO.
1. Direct answers up front
Open every key page with two or three sentences that answer the main question on their own: what it is, who it is for, what you get. A paragraph that can be quoted without context is exactly what an answer engine is looking for.
2. FAQs based on real questions
Collect the questions customers actually ask you by phone or email and answer them briefly and precisely. Headings phrased as questions help both people and AI find the right spot.
3. Structured data
Structured data is information added to a page’s code, using the Schema.org vocabulary, that explicitly describes what the page contains: an organisation, a service, an article, frequently asked questions. It does not guarantee citations, but it reduces ambiguity.
4. Consistent company details everywhere
Name, legal name, address, contact details and service descriptions should match across your website, Google Business Profile, social channels and directories. Inconsistencies make it harder for an automated system to recognise that they all refer to the same company.
5. The llms.txt file, with realistic expectations
llms.txt is an unofficial proposal: a text file in the site’s root that summarises the main pages for language models. It is not a standard, and it is unclear how many systems actually read it. It is cheap to add and may help, but it should not be treated as a decisive lever.
6. Solid technical foundations
Speed, heading structure, sitemaps and no indexing errors: this is the territory of technical SEO, and it matters for Google and AI alike. Also check in your robots.txt file which AI crawlers you are allowing or blocking: it is a choice worth making deliberately.
How to measure visibility in AI answers
Measuring GEO is still a young discipline and less precise than SEO. A few practical methods:
- Referral traffic: in your analytics, look at visits coming from AI assistant domains.
- Regular manual checks: keep a fixed list of questions your customers would ask and check each month whether and how your company is mentioned.
- Search Console: keep monitoring impressions and clicks, because Google’s generated answers are based on its own index.
- Enquiries: ask new customers how they found you and add “AI assistant” to the options.
Mistakes to avoid
- Dropping SEO to chase GEO alone: no indexing, no citations.
- Writing for machines with repetitive, keyword-stuffed text: it reads worse and does not help.
- Mass-producing generic AI content with no real experience or verifiable facts behind it.
- Trusting anyone who guarantees a place in ChatGPT or Gemini answers: nobody can promise that.
- Leaving outdated information online: old prices, services or addresses can be picked up and repeated.
In short
GEO is the natural evolution of SEO: the same fundamentals, with more attention to direct answers, clear structure and consistent information. There are no shortcuts, but a well-written, technically sound website stands a good chance of being found both on Google and in AI answers. Clear writing is half the job, which is where good website copywriting comes in.
To see how your company comes across today, explore our SEO and GEO service and in particular GEO for AI search visibility. Or contact PragaWeb for a review of your website.
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