What is GEO? Getting named by AI assistants

A growing share of buyers no longer open ten blue links. They ask an assistant what to use and act on the answer. If your product is not named in that answer, you were not in the running — and unlike a search result, there is no page two to be on.

Generative Engine Optimization is the work of being named. It overlaps with SEO, but the thing being optimised for is different, and so is the way you check whether it worked.

How it differs from SEO

The last row is the one that catches people. There is no Search Console for AI answers. Nobody sends you a report saying you were mentioned in four thousand conversations last month. If you want to know, you have to ask the models yourself, repeatedly, and record what came back.

What actually makes a product citable

Models reach for things they can state without hedging. That has practical consequences for how a page is written.

• A one-sentence definition on the page. If a model has to infer what you are, it will reach for something it can describe in one line instead.
• An explicit category and differentiator. "An AI CMO for founders without a marketing hire" is quotable. "A growth platform" is not.
• Comparison tables. A model asked to compare options will lift a structured comparison almost verbatim.
• Real numbers and dates. Specifics get cited; adjectives get paraphrased into nothing.
• FAQ markup answering what a buyer asks before trusting you.

Notice that none of this is a trick. It is the same thing that makes a page useful to a person in a hurry, which is roughly what a model is.

How to measure it

The measurement is simple to describe and easy to get wrong in one specific way.

1. Write the questions a buyer would actually type — "what is the best X for Y", not "tell me about your brand".
2. Ask a model each one, in a fresh context, with no mention of your company.
3. Record whether your name appears, and which products appeared instead.
4. Repeat on a schedule, because the answer changes as models are retrained.

The query must never contain your brand name. Ask a model about your company and it will describe your company — whether or not it has ever heard of you. That question always returns good news, which is exactly why it is worthless.

The names that appear instead of yours are the useful output. They are who the model currently reaches for in your category, which tells you what you are actually competing against in that channel.

What GEO cannot do

Model weights are not a search index. You cannot submit a page and appear tomorrow. Changes propagate when models retrain, on a timescale you do not control and nobody publishes. Anyone selling guaranteed AI-answer placement is selling something that does not exist.

What you can control is whether, when a model does encounter your page, there is a clear sentence to quote — and whether you know your current position well enough to tell if it moves.

Common questions