What Is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?

GEO (generative engine optimization) is the practice of making your brand and your pages more likely to appear in AI-written answers. That means being named, quoted and cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. It is also called GEO SEO or GEO optimization. In practice, the goal is a reply that quotes your page, links to it, or names your product when a buyer asks for a recommendation.

A generative engine is a search tool that writes one reply from several sources in place of a list of links. Google AI Overviews are one kind: short AI summaries that appear above the regular links on some Google searches. This page uses GEO in that marketing and search sense. AI search engines in India compares the generative engines buyers in India use.

What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of making your brand and your pages more likely to be named, quoted and cited when AI tools write an answer. Those tools include ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Success shows up as brand mentions, your place in the reply, and the pages each reply links to.

The same work goes by other names: AI engine optimization, generative AI optimization, generative search optimization and generative search engine optimization. Many SEO and marketing teams call it AEO (answer engine optimization). This page uses GEO, the label the 2023 research paper introduced.

What is the full form of GEO in SEO?

The GEO full form in digital marketing and SEO is generative engine optimization, sometimes written generative engine optimisation. It means shaping your content, your site access and your presence on other websites so AI-written answers include your brand.

GEO means other things outside marketing. In space and telecom, GEO is geostationary Earth orbit, about 36,000 km above the equator, where many communication satellites sit. In everyday use, geo is short for geographic or geolocation. On this page GEO always means generative engine optimization.

Where does the term GEO come from?

The term comes from the research paper GEO: Generative Engine Optimization (opens in a new tab) by Pranjal Aggarwal and five co-authors. It was first posted on arXiv on 16 November 2023 and accepted at KDD 2024, a data science conference.

The paper built GEO-bench, a test set of user questions from many subject areas with web sources for each. It then measured how edits to a source page changed that page's visibility in the generated answer. It reports visibility gains of up to 40%, and found that the edits that worked best differed from one subject area to another.

For a brand, that last finding matters most. A tactic that helped in one topic may do little in yours, so test each change in your own category and measure it there.

How does GEO work?

GEO targets the steps a generative engine takes to build an answer. First the engine interprets the question. Then it runs one or more searches, keeps a small set of pages, and writes a reply that names brands and links a few of them. A page or brand that fails any step is missing from the reply. How an AI answer is assembled splits these steps into six layers, from model training to the citation.

• Searching. Google says AI Overviews and AI Mode, its conversational search option, may issue several related searches across subtopics and data sources to build one response. Google calls this query fan-out (Google Search Central (opens in a new tab)). A page can be found through any of those searches. Query fan-out explained lists the searches ChatGPT ran for shopping questions asked from India.
• Access. For Google's AI features, a page needs to be indexed (kept in Google's database of pages it can show) and eligible to appear with a snippet (the preview text under a result), with no extra requirements. Google also gives every site a Search generative AI control in Search Console, rolled out to all sites by 31 August 2026. Sites are included by default, and a site its owner excludes does not appear in these features (Google Search Console Help (opens in a new tab), checked 7 Oct 2026). On ChatGPT, a site that blocks OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot crawler will not be shown in search answers, though it can still appear as a navigational link, according to OpenAI's crawler docs (opens in a new tab). Sites set this in robots.txt, a plain text file at the root of a domain that tells each bot what it may read.
• Choosing passages. The GEO paper tested page edits in a controlled setup. Adding citations, quotations and statistics raised a page's visibility in AI answers by up to about 40% in a GPT-3.5 test setup (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024 (opens in a new tab)). Live engines may weigh pages differently.
• Describing brands. Brand descriptions come from whatever the engine read about the brand: its own pages, marketplace listings, reviews, lists and forums.

What is GEO SEO?

GEO SEO means using search work to get your brand into AI-written answers, not only into the list of links. GEO stands for generative engine optimization. It builds on SEO, because ChatGPT search, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite pages they can find and read. Some teams call it generative AI SEO.

Put in SEO terms, most familiar SEO tasks have a GEO version. The target changes from a place in the links to a place in the reply.

• Keywords become buyer questions. In SEO you choose keywords. In GEO you choose the questions a buyer asks an AI tool, often called prompts, in the words a buyer would use.
• Crawling and indexing still come first. Google's AI features link only to pages that meet normal Search requirements. ChatGPT search needs access for OAI-SearchBot. Each engine finds pages its own way, and which search index each AI engine uses maps them engine by engine.
• On-page work becomes answer-first passages. Start each section with a short, direct answer. Then add sourced numbers, quotes and citations, the edits the GEO paper tested.
• Link building becomes coverage on cited sites. Engines describe brands from what they read elsewhere: marketplace listings, reviews, lists and forums. GEO work gets your brand covered on the sites the replies cite.
• Rank tracking becomes answer tracking. Instead of a position on a results page, you track whether each reply names you, where you sit among the brands it lists, and which pages it cites.

How is GEO different from SEO?

SEO works on where your page ranks among search results, and success shows up as rankings and clicks. GEO works on what the AI reply says and links to, and success shows up as brand mentions, order in the reply and citations.

GEO still leans on SEO. Google only shows pages that meet normal Search requirements as links in its AI features, so pages Google cannot index cannot be cited there. GEO vs SEO covers the differences in detail, and LLM SEO explains another name people use for this work.

Is GEO the same as AEO?

AEO (answer engine optimization) is the label many SEO and marketing teams use for the goal of being included in AI-written answers. GEO is the label the 2023 paper introduced. Both lead to the checklist further down this page.

Read what AEO means, or see AEO vs GEO vs SEO for all three terms side by side.

What is an example of GEO in India?

A sunscreen question, asked in English and in Hinglish, is a simple example of GEO in product search from India. In English, a buyer choosing a sunscreen might type: "I want to buy a sunscreen that doesn't leave a white cast on Indian skin. Which one is best?" In Hinglish, Hindi-English typed in English letters, the buyer asks the same thing in a mix of the two languages.

A generative engine answers each version with a few sunscreen brands, a reason for each, and usually links to the pages it drew from. Those links show which websites shaped the answer: beauty publications, marketplaces, review pages or brand sites.

Asking in Hinglish can send the engine to different sites. Depra AI's Hinglish study put this sunscreen question and nine other buying questions to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity from India, in English and Hinglish, 8 times each, for 480 answers in total. In the August 2026 wave, Perplexity linked sources in every answer in both languages, yet the websites it cited moved: the sites cited in two runs of the same question overlapped 85.2%, and the sites cited in the English and Hinglish versions overlapped 52.8%.

The GEO work for a sunscreen brand: track both versions, list the pages cited in each, get the product covered on sites that show up in only one language, and make its own product page state white cast and skin type near the top.

In August 2026, Perplexity's cited websites overlapped 32.4 points less between the English and Hinglish versions of a question than between two runs of the same version (October 2026 re-run: 52.6 points).

How do you do GEO? An 8-step checklist

A GEO checklist moves from the questions you care about, to changes on your site and elsewhere, to a measurement you repeat. Work through these 8 steps in order. To decide whether your team or an agency runs them, see AI SEO and GEO services in India. For a longer guide, read generative engine optimization best practices.

How Depra AI used Depra AI to get named in AI answers shows this measure, change and re-measure loop on one brand, with dates and sources.

• Pick the questions that matter. Choose 20 to 40 buying questions for your category that do not name your brand. For India, write each one in English and Hinglish.
• Get a baseline from several runs. AI answers vary between runs of the same question. Ask each one several times per engine and record whether you were named.
• Open your site to AI crawlers. Allow the crawlers that fetch pages for answers, such as OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search, and make sure your key pages are indexed in Google. The guide to AI crawlers explains which bots do what.
• Lead with the answer. Start each section with a short, direct answer to one question, under a heading written in the buyer's words. A content AEO audit checks this page by page.
• Add citations, quotes and statistics. These are the edits the GEO paper tested. Use numbers you can source, and name the source on the page.
• Match your brand facts across the web. Make product names, prices, sizes and category descriptions agree on your site, marketplaces and profiles.
• Earn a place on cited sites. Find the pages engines cite when they recommend your competitors, then pitch, list or get reviewed on them. Citation gap analysis lists those sites for you.
• Re-measure on a fixed schedule. Compare the same questions period by period, per engine and per language, before you decide what worked.

How do you measure GEO?

You measure GEO by running a fixed list of buying questions through each engine on a schedule and reading the replies for five signals.

• Mention rate: out of all replies, how many include your brand. Depra AI calls this AI visibility.
• Rank in the reply: your place among the brands when a reply lists more than one.
• Tone: positive, neutral or negative, with the sentence from the reply that shows it.
• Citations: the exact pages each reply links to, including any of your own.
• Source mix: the kinds of sites that get cited, such as editorial, marketplace, forum or brand sites, so you know where to get covered. Guide: how to get cited by AI.

Measuring GEO with Depra AI

Depra AI's AI visibility tracking runs your questions through ChatGPT with web search, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews daily on every plan, asked from inside the country you pick. Enterprise adds every other major AI engine, such as Claude, Microsoft Copilot, DeepSeek, Google AI Mode and Grok. Questions can be in English, Hinglish, French and most other major languages, plus code-mixed questions. Each full reply is saved with the brands it named and the sites it cited, for you and your competitors. Branded questions, the ones that already include your name, are left out of your scores by default. Your report shows each engine's visibility with a confidence range, the band the true figure most likely sits in.

Before you edit pages, check that AI bots can reach them: the AI crawler checker reads your robots.txt rules for 41 AI crawlers. For a side-by-side of software built for this, see the best GEO tools. For prices, see how much AI visibility tools cost.