Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
Generative engine optimisation is the work of making your pages easy for AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Mode to find, understand and cite. I measure how those tools describe your business today, then fix the parts you control. You deal with me directly, from the free audit to the monthly report.
- A measured read on how often AI tools cite your business
- Business details that agree across your website and Google profile
- 1 person doing the work, on published month-to-month prices
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Meet Chris →Quick answer
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of improving how often and how accurately a website is retrieved and cited by generative search systems such as Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity. The term comes from a research paper submitted to arXiv on 16 November 2023. In practice the levers are SEO levers: crawlable pages, plainly stated facts, standard schema.org markup, and business details that stay consistent across the pages you control. I offer a free AI search audit, and any fixes it finds go into website SEO.
Provenance
Where the term came from.
“GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” was submitted to arXiv on 16 November 2023 by Pranjal Aggarwal, Vishvak Murahari, Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan and Ameet Deshpande. It's free to read at arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735, and a revised version appeared at KDD 2024, the ACM data-mining conference. The authors wanted to give content creators a way to measure, and improve, how visible their work is inside generated answers.
The main experiments ran on an engine the authors built: it fetched the top 5 Google results for each query and had OpenAI's gpt-3.5-turbo write a cited answer. They tested against GEO-bench, a set of queries and sources they assembled, and the revised paper also reports tests on Perplexity.ai. Those findings describe that setup at that time. For a local business, the useful part is the framing: visibility inside an answer can be measured, and what a page says affects it.
2023
The year the paper reached arXiv and gave the practice its name.
6
Authors on the paper. Their aim was a way to measure visibility inside generated answers.
5
Google results the study's own engine read for each query before it wrote an answer.
How a generative system reaches your page.
There are 4 stages between a question and a citation. Each one narrows the field, and your page has the most say at stages 2 and 3.
1. Query fan-out
The question a person types is rarely the query that runs. Generative systems rewrite it, often into several queries at once, to cover the ways an answer might be phrased. This happens before any website is involved, which is why pages that answer the related questions as well as the main one get more chances to be found.
2. Retrieval
Each query hits an index and returns candidate passages, drawn from individual pages. Pages that load quickly, show their text in the HTML and live at 1 clear address are the ones a retriever can read and use. This is the stage where everyday technical SEO pays off.
3. Grounding
From a long candidate list, a handful of passages are selected to write the answer from. Selection favours text that states something specific and checkable. A paragraph that names the service, the suburb and the price gives the system something concrete to build an answer on.
4. Attribution
The visible citations are a subset of what the system read, chosen while the answer is written. Being read and being credited are 2 different outcomes, so a business can shape an answer before it appears as a link in it. This step sits with the AI vendor.
Shared Foundations
Where GEO, AEO and SEO overlap.
Each name describes a different place your business can show up. All 3 draw on the same pages, so the work underneath them is shared. The table sets out what each one aims for and where you'd see the result.
| Practice | What it aims for | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | A page that ranks as a link a person clicks | Google's organic results and the map pack |
| AEO | A passage quoted as the direct answer to a question | Featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice answers |
| GEO | A source cited inside an answer the system writes | AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity |
| All 3 need | Crawlable, indexed pages, facts stated plainly, standard schema.org markup, and business details that agree everywhere they appear. | |
AEO grew out of featured snippets and voice search, and GEO came out of the 2023 paper, so they carry different histories. On a local business website they ask for the same things. I've written the history of the other acronym on answer engine optimisation, and you'll find every GEO tactic, checked against the documentation on its own page.
Variance
Why the same question gets different answers.
A ranking is a position on a page that anyone can check and re-check. A citation is the outcome of 1 generation, and it moves with things that sit outside your website. That's how these systems are built, and it shapes how GEO should be measured.
These 6 variables can change the sources in front of you while your site stays exactly the same:
How I read it. A single screenshot is 1 sample, and the next run can name different sources. The sound way to describe generative visibility is to fix the prompts, run them several times, log every result, and report the pattern across all the runs. I treat it as measurement work, and I deliver it inside SEO.
Your Lever
Entity clarity is the part you control.
What a retriever finds when it looks for your business is up to you. Every generative system has to work out whether the records it holds describe 1 business or several, and it settles that using the pages that carry your name: your website, your Google Business Profile, and the other pages that already mention you.
When those agree, a system can state a fact about you with confidence. That's the mechanism, and it's why I start every GEO job with the details listed under Yours to control.
Yours to control
- ✓A single canonical page per service, reachable and rendered in the HTML
- ✓The same trading name, address and phone number, everywhere
- ✓The same words for the same service across every page
- ✓Standard schema.org markup describing the business and its services
- ✓A complete Google Business Profile with real categories and hours
- ✓Prices, service areas and process stated plainly
Set by the platform
- Which index an assistant retrieves from, and how fresh it is
- How your customer's question is rewritten before retrieval
- Whether the system searches at all or answers from training
- Which of the passages it read receive a visible citation
- The model version, the session history and the personalisation
- What a forum thread or a third-party article says about you
Every item under Yours to control is standard SEO work. I deliver it inside website SEO, alongside local SEO for your Google Business Profile, so the same fixes help you in search results and in AI answers.
Check whether your details agree.
The free AI search audit compares your business details across your website and Google Business Profile, and logs how AI tools describe you today.
“Chris has been extremely helpful in answering all our questions about SEO and website design and optimisation. He is very knowledgeable on a number of different areas and has helped us immensely in being able to increase the visibility of our website on google search.”
Measurement
How I measure GEO for a client.
GEO work starts with a measurement diagnostic, the free AI search audit, so you can see where you stand before you spend anything. It gives you a plain read on whether AI tools can find and describe your business, and which gaps are worth closing.
The whole scope is published below, so you know what you're getting before you book.
01
I agree 12 prompts with you first
Questions in the words your customers use, settled in advance so the test reflects real demand for what you sell.
02
I run each prompt 3 times on 4 platforms
Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, each run in a separate session, with every response logged, including the runs that name other businesses.
03
I log which domains get cited
Who appears, how consistently across the runs, and what their pages state that yours can add.
04
I audit your entity details
Name, address, phone, categories, service names, canonical pages and schema across your website and Google Business Profile.
05
I sort the fixable from the variance
Gaps that trace to something you can change go to the top of the list. The rest is the normal variance described above, and I show you the pattern so you can see it for yourself.
The diagnostic is free, and I can re-run the same 12 prompts on request, so you have a second reading to set against the first. If the diagnostic finds work worth doing, that work goes into website SEO, which starts from $1,500+GST/month, month to month with no lock-in. See the SEO cost guide for what moves that figure, or the audit page for how the diagnostic runs.
Comparing providers? My notes on choosing a GEO agency list the questions worth asking and what good answers sound like.
Start with the measurement.
Request the free AI search audit and I'll agree the prompts with you, then send you the results with a short list of what to fix first.
“Chris gave us some really practical and directly implementable advice, grounded in facts and data. His report was delivered in an intuitive and engaging way.”
About this page
Written by Chris Lourenco, Director of Loudachris Digital Marketing, based at 21-22 Greenhill Road, Wayville SA 5034. ABN 73 630 143 190. Every claim on this page links to a primary source or is stated as my own view.
My published client results, each with the client named, are on the results page. The wider hub is on AI search visibility, and more about me is on the about page.
Published 9 August 2026. Last updated 15 October 2026.
Questions about generative engine optimisation.
What is generative engine optimisation?
Who coined the term GEO?
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
How do generative engines choose which pages to cite?
What is entity clarity?
Do I need an llms.txt file or AI-specific schema markup?
Can anyone guarantee a citation in ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity?
What does GEO work cost with Loudachris?
Book Your Free AI Search Diagnostic
I'll agree the prompts with you, run them several times across the AI tools your customers use, and give you a plain answer on what's worth fixing. The call is 30 minutes, free, and with me.
Or call 0403 454 199
Keep Reading
The rest of the AI search hub covers the other acronym, the tactics, and how to choose help.
What Actually Works
Each tactic sold as AI optimisation, with the documentation behind each verdict.
Answer Engine Optimisation
The other acronym, where it came from, and how its answers sit beside GEO's citations.
Choosing a GEO Agency
The questions worth asking before you sign, and what good answers sound like.
See whether AI tools cite your business, free.
The AI search audit is free and its scope is published above. You'll get a plain answer on how AI tools describe your business today and which parts you can improve.
Call 0403 454 199
“The world of SEO and digital marketing can be confusing. Chris from Loudachris Digital Marketing managed to simplify it and make it easy to understand. Chris was generous with his time and knowledge and helped me to review my own marketing efforts.”
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