To get cited in AI answers, publish pages an assistant can quote without help: a direct answer in the first 40 to 60 words, specific claims with named sources, and the same plain facts about your business everywhere. Keep the page crawlable and indexed. Google says there is no special markup or file to add. Good SEO is the base.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) means making your business clear and quotable to AI assistants, and checking whether they name you. It overlaps with good SEO, so we do not sell it on its own. It sits inside our ads management service, next to the tracking that shows whether any of it brings leads.
What does Google say you need to do?
Less than most guides claim. Google’s page on AI features and your website says a page needs to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet to be linked in AI Overviews or AI Mode. It says there are no additional technical requirements, and that you do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup.
Its advice is the familiar kind: original, non-commodity content, clear organisation, and good images and video where they help. Google also says meeting every requirement does not guarantee crawling, indexing or serving.
What does the research say?
The best-known study is the GEO paper (Aggarwal and co-authors, later published at KDD 2024). The authors tested ways of rewriting content and measured how often it showed up in generative engine answers on a benchmark they built. They report that some methods raised visibility by up to 40 percent. The methods that helped most were adding quotations, statistics and citations.
Treat that with care. It is a test on a benchmark, not a promise for your site, and “up to” is the key phrase. What it supports is a plain idea: claims that are specific and sourced are easier to quote than vague ones.
What are the six steps?
- Open each page with the answer. Write one 40 to 60 word paragraph that answers the page’s question on its own. An assistant lifts passages, not pages. A good passage still makes sense when it is pulled out alone.
- Use question headings. “What does a tracking audit check?” above a short, direct answer matches how people ask.
- Be specific and name your sources. Replace “we improve results” with what you do, for whom, and what a claim rests on. If you cite a number, link where it came from and give the date. If you cannot source it, leave it out.
- Say the same facts everywhere. Entity work means making clear who you are. Your name, what you sell, who it is for and how to reach you should read the same on your site, your LinkedIn and any directory listing. Mixed descriptions make you harder to recognise.
- Let the crawlers in. Check robots.txt. OpenAI says that blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps your content out of ChatGPT search summaries and snippets. Do not block what you want cited.
- Keep pages current. Update dates and facts when they change. An answer built on stale information is easy to skip.
We publish an llms.txt file on our own site, because it costs little. Google says it is not needed for Google, and we do not claim it changes rankings.
How do you know if it works?
Two ways. First, look at the traffic: our guide to tracking ChatGPT and AI search traffic in GA4 shows how to find it. Second, check mentions directly. Pick 15 to 20 questions a buyer would ask, run them monthly in the main assistants, and log whether you are named, linked or absent. Do it the same way each time and keep the log. It is slow and manual, but it is the honest method, because no assistant publishes its citation rules.
Do not judge by one test. Answers change from one run to the next.
Which businesses should bother?
Those where buyers research before they call: SaaS, B2B, real estate and construction, and e-commerce. Our SaaS page explains how this fits with the rest of the work. If you sell something people buy on impulse, SEO and ads will likely give you more for the effort.
Questions people ask
Is GEO different from SEO? Mostly it is the same craft with a sharper focus on direct answers and clear facts. Google says its AI features are rooted in its core ranking and quality systems.
Do we need schema markup? Not for Google’s AI features, according to Google. Markup can still help other search features, so use it where it fits.
Can you guarantee a citation? No one can. We can make your pages easier to quote and tell you what we see. Send the brief if you want a look at yours.
