A growing share of people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity instead of searching Google. If these tools don’t know your business, they recommend your competitors. GEO does for AI answer engines what SEO did for Google.
How do SEO, AEO and GEO differ?
| Goal | What success looks like | |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | Ranking in Google’s results list | Clicks from the results page |
| AEO | Direct answers and featured snippets | Your answer shown above results or by a voice assistant |
| GEO | Being known by language models | Your brand quoted or recommended in AI answers |
Where do AI models learn about you?
From public web pages, structured data (schema), authoritative profiles like LinkedIn and GitHub, and the live searches some models run while answering. The more accurate, consistent and quotable your information is across these sources, the more likely you are to be cited.
Five practical steps to start with GEO
- Open every page with a short, precise answer (40–60 words) and write headings as questions.
- Add Organization, Service, FAQPage and Article schema to your pages.
- Publish an llms.txt file: a summary of your business and key pages for language models.
- Allow crawlers such as GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot in robots.txt.
- Keep your brand name, description and links identical across your site, LinkedIn, GitHub and directories.
What kind of content gets quoted most?
- Precise, short definitions (“X is …”)
- Comparison tables and step-by-step checklists
- Numbers and facts with credible sources
- Direct answers to customers’ real questions
How do you measure GEO results?
Each month, ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity a few key questions from your field and record whether your brand is mentioned or linked. Also track referral visits from chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai in your analytics.
Frequently asked questions
How is GEO different from SEO?
SEO targets ranking in Google’s result list, while GEO aims for AI models to quote your site or recommend your brand when they answer.
What is llms.txt?
A text file at the root of your site that gives language models a plain summary of your business and links to your most important pages.
How long does GEO take to work?
Models with live search can reflect changes within weeks; getting into a model’s core knowledge takes longer.