Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your content easy for AI answer engines to find, understand and cite. Brands get cited when a page answers a specific question early, names the brand and its expertise clearly, backs claims with sources and original data, and is open to crawlers. Google says AI Overviews need no special markup: the fundamentals decide it.
Key takeaways
- AI answer engines quote passages that answer one question clearly, so build each page around the questions buyers actually type.
- Entity clarity matters: one consistent brand name, an about page and Organization markup with sameAs links help engines know who you are.
- In the GEO study presented at KDD 2024, adding citations, quotations and statistics raised visibility in generated answers by up to about 40%, while keyword stuffing did worse than doing nothing.
- Google states there are no additional technical requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet.
- Original data is the strongest asset you have, because an engine has no reason to cite what everyone else also says.
What is generative engine optimisation?
GEO is search optimisation for answers rather than rankings. The goal is to be one of the sources an AI system quotes, links or names when it writes a response.
The term comes from a paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, presented at KDD 2024. The authors tested ways of rewriting web content and report that GEO "can boost visibility by up to 40%" in generative engine responses. Adding quotations from relevant sources did best, followed by adding statistics; citing sources and improving fluency also helped. Keyword stuffing, the old SEO reflex, scored below the unmodified baseline.
Two caveats matter. It is a benchmark study, and the authors note that what works varies by domain. And none of it replaces having something worth citing in the first place.
Why are brands worried about invisibility in AI answers?
Because more answers now arrive without a click, and a brand that is not cited is not in the consideration set. The worry is visible in what brands publish.
In SOMIN's creative-content workspace, which tracks AI content tools, a perspective study of 108 posts published between 27 September and 27 October 2025 grouped a theme around AI in brand visibility and content creation. Brands fear becoming invisible as AI platforms turn into primary information sources, see traditional SEO working less well, and feel pressure to produce content at unprecedented pace while low-quality AI content saturates feeds.
The audience-research workspace shows the same concern a year later. A 30-day whitespace study of 220 posts (September 2026) contains a theme of 91 posts on the AI marketing maze, which includes brands losing visibility because their SEO approach does not fit AI-generated results. SOMIN's moments-of-truth model surfaces the matching thought: "If we don't find a unique angle, we risk becoming invisible to our audience."
The common response, publishing more AI content faster, makes the problem worse. Engines have little reason to cite the hundredth version of the same paragraph. We explore that sameness problem in our AI copywriting framework.
What does Google say about AI Overviews and AI Mode?
Google says no special optimisation is needed: the SEO fundamentals and its helpful-content guidance apply. That is useful, because it rules out most of the tricks being sold under the GEO label.
Google's page on AI features and your website states that "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." To appear as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. The page also asks that structured data match the visible text and says no special schema is required. It notes that both features may use query fan-out, running related searches across subtopics, which rewards pages that cover a topic's adjacent questions.
Google's guide to helpful, reliable, people-first content adds the editorial standard. It asks whether content provides "original information, reporting, research, or analysis", whether the use of AI is made clear to visitors where they would expect it, and it states that "Of these aspects, trust is most important."
What should a GEO checklist include?
Eleven checks cover most of it, from page structure and entity clarity to sources, crawl access and measurement, with llms.txt as an optional extra.
| Check | What to do | Why it helps |
|---|---|---|
| Answer first | Open each page with a 40 to 70 word answer to the question in its title | Engines lift self-contained passages |
| Question headings | Use the questions buyers type, one per section, each opened by a direct answer | Matches the sub-queries of query fan-out |
| FAQ | Three to five real questions with one-to-three-sentence answers, visible on the page | Short, quotable question-and-answer pairs |
| Entity clarity | Use one brand name everywhere, keep an about page, add Organization markup with logo, URL and sameAs links | Google says it helps disambiguate your organisation |
| Schema that matches | Article, Organization and FAQ markup that mirrors what readers see | Google requires structured data to match visible text |
| Sources and statistics | Link primary sources, quote them and date every number | The strongest methods in the GEO study |
| Original data | Publish your own studies, benchmarks and case results | Gives engines something only you can supply |
| Authorship and dates | Name the author and their role; show published and updated dates | Supports the trust Google puts first |
| Crawl access | Allow crawling in robots.txt and at the CDN; keep key content in text | A page must be indexed and snippet-eligible to be cited |
| llms.txt (optional) | Publish a Markdown summary of the site and its key pages at /llms.txt | Low-cost help for AI tools that read your site; not a ranking factor |
| Measurement | Track a fixed question set in answer engines, plus Search Console and conversions | Shows whether the work is changing anything |
Google's documentation on Organization structured data recommends placing it on the home page or a single page that describes the organisation, not on every page.
Where does llms.txt fit?
It is a cheap, optional extra, not a ranking factor. Treat it as a courtesy to AI tools that read your site, and do not expect it to move citations on its own.
The llms.txt proposal, published by Jeremy Howard in September 2024, suggests a Markdown file at /llms.txt with the site's name, a short summary and lists of links to the pages that matter. It is presented as a proposal, mainly for use when a model reads a site to answer a question, and it does not claim adoption by any search engine.
We publish an llms.txt and a full-text llms-full.txt on somin.ai because both are generated by the same build that makes the pages, so they cost nothing to keep current. The work that counts happens on the pages themselves: answer-first openings, question headings, an FAQ that becomes FAQPage markup and BlogPosting markup that matches the visible text. This article follows that pattern.
How do you measure whether AI engines cite your brand?
Fix a set of 20 to 30 questions your buyers ask, run them in the main answer engines every month, and log whether you are cited, linked or named. Track Search Console and conversions alongside.
Google counts traffic from AI features within the Web search type of the Search Console Performance report, alongside classic results. Your own question log adds what that report does not show: whether you were cited at all. Record competitors too, because the question that matters is who gets cited instead of you, and why.
Visibility against homogenised content is also a research question for us. Our SIGIR 2026 paper with Prof. Aleks Farseev describes agentic AI that helps professionals write distinctive content and counters content homogenisation; it is listed with our other peer-reviewed work on the SOMIN research page.
FAQ
What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO aims to rank a page in a list of results; GEO aims to have a page quoted, linked or named inside an AI-generated answer. The foundations overlap: crawlable, helpful, well-structured pages with clear sources.
Do I need special schema to appear in AI Overviews?
No. Google says there is no special schema.org markup required for AI features, but any structured data you use should match the visible text on the page.
Does llms.txt help with ChatGPT or Google?
It is an open proposal rather than an adopted standard, so treat it as an optional extra. Clear, well-sourced pages matter far more.
How do I know if AI answer engines cite my brand?
Run a fixed set of buyer questions in each engine every month and record whether your brand is cited, linked or named, and who is cited instead.
Pick the ten questions your buyers ask most and check which of your pages answers each one in its first paragraph. Fix the gaps, add a source and a dated number to every claim, and publish one piece of original data this quarter. Then start the monthly citation log, and read more on the SOMIN blog.
