In short
- GEO (generative engine optimisation) is making sure AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI answers name you.
- It builds on SEO: if you can't be found and can't be understood, you won't be named either.
- What helps: content that answers directly, a scannable structure with FAQs, honest structured data and mentions in trade press and regional media.
- There's no guarantee of being named. What you can do is measure, with fixed prompts you test regularly.
In this article (6)
Someone is looking for a trainer, a coach or an SEO specialist. They used to type it into Google and get ten blue links. Now they ask ChatGPT. And it names a few. Is your name one of them?
Chances are it isn’t. Not because you’re bad at what you do, but because an AI doesn’t know you. Or does know you, but doesn’t understand what you do.
SEO has always been my trade, and within OMB I still do the SEO myself. So let me be honest: much of what’s now sold as GEO is just good SEO with a new label. But there’s one real difference in it, and you miss that difference if you only look at your own site.
What is GEO?
GEO stands for generative engine optimisation: making sure AI search engines name you in their answer. Think ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and the AI answers Google puts above the search results.
You’ll see other names go by too: AI SEO, AEO (answer engine optimisation), LLM optimisation. Different labels, same loaf. The goal is always: when someone asks a question about your field, you’re in the answer.
What is the difference between GEO and SEO?
In short: with SEO you want a place in the list. With GEO you want a place in the answer.
SEO
You compete for a place in the search results. The visitor chooses which link to click, and then reads your page.
GEO
The AI reads the pages for the visitor, summarises them and names a few names. Whoever isn't named doesn't exist in that conversation.
That sounds like a completely different game. It isn’t.
AI search engines that search the web take their answer from pages they can find and understand. Google says so itself in Google Search Central, AI features and your website: to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations are necessary. No separate AI file, no special structured data. The ordinary SEO basics are the basics. If your site is technically messy and nothing on it answers a question, you won’t be named either.
So no: GEO doesn’t replace SEO. GEO is SEO where you can no longer get away with limp content.
Where does an AI get its answer from?
From two places, roughly.
- What the model already knows. A language model is trained on enormous amounts of text from the internet. If a lot is written about you, consistently, the model knows you.
- What it looks up right now. ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini and Google search the live web for many questions and cite their sources, often with a link.
And this is where that one real difference from classic SEO sits. SEO is about your page. In GEO, what others say about you counts at least as much. An AI that names a few names wants to see those names in several places: in a trade journal, a regional newspaper, a podcast, an overview article.
It’s not your own site that makes you credible, but the confirmation of others.
How do you get found in ChatGPT?
Not with a trick. With five ingredients that need each other.
Content that answers
Start with the answer, not the run-up. Put the question in a heading, and the answer in the first one or two sentences below it. Only then the nuance.
Scannable or it doesn't exist
Clear subheadings, short paragraphs, lists, tables and an FAQ. What a human can scan quickly, an AI can also easily take apart.
One story about who you are
Your name, your business and what you do, described the same way everywhere: on your site, your LinkedIn, your Google Business Profile, your guest articles. Say something different in every place and you become nobody.
Honest structured data
Schema.org markup such as Organization, Person, Service and FAQPage tells machines who you are and what you offer. Only what's actually on the page. No made-up stars, no fake addresses.
Mentions in trusted sources
An interview in a trade journal, an article in the regional media, a guest spot on a podcast. That builds authority with people, and it gives AI search engines more places where your name appears in the right context.
A note on those FAQs. Since 2023 Google only showed the expandable FAQ in search results for well-known government and health sites, and since 7 May 2026 it has stopped altogether (Google Search Central, documentation updates). So don’t write them for a rich result. Write them because they’re the questions your client really asks, with a short answer that’s right first time.
And one more open door that’s closed more often than you’d think: check your robots.txt. If you block the crawlers of AI search engines in there, they can’t fetch your pages. Sometimes that’s deliberate, sometimes someone once switched it on as a precaution. For the AI answers in Google itself, it’s simply Googlebot that counts: you control that with the same robots.txt rules as your ordinary findability. Google-Extended is about other Google systems, not Search (Google Search Central).
What does an answer like that look like? Like this:
Factory bread
"In today's digital landscape it is increasingly important for organisations to be visible. In this article we take you into the world of…"
Three sentences and still no answer. An AI finds nothing here to quote, a human drops off.
Fresh from the baker
"GEO is making sure AI search engines name you in their answer. It builds on SEO, with one difference: what others say about you counts more."
The question is answered in two sentences. You can lift those without reading the rest of the page.
Factory bread
A service page that promises "everything in the field of marketing".
For which question would an AI name you then? Not a single specific one.
Fresh from the baker
One page per question your client asks, with a clear answer and an example from your own work.
For that question, you're the logical answer.
Noticed? This article is built that way itself. Questions as headings, the answer right below them, an FAQ at the end. No coincidence.
How do you know whether AI names you?
By asking it. In SEO you do keyword research. In GEO you do prompt research: which question would someone ask ChatGPT that you are the answer to?
Write down your questions
Ten to twenty questions a client would ask before they end up with you. Not "Rubin Koot", but "which agency helps me fill my masterclass?". Use your client's words, not your own jargon.
Ask them to several AIs
ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google. Note per question who gets named, and which sources are cited.
Look at the sources, not just the names
Which sites get cited? A trade journal, a comparison article, a competitor with a strong FAQ? That's where your homework is.
Repeat it at fixed intervals
AI answers vary per moment and per user. Testing once is a snapshot. Asking the same questions every time shows the direction.
For us this comes at the start of every piece of content, just like keyword research. First know which question you’re answering, then write.
An example, made up but recognisable. Say you’re a career coach in Eindhoven. You ask ChatGPT and Perplexity: “Which career coach in Eindhoven helps when I’m unsure about a career switch?” Three names come back. You’re not among them.
Then you look at the sources. Two of the three names come from the same overview article in a regional newspaper. The third has a page with literally that question as its heading, and the answer below it.
That’s where your homework is. A page that answers exactly that question. And a story interesting enough for that newspaper. Four weeks later you ask the same question again.
Can anyone guarantee that ChatGPT names you?
No. And anyone who promises otherwise, you can politely show the door.
Nobody controls what an AI search engine puts in its answer. Not you, not me, not the agency with the slickest pitch. The answers vary per question, per day and per user. Just as nobody can give you an honest guarantee of position one in Google.
What we do control: a site that’s technically sound, content that answers, a story that’s the same everywhere, and mentions in places that matter. And measuring with fixed prompts, so you can see whether it’s moving.
Measure what Google does show you too. According to the same page from Google Search Central, traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Performance report in Search Console, under the “Web” search type. Your fixed prompts show whether you’re named. Search Console and your own analytics show what it delivers. Not in mentions, but in visitors and enquiries.
Want to know who ChatGPT names right now when your client asks a question? Book a one-hour baker’s chat. We’ll ask the questions your client asks together, and see who’s answering them now.
An AI only names names it knows and understands. Make yours one of them.
Rubin is the founder of Online Marketing Bakery in Roermond. You take the stage, we fill the room. And we make sure it buys.
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Further reading: SEO agency · SEO agency in Roermond · Local landing pages that rank · Ecommerce migration without losing SEO
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