What are GEO and AEO? How to show up in AI search

GEO, generative engine optimisation, is the work that helps a page get cited as a source in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. AEO, answer engine optimisation, makes a page give a direct, quotable answer to a question. Both sit on top of SEO. Google says there are no extra technical requirements to appear in its AI features: the page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Search with a snippet.

Customers no longer search only by typing into Google. They ask ChatGPT or Gemini the same question and get one answer assembled from a handful of sources. A business that is not named in that answer does not exist for that search. This guide explains what GEO and AEO mean, how the work is done and how it is measured.

What does AEO stand for?

AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. An answer engine is a search surface that gives the user an answer instead of a list of links: an answer box, a voice assistant or an AI chat. AEO aims to have the answer on your page quoted there. We cover the term in more depth on our what is AEO page.

What does GEO stand for?

GEO stands for generative engine optimisation. The term comes from a 2023 research paper, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, published on arXiv. In their own test setup, the authors reported that these methods could raise a page's visibility in AI-generated answers by up to 40 per cent.

SEO is the foundation of both. If a page is not crawled, loads slowly or does not appear in any search, it will not make it into an AI answer either.

How are GEO, AEO and SEO different?

	SEO	AEO	GEO
Goal	Rank high in search results	Be quoted in the answer to a question	Be cited as a source in a generated answer
Surface	Google and Bing organic results	Answer boxes and voice search	ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, AI Overviews
Measure	Position, impressions and clicks	Being quoted in the answer	Your name and link appearing in the answer

They look like three separate jobs, but in practice they run on the same page. Technical order comes from SEO, the answer format from AEO and content trustworthy enough to cite from GEO.

How do AI assistants choose their sources?

The exact rules are not published, but a few things are clear. When an assistant answers a question, it searches the web and reads some of the pages it finds. A page it cannot read cannot be cited.

Access rules are explicit. OpenAI says ChatGPT's search features find sites with a crawler called OAI-SearchBot, and that sites which block it will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers. Perplexity recommends allowing PerplexityBot in robots.txt. On Google's side, being indexed and eligible for a snippet is enough.

Our own measurement gave another clue. On 23 September 2026, for recommendation questions such as “recommend”, “which is good” and “who is best”, AI answers cited list articles and directories more often than vendor sites. The same pattern appeared on three surfaces: Yandex's AI answer, Bing and Perplexity. In the same measurement, ChatGPT answered part of the local business questions with a map card that showed ratings and review counts.

How do you show up in AI search?

1. Check that the page is indexed. The URL inspection tool in Search Console shows this. A page outside the index cannot appear in any answer.
2. Let the crawlers in. Make sure robots.txt does not block Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot.
3. Answer in the first paragraph. The first sixty words should carry a short answer that makes sense on its own.
4. Write headings as questions. The questions people actually ask become headings, with the answer right below.
5. Back facts with sources. In the GEO paper, the strongest methods were citing sources, adding quotations and adding statistics. Keyword stuffing did not help.
6. Use structured data correctly. Schema tells machines what a page is about. But Google says no special schema is needed for its AI features, and since 2023 it has shown FAQ rich results mainly for well-known government and health sites. Schema helps; it does not bring visibility on its own.
7. Complete your Google Business Profile. Local questions bring up map cards and reviews, so services, hours, photos and genuine reviews should be complete.
8. Appear in lists and directories. For recommendation questions these are often the sources. Being listed accurately in your sector's directories and comparison articles is the second half of the work.
9. Announce changes. IndexNow tells Bing and Yandex about new or updated pages, and the sitemap date changes when the content does.
10. Show the date and the author. Readers and engines both need to see when the information was true.

An llms.txt file can be added too. It is a format proposed in 2024 to give AI tools a summary of a site. It is not yet a standard; it is easy to add, but it does not replace the work above.

How do you measure GEO and AEO?

Measurement comes from three places. The first is Search Console, which shows which queries earn impressions, which pages are clicked and whether pages are indexed. Results are read by comparing 28-day periods, and a one-day swing is not a result.

The second is a target question list. Ten to twenty questions a customer might ask are written down and asked every month, in the same way, to ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Whether the business is named and whether the site is linked as a source goes into a table.

The third is the site's own traffic, with visits from AI assistants tracked as a separate source. Read together, these three show whether a change worked.

How does ALTAI Digital do GEO and AEO work?

We built the Koy Zekeriyakoy site for the estate agent Kerem Ali Yorukoglu. The site received SEO, GEO and AEO work and gained visibility in AI search. It is linked to his main site and we maintain it. The same work is ongoing on the sites of Mujgan Simsek and Damla Subar.

The work follows the same order every time. First comes a technical audit: index status, speed, robots.txt and structured data. Then we write content that answers the questions customers really ask. Every number and quotation is checked against its source, and the client decides what is published. Finally, Search Console data and the target question list are measured and reported every month.

The scope of the service is on our AI SEO page. If search visibility is part of a wider change, the method is on our digital transformation page.

Common myths about GEO and AEO

• You need a separate site for AI. You do not. The same page can appear on Google and in assistant answers.
• Adding schema is enough. It is not. Schema describes the content; it cannot make weak content strong.
• Repeating keywords works. It does not. In the GEO paper's measurements, keyword stuffing did not raise visibility.
• Appearing in AI answers can be promised. It cannot. Answers change often, so the right habit is regular measurement.