What is Generative Engine Optimization?

GEO is a discipline to help enhance your brand’s visibility on AI answer engines. Here's what to know

WTF is SEO?

Mar 31, 2025

#SPONSORED

🚀 More Google Discover Traffic with Real-Time Tracking!

Struggling with Google Discover? DiscoverPulse by NewzDash gives you real-time insights on:

✅ Google Discover Trends & Entities

✅ Trending & Viral Stories on Discover

✅ Competitor Analysis to outperform rivals

✅ Viral Content by Category, Language, Location, ...

Available in 45+ countries!

Track Discover Traffic now!

Hello, and welcome back. Shelby here, back from a wonderful weekend that went by far too fast. After cat sitting in my hometown, I spent a large sum of money on hummus, dips and honey at the One of a Kind Show in Toronto. This week’s lunches are going to be the best.

This week: Generative Engine Optimization 101. While this is a very new concept, GEO is a key discipline to help enhance your brand’s visibility on AI answer engines. We cover what it is, why it’s important and how publishers should be thinking about it. We’ll dive into tactics in a future newsletter.

Join our community of news SEOs on Slack to chat any time.

Everything is computer. Photo by Andras Vas on Unsplash

Let’s get it.

In this issue:

What is Generative Engine Optimization?
Why is GEO important?
How should publishers think about GEO?

THE 101

What is Generative Engine Optimization?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the process of optimizing content to boost its visibility in AI-driven applications, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Claude or Perplexity. GEO enhances an entity’s visibility to be featured in Generative AI experiences, getting your brand mentioned or used in a response for a user’s query.

Instead of optimizing an article to be surfaced on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), the goal of GEO is to increase visibility of your brand as a whole in AI-generated responses.

Language Learning Models are artificial intelligence systems that power AI applications like ChatGPT. They are trained to understand and interpret massive data sets. When prompted by a user, it generates the “right” response based on the data. Those human-sounding outputs provide users more context than a traditional search engine.

Seer Interactive’s team says it best: You influence for AI; you optimize for search engines.

An informative chart from Seer Interactive lays out the similarities and differences between GEO and SEO.

GEO and traditional SEO are quite similar, focusing on several of the same key foundational components such as visibility of content in front of users; content quality and relevance; keyword and key phrase research; user experience; data insights; and authority building.

Where SEO and GEO vary depends on the use case. Answer engines like ChatGPT provide far more context compared to the "10 blue links," making it much harder to optimize for. Therefore, brand recognition — being mentioned or linked to in a response — becomes more important.

Why is GEO important?

AI applications are becoming more and more prevalent, cutting into the share of traffic from traditional search — and even affecting the market share of Google, which dropped below 90% for the first time ever in October 2024.

Back in February 2024, Gartner, a technological research and consulting firm, predicted traffic from search engines to sites would drop close to 25 per cent by 2026 as a result of the rise of generative AI answer engines. In February 2025, over 400 million people (up from 300 million in December 2024) were using ChatGPT, while Perplexity AI had around 10 million active monthly users.

People are increasingly turning to these and other answer engines for quick, tailored responses without needing to refine them — even if the information isn’t always accurate.

The surge of AI Overviews in organic search is also impacting traffic levels. During the March 2025 core update, visibility of AI Overviews grew from 9.8 per cent before the release, to 16.25 per cent, according to DataForSEO data. People also reported seeing AIOs more in features like People Also Ask, something first noted in November 2024.

It’s too soon for GEO to be its own discipline, but audience and SEO editors should start to analyze what — if anything — from their brand already shows up on AI-powered answer engines. Start to think about opportunities and focus on overall brand authority.

Caveat: Many news organizations have already taken action against these LLMs ingesting their content for free, deciding to block the AI robots from crawling their sites. This limits their visibility on AI answer engines. This is entirely a business-by-business case, and is likely something you have little to no control over. That’s okay! Consult business stakeholders to identify the right level of GEO involvement and set realistic expectations.

THE HOW TO

How should publishers think about GEO?

Since AI answer machines are influenced more by authority and brand visibility, SEO and audience editors should emphasize E.E.A.T and topic authority strategies. This means comprehensive coverage that answers a broad range of questions on a topic is key, with expert insights from first-hand experiences.

While it’s still early, a study by Seer Interactive found that optimizing content for generative search engines resulted in 40 per cent more visibility. The biggest factors are credibility and citations; engaging content, particularly with authoritative quotes; compelling statistics; clear language; and easy readability.

To get started, start small. Play around with answer engines and see if you can surface your publication for queries. Identify the top 10 or so long-tail/question queries that your site ranks for on organic search using Google Search Console data. Input those phrases on organic search and ChatGPT or another AI application of choice. Compare the results. Does your publication show up in both? Review which presents a better response and why users may find one more useful than the other. Determine where the AI response falls short and where you can enhance your credibility to be considered.

Look into if you can track referral traffic from ChatGPT or other AI applications. AI Overviews can’t be meaningfully tracked in places like GSC, but keep an eye on where they’re showing up and if your content is involved.

Publishers should also focus less on traffic grabbers. Simple informational queries like “what is” or “when is” are or will be entirely owned by Google’s AIO, resulting in less traffic in the future. Lean into brand authority. What is your publication known for? Who are the key authors you need to emphasize? What do people seek you out for? Those entities may be picked up by the bots and surfaced for readers. Enhance your brand awareness as a key strategy for GEO.

🔗 Read more: Consult Seer’s excellent guide to optimizing content for generative search, complete with a checklist.

The bottom line: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) optimizes content to improve its visibility in AI-driven applications like ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews, Claude and Perplexity. While GEO is still evolving, there are simple steps to take now as AI engines become more prominent, while still focusing on traditional search as your site's main traffic driver.

But a tote!

#SPONSORED - The Classifieds