What is GEO? (and what Google actually says about it)

The short answer

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), sometimes called AEO (answer engine optimization), is the work of getting your business named and cited when an AI assistant answers a question. Where classic SEO chases a ranking on a results page, GEO aims to be one of the few sources the AI uses to write its answer.

What Google actually says

Google is blunt about it: from Google Search's perspective, optimizing for generative features like AI Overviews and AI Mode is optimizing for Search, and so it is still SEO. There are no special requirements and no magic markup. If Google were your only target, the honest advice would be simple: do good SEO.

Why GEO is still its own thing

Google is not the only engine answering your buyers. ChatGPT (OpenAI's GPTBot), Claude (Anthropic's ClaudeBot and Claude-User) and Perplexity each crawl the web on their own terms and decide their own citations. Optimizing across all of them, and knowing whether any of them actually name you, is not something a classic SEO report tells you. That gap is what GEO addresses.

What it comes down to

Three things move the needle: your content has to be genuinely useful and answer-first, the engines have to be allowed to read it, and you have to measure whether they cite you. The rest is noise. The other guides cover each in turn.