// guides
Direct answers to the questions people ask about AI search visibility. Each guide opens with a short answer, then the detail, then the sources it relies on.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring a brand and its content so generative AI systems — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google AI Overviews — discover it, trust it and cite it inside generated answers. Where SEO competes for a ranked link, GEO competes to be the source the model quotes.
SEO optimizes for placement in a ranked list of links, where the click is the outcome. GEO optimizes for inclusion inside a generated answer, where the citation is the outcome. They share technical foundations such as crawlability and structured data, but differ in content shape, success metrics and how results are measured.
To be cited by ChatGPT you need three things: crawler access for OAI-SearchBot and GPTBot in robots.txt, server-rendered pages with self-contained passages a model can quote without surrounding context, and independent sources that describe your brand the same way. Access and structure make you eligible; corroboration is what gets you named.
AI Overviews are generated from Google's regular search index, so appearing in one starts with ranking for the query. Beyond that, Google documents no separate opt-in: the levers are conventional indexing, allowing the Google-Extended token, structured data, and content written as compact self-contained answers that are straightforward to summarize and attribute.
Measure AI visibility with four inputs: citation rate across a fixed prompt set sampled repeatedly, share of voice against competitors on those same prompts, AI-crawler hits in server logs as the earliest signal, and referral traffic from assistant domains as the commercial outcome. Single checks are unreliable because answers vary between runs.