Generative engine optimisation, answered plainly
16 answers. Every one states its answer in the first forty words, so you can leave immediately if that is all you needed.
What the words mean
The category settled on a vocabulary before it settled on definitions, so the same term is used to mean different things by different vendors. These are ours, written to be argued with.
What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of getting a brand cited and accurately described in AI-generated answers. There is no ranking position to win: a model retrieves a few sources and writes prose from them.
Read the full answerWhat is answer engine optimisation (AEO)?
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is structuring content so it becomes the source an answer engine uses. An answer engine is any surface returning a direct answer rather than links: AI assistants, AI Overviews, snippets and voice.
Read the full answerWhat is AI visibility?
AI visibility is how often, and how accurately, a brand appears in AI-generated answers. It is measured across six metrics: citation rate, brand mention rate, share of voice, prompt coverage, brand accuracy and source concentration.
Read the full answerAnswer engine optimisation vs SEO: what actually changes?
SEO optimises a page to rank in a list. AEO optimises a passage to be extracted as an answer. They share most of the technical foundation, and diverge on the unit of selection and on what failure looks like.
Read the full answerGEO vs AEO vs SEO: what each term actually means
SEO is getting found in a list. AEO is being the source of an extracted answer. GEO is the discipline of being cited and correctly described by AI assistants, which contains AEO and assumes competent SEO underneath.
Read the full answerHow the work is done
Methods you can run yourself, including the manual checks that are worth doing before you buy any tooling.
How to rank in AI Overviews
You cannot rank in an AI Overview: there are no positions. Overviews are generated from pages already ranking, and selection is passage-level. So rank for the query, then put a clean, self-contained answer in an early passage.
Read the full answerHow to show up in AI Overviews when you already rank
If you rank well and a competitor is in the overview, it is almost always one of five things: Google-Extended blocking you, a buried answer, a stale page, a passage that needs context, or a query rewarding another source type.
Read the full answerHow to monitor AI search visibility
Build a prompt set of 30 to 50 buyer questions and freeze it. Run each at least five times a month, per platform, recording the answer, the sources and the model version. Report citation rate and mention rate separately.
Read the full answerHow to track AI Overviews
Track presence continuously, not at a point in time: the same query can produce an overview one week and not the next. Record trigger rate, citation rate within triggered queries, and clicks separately, because citation and traffic diverge.
Read the full answerAI visibility checker: how to check your AI visibility yourself
Run ten category questions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot, three times each, recording whether you were named, whether you were linked, and which sources were cited. An hour, and better than most instant checkers.
Read the full answerWhat to buy, and whether to buy anything
Budget, cost, resourcing and supplier selection. Each of these has a version of "you may not need this yet", because a decision page with one possible conclusion is a sales page.
Does GEO need its own budget, separate from SEO?
Partly. Most GEO work is technical and content work your SEO budget already funds. Two lines have no SEO equivalent and need separate funding: the off-site citation-sources programme, and AI visibility measurement.
Read the full answerWhat does generative engine optimisation cost?
Across the market in 2026: AI visibility tooling runs roughly £200 to £2,000 a month, freelance GEO £2,000 to £6,000, agency retainers £4,000 to £15,000, senior advisory £8,000 to £35,000. An in-house hire is £60,000 to £95,000.
Read the full answerAI search: advisory, agency or in-house?
Hire in-house if AI search is permanent and full-time. Use an agency if you need execution capacity. Use an advisory if you have a capable team but no senior judgement here. Many companies need none of the three yet.
Read the full answerHow to brief and evaluate a GEO partner
Brief on the outcome and the constraint, not the tactics: what you want to be found for, which competitors you lose to, and what you will not do. Then evaluate on nine technical questions with known answers.
Read the full answerHow to report AI search visibility to a board
Report four things: share of voice against a fixed competitor set, brand accuracy, source concentration, and citation rate per platform. Never a blended score, modelled traffic shown as measured, or a projection.
Read the full answerLooking for a GEO agency or an AI SEO agency?
An agency does the work and is paid for output. An advisory sets direction and is paid for judgement, with your team executing. Capacity but no direction means you want an advisory. Direction but no hands means an agency.
Read the full answerThe parts of this we publish rather than sell
Our measurement definitions, a full worked audit, the public index and our position on llms.txt. Free, and useful whether or not you ever speak to us.