What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)?
GEO is the practice of optimising your online presence so AI tools - ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and similar - can accurately find, understand, and recommend your business when someone asks a relevant question.
For years, being found online meant one thing: ranking on Google. That's no longer the whole picture.
A growing number of searches now happen inside AI tools - someone asks ChatGPT for a recommendation, or reads Google's AI Overview instead of clicking through to a website at all. Your business either gets mentioned in that answer, or it doesn't exist as far as that searcher is concerned.
Unlike traditional search, these tools don't just list links - they generate a direct answer, often citing only a handful of sources.
Getting cited (or mentioned at all) depends on factors that overlap with SEO but aren't identical: clear, well-structured content that directly answers likely questions, accurate and consistent information across the web, credible sources, and technical foundations that let AI tools properly parse what your site actually says.
It's a genuinely new discipline, and one that's moving fast - which means there's a real advantage in getting it right early, rather than waiting until it's standard practice.
This isn't a replacement for traditional SEO - it's an extension of it.
Who is this for?
GEO tends to matter most for businesses who already care about being found - just not yet by AI tools specifically.
GEO tends to be a good fit if:
- You want your business recommended when people ask AI tools for suggestions in your industry or area
- You've noticed AI tools misrepresenting or not mentioning your business at all
- You're already investing in SEO and want to make sure that work extends to AI visibility too
- You operate in a competitive space where being the AI's go-to recommendation would be a genuine advantage
- You want to be ahead of competitors who haven't started thinking about this yet
If you're not sure whether AI tools currently know about your business at all, a GEO audit is the simplest way to find out.
How it works
Because so much of this is new, the process starts with finding out where you actually stand today. Here's what that looks like.
We check how AI tools currently represent (or fail to represent) your business, across the relevant platforms.
We identify where the biggest opportunities are - missing information, unclear content, technical barriers.
Content restructuring, technical fixes, and consistency improvements, carried out directly.
We track how things change and adapt the approach as AI tools and their behaviour continue to evolve.
What we offer
GEO covers a mix of new territory and familiar ground. Here's where we focus, and how it builds on the SEO fundamentals you may already have in place.
FAQs
A few things clients often ask before getting started with GEO.
They're closely related but not identical. Both rely on similar foundations - clean technical structure, credible content - but GEO specifically focuses on how AI tools find, understand, and cite your business, which has its own additional considerations.
Yes - if anything, it matters more. AI tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews still rely on the same foundations of traditional SEO builds: technical health, credible content, clear structure.
GEO isn't a replacement for SEO, it's an extension of it - businesses with strong SEO tend to see GEO improvements land faster, because so much of the groundwork already overlaps.
A GEO audit will tell you directly - we check what tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews currently say (or don't say) about your business, and why.
We'd argue the opposite - because most businesses and agencies haven't started properly on GEO yet, there's a real first-mover advantage available right now that will only shrink as it becomes standard practice.
Not necessarily, but the two work best together - a lot of the technical and content foundations overlap, so businesses already investing in SEO tend to see GEO improvements land faster.
We track how and whether your business is mentioned across relevant AI tools over time, alongside more traditional indicators like referral traffic from AI platforms where that data is available.
Want to know how AI tools currently see your business?
A GEO audit shows you exactly what AI tools say (or don't say) about your business right now.
Ready to build ongoing AI visibility?
If you want to stay ahead as this area develops, we can keep your business properly represented as AI tools and best practices evolve.