GEO: what it is, and what it isn't

The short answer: GEO is a name for work aimed at being quoted in AI answers. For Google, it's "still SEO" (Google, Jul 2026). The research paper behind the name found that adding quotations and figures helped on a test engine, and that stuffing in keywords did little or nothing. We suggest clear pages with real facts and sources, and no tricks.

Where the name comes from

"Generative engine optimization" comes from a paper by Pranjal Aggarwal of IIT Delhi and five co-authors: three from Princeton University and two independent researchers. It was first posted in November 2023, "Accepted to KDD 2024", a computer-science conference, and paid for, the paper says, by the US National Science Foundation (arXiv).

You'll also see AEO ("answer engine optimization"), LLMO and "AI SEO". Wikipedia lists them as other names for the same idea and says there is "no consensus definition" (Wikipedia). Google names AEO and GEO as terms you "may see used" (Google, Jul 2026). So we suggest asking anyone who uses these words what exactly they mean by them.

What Google says

Google's view is short: "optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO" (Google, Jul 2026).

It names what matters most: "Creating content that people find unique, compelling, and useful will likely influence your website's presence in generative AI search in the long run more than any of the other suggestions in this guide." And it lists tactics you can ignore for Google, including llms.txt files, "Chunking" content and "Rewriting content just for AI systems" (Google, Jul 2026).

What the original study found

The study built its own test engine: it took the top five Google results for a question and had an AI model (gpt3.5-turbo) write the answer. It then rewrote pages in nine ways and measured how much of each page made it into the answer (arXiv).

• What helped: its three best methods, "Cite Sources, Quotation Addition, and Statistics Addition", improved visibility by "30-40%" on its word-count measure. Adding quotations did best.
• What didn't: keyword stuffing offered "little to no improvement", and on the word-count measure scored below an unchanged page.
• Good news if you're not number one: citing sources raised visibility by 115.1% for pages ranked fifth in the search results, while pages ranked first lost 30.3% on average.
• On a real AI service: on Perplexity, on the word-count measure, adding quotations gave "a 22% improvement", and keyword stuffing performed "10% worse than the baseline". That test used 200 questions, with the pages given to Perplexity as uploaded files, not found on the open web.

All figures from the paper (arXiv). It tested a research setup from 2023, not today's ChatGPT or Google, so we suggest reading the results as a direction, not a promise.

Will AI answers send you visitors?

Fewer than you might hope, going by one study. A study by the Pew Research Center, whose "primary funder" is The Pew Charitable Trusts, published as a short read in July 2025, followed the browsing of 900 US adults. When Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a link inside it in "just 1% of all visits to pages with such a summary". They clicked an ordinary result in 8% of those visits, against 15% when no summary appeared (Pew Research Center). The 1% is a share of visits to results pages with a summary, not of all searches.

What we suggest

• Write what only you can write. Prices, opening hours, what you do and where, answers to the questions your customers really ask.
• Back it up. Real figures, short quotations and named sources were what helped in the original study (above).
• Skip the tricks. Keyword stuffing didn't help in the study, and Google lists "chunking" and rewriting for AI among things to ignore (above).
• Measure honestly. See Check your site for free reports from Google and Bing.

Questions

Is GEO different from SEO? For Google, no: it's "still SEO". For the other AI services, see How AI answers work.

Should I hire a GEO agency? Google's advice: "If you're considering third-party 'AEO' or 'GEO' advice or services, review our guidance on evaluating third-party SEO advice." It also warns that "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems" (Google, Jul 2026). We suggest asking any agency which study its advice rests on.

Does adding keywords to every sentence help? Not in the original study: keyword stuffing scored below an unchanged page on its word-count measure (arXiv).

Checked on 3 November 2026.