The short answer
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google's AI Mode to find, understand and quote. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is its close cousin: shaping a page so one clean answer can be lifted from it. Neither replaces SEO. Both are built on it.
If you have been told you need a special "AI file" or secret schema to show up in AI answers, take a breath. As of October 2026, Google says plainly that you do not. Most of the job is old work done more carefully: clear pages, consistent facts, honest sources and other people talking about you.
AEO vs GEO vs SEO: what is the difference?
SEO earns you a place in a list of links, AEO earns you the single answer to a single question, and GEO earns you a mention inside a paragraph an AI model writes. They overlap heavily, so in practice one plan covers all three. The table shows where each one differs.
| SEO | AEO (answer engine optimisation) | GEO (generative engine optimisation) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it means | Ranking pages in search results | Making a page the cleanest direct answer to a question | Making your brand easy for an AI model to describe and cite |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results pages | Featured snippets, voice answers, the first line of an AI answer | ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| What it rewards | Relevance, useful content, links, technical health | Answer-first sections, plain definitions, tables, FAQs | Clear entity facts, consistent details, trusted third-party mentions, quotable passages |
| How to measure | Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools: impressions, clicks, rankings | Snippet ownership, questions answered, Search Console queries | Prompt testing logs, branded search, direct traffic, "how did you hear about us" answers |
An entity, in this context, is a thing a machine can identify without confusion: your company, its services, its city, its founders. GEO is mostly about making that entity unmistakable.
Our plain guide to what an LLM is explains why models repeat what many sources agree on.
What Google actually says about AI Overviews and AI Mode
Google's own guidance is short: there is nothing extra to do. Its AI features documentation says "There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary." A page only needs to be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet."
Three more points from the same page are worth knowing, as of October 2026:
- No special files. Google writes: "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features."
- No special schema. "There's also no special schema.org structured data that you need to add." Structured data still helps Google understand a page.
- Traffic is not hidden. Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in Search Console's Performance report "within the 'Web' search type." There is no separate AI tab, so you cannot isolate that traffic cleanly.
The same page also lists the controls you already have: robots.txt for Googlebot, and nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex.
If you have been doing honest SEO, you are not starting from zero.
Bing matters more than its market share suggests
Bing matters for AI search because several assistants draw on its index. Microsoft says Copilot Chat grounds its answers with web search queries sent to Bing, and OpenAI's help centre says ChatGPT search may share disassociated search queries with Bing to return web results.
Grounding, in plain words, means the assistant looks things up before it answers, then writes from what it found. If Bing has never indexed your page, those assistants have less chance of finding it.
So do the dull things:
- Verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap.
- Set up IndexNow, an open protocol that lets you tell participating search engines the moment a URL is added, changed or removed. Microsoft Bing supports it. Google does not.
- Check your robots.txt. OpenAI documents that OAI-SearchBot is the crawler for ChatGPT search, and that sites which block it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers. GPTBot is a separate crawler used for model training, so you can allow one and block the other.
What llms.txt is, honestly
llms.txt is a proposal, not a standard and not a Google requirement. It was proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024 as a Markdown file at the root of a site that gives AI tools a short summary and links to its most useful pages.
It is cheap to add, and some developer tools read it. But Google's documentation, quoted above, says you do not need AI text files to appear in its AI features. We add one to sites where it costs an hour, and we never sell it as a ranking lever. If someone pitches llms.txt as the centre of an AI strategy, ask them which assistant has publicly confirmed it uses the file.
What actually influences whether you get cited
Nobody outside the model providers knows the exact rules. What stays consistent across the assistants we test is simple: they quote sources that are readable, specific, consistent and corroborated by others.
Content a machine can read
Assistant crawlers read HTML. Text that appears only after JavaScript runs, sits behind a form or is baked into an image may never be seen. Server-rendered pages with plain text are the baseline.
A clear statement of who you are
Give one page that says what you do, who you do it for and where you are based, in sentences a stranger could quote without editing.
Mentions you do not control
A claim repeated across review sites, directories, industry roundups and forum threads reads as fact. One that appears only on your own website reads as marketing. This is the slow part, closer to public relations than SEO. For local businesses, a well-kept profile is part of it, which our Google Business Profile guide covers step by step.
Not sure how your own site reads to a machine? Our free website audit checks rendering, structured data and answer-first structure, and tells you plainly what is missing.
A practical AEO and GEO checklist
This checklist covers what we would do first on almost any site, in order. None of it depends on a secret, and every item also helps ordinary rankings.
- Answer-first sections. Under every H2, the first one or two sentences answer the heading on their own. Define each term in one plain sentence the first time it appears.
- Entity consistency. Your business name, services, city, phone, hours and founding year match on your site, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, LinkedIn and every directory. Contradictions turn into doubt, and doubtful brands do not get quoted.
- Sources for every claim. Link outside facts to the primary source and date them. A page that shows its working is safer for a model to repeat.
- Structured data that matches visible text. Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Article and FAQPage markup should restate what a reader can see. Markup that says something the page does not is worse than no markup.
- Mentions on trusted sites. Aim for real listings and features on sites your buyers already trust: industry associations, review platforms, local press, podcasts. Earn them, never buy fake ones.
- Index everywhere. Search Console for Google, Bing Webmaster Tools plus IndexNow for Bing, and a robots.txt you chose on purpose.
- Test prompts and log the results. Write 15 to 20 questions your buyers really ask. Once a month, run them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Record in a sheet whether you were mentioned, what was said, which sources were cited and whether anything was wrong.
That last step is monitoring, not attribution. Two people asking the same question can get different sources, and model updates shift things without notice. Watch the trend over months, not a single answer.
How much budget this deserves
For most businesses, classic search still sends the most valuable visitors: people typing a commercial query and ready to compare. So we treat generative engine optimisation as part of SEO, not a separate line item.
In our AEO and GEO service, the work is schema, entity pages, question-led content, digital PR and fact consistency. SEO retainers start from $800 per month (INR 10,000), with the price agreed in writing before we begin. Our opinion: if a plan cannot explain how each task would also help normal rankings, it is probably selling hope.
Timing is the other worry we hear most. Our opinion, from the prompts we track, is that mentions tend to move over months rather than weeks, and unevenly. The foundations take time the same way SEO does, which we cover in how long SEO takes for a new website.
The limits worth being honest about
You cannot buy a place in an AI answer. There is no auction, submission form or partner programme for ordinary businesses, so anyone selling guaranteed AI citations is selling something they do not control.
Some tools now claim to measure your "AI visibility share". Treat their numbers as vendor claims: they sample prompts their own way, and results vary by user, location and model version.
It is normal to feel behind here. Everyone is learning in public. The businesses that do well will be the ones that are clear, consistent and well spoken of, which is good business with or without AI.
If you want a calm second opinion, book a 30-minute call. Bring the three questions your buyers ask most, and we will show you what the assistants say about you today and what we would fix first.
Frequently asked questions
What is generative engine optimisation in simple terms?
Generative engine optimisation is making your business easy for AI assistants to find, understand and quote when they answer a question. It rests on the same foundations as SEO: readable pages, clear facts, sources and mentions on other trusted sites.
What is the difference between AEO and GEO?
AEO, answer engine optimisation, focuses on giving one clean, quotable answer to a specific question, the way featured snippets and voice results work. GEO is broader and covers how a model understands and describes your brand as a whole. You usually do both with the same content.
Do I need special schema or an llms.txt file to appear in Google AI Overviews?
No. Google's AI features documentation says there are no additional requirements beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet, and that no special AI text files or schema.org markup are needed. llms.txt is a proposal some tools read, not a Google requirement.
How do I get my business to show up in ChatGPT?
Make sure Bing can index your site and that OAI-SearchBot is not blocked in robots.txt, state your facts clearly and consistently, and earn mentions on sites you do not own. There is no paid placement or submission process for ordinary businesses.
How do I measure AI search traffic?
Google counts AI Overviews and AI Mode clicks inside the Web search type in Search Console, so they are not shown separately. Add a monthly prompt test log, watch branded search and direct traffic, and ask new enquiries how they heard about you.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. Classic search still drives the most qualified traffic for most businesses, and AI features rely on the same indexing and quality signals. Treat AI visibility as an extra result of doing SEO well, not a replacement for it.
Written byAstrafolio Team, senior web, SEO and AI specialists in Noida, India.
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