What is GEO, or AI search optimisation?

GEO, short for generative engine optimisation, is the work of making a business easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot and Google’s AI Overviews to find and quote. This GEO is about AI search, not geography. In practice it means letting their crawlers in, saying plainly who you are and what you do, answering your buyers’ questions on your own pages, and being described the same way on other sites.

The same work goes by other names: AI search optimisation, answer engine optimisation (AEO) and LLM SEO. The term GEO comes from a research paper first published in November 2023. The names differ but the goal doesn’t: when someone asks an assistant a question your business can answer, your business is part of the answer.

Why AI answers matter to your business

For years, search meant a list of links, and the job was to be near the top. That list is still there, but Google now adds an AI Overview to some searches, and ChatGPT, Perplexity and Copilot can search the web and reply in a few paragraphs with links to their sources. If your business isn’t one of those sources, the answer has sent the reader somewhere else, even if you rank well in the links below it.

How AI assistants find and choose sources

Each assistant can search the web before it answers, and each does it in its own way.

• ChatGPT uses its own crawler, OAI-SearchBot, and sometimes other search providers. OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot won’t be shown in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still appear as navigational links.
• Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode link only to pages that are in Google’s index and eligible to show with a snippet. Gemini can also draw on Google’s search index when it answers.
• Copilot runs on Bing’s search index.
• Perplexity runs its own crawler, PerplexityBot.

None of them publishes a formula for which sources it names. OpenAI says ChatGPT ranks results on several factors meant to surface relevant, reliable information, and that placement isn’t guaranteed. Microsoft says Copilot breaks pages into smaller pieces, judges each for authority and relevance, and often builds its answer from several sources. Perplexity says it gathers information from authoritative sources and numbers its citations. Google says the usual SEO best practices still apply to its AI features, with no special optimisation needed.

What the work involves

1. Crawler access. Ask whoever runs your website to check that robots.txt, your firewall and your CDN let in the crawlers that matter: OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Bingbot and Googlebot. Google and OpenAI both point site owners to hosting and CDN settings, not just robots.txt, and some security services now block certain AI crawlers by default. GPTBot, which OpenAI uses for model training, is a separate setting: you can block it and still allow OAI-SearchBot.
2. Clear facts. State your name, what you do, where you work and who runs the business in plain sentences, the same way on your site and on every profile. Structured data can repeat them for machines. Google says its AI features need no special schema and Microsoft says schema helps AI systems understand a page, so we add it where it matches the page.
3. Answer-first pages. Phrase headings as the questions your buyers ask, and answer each one in the first two or three sentences, so each answer still makes sense if lifted out on its own. Important content belongs on the page as text, which Google lists among the basics.
4. Bing as well as Google. Because Copilot answers from Bing’s index, verify your site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap there too. Since February 2026, Bing Webmaster Tools has also had an AI Performance report showing how often Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries cite your pages.
5. Mentions elsewhere. The assistants search the whole web, not just your site, so directories, trade press, local news and forums can all shape what they say about you. We check how they describe the business and correct what we can.

How it differs from SEO

Mostly it doesn’t. Google says so for its own AI features, and Microsoft calls crawlability, metadata, internal linking and backlinks essential for AI search too. The differences are in emphasis. GEO cares more about plain, quotable facts than keywords, more about consistency across the web than any single page, and it needs its own measure, because a ranking report can’t tell you whether ChatGPT named you.

How to check where you stand

Write down ten questions your buyers might ask an assistant. Include obvious ones, such as “best accountant in Harrogate” or “who can fix a leaking flat roof in Leeds”, and some specific ones about your service. Ask each in ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google, and note whether you were named, who was named instead, and which pages were cited.

Then repeat it every month. One check is a snapshot. Answers differ between assistants, and Google says even its AI Overviews and AI Mode can show different responses and links. A record over several months shows whether the work is landing. Visits from ChatGPT links carry utm_source=chatgpt.com, so your analytics can pick them out.

What it can’t do

Nobody can guarantee a place in an AI answer. The assistants choose their own sources, and both OpenAI and Google say a page’s appearance isn’t guaranteed. Be wary of anyone who promises it. What can be done is to make your business the easiest one to cite, and to measure honestly whether that’s working.

Clients of Peacock Search’s AI search visibility service get a monthly panel of AI prompt checks, and the free visibility audit covers AI answers as well as Google and Maps.