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I've spent the last few years on conference stages across three continents talking about how AI is rewriting search, and helping brands act on it while the shift is still early.
Generative engine optimisation is how you make sure AI answers mention you.
Generative Engine Optimisation Consultant
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Driving AI Citations 📈
A growing share of your buyers never see a traditional results page. They ask ChatGPT which tool to use, let Perplexity compare their options, or read Google's AI Overview and never scroll past it. In every one of those moments, either your brand is part of the answer or a competitor's is.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO, sometimes called answer engine optimisation or AEO) is the discipline of earning those mentions. It overlaps with strong SEO but it isn't identical. Language models care whether the web tells a consistent story about who you are, whether your pages contain statements worth quoting, whether your markup lets machines parse them, and whether independent sources back up what you say about yourself.
I've been close to this shift for years - it's the subject of my conference talks from Dubai to San Diego. My GEO services turn what I present on stage into work that gets your brand into the answers.
“Itamar's SEO expertise has been an invaluable part of our continuing process to bring new optimization functionality to the Wix platform. His clear understanding of how 'Search' works along with a crisp conception of what is vital in creating a well-performing site is evident in everything Itamar does.”
When AI assistants never mention you, there's always a reason. It's usually one of these three.
If the web is inconsistent or vague about who you are, what you do and who you serve, language models can't confidently include you in an answer. Google might still rank you despite that ambiguity, but an LLM will simply leave you out of the answer.
AI answers lean on sources that state facts clearly: statistics, definitions, comparisons, honest assessments. Pages full of vague marketing copy give a model nothing to quote, so the citations go to whichever source states things plainly - often a third-party site or a competitor's page.
Most brands have no idea what ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews say about them, or that competitors are being recommended in their place. Testing the questions your buyers actually ask is the starting point, because it shows exactly where the gaps are.
My Generative Engine Optimisation Services
Testing what ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and AI Overviews actually say about your brand, your category and your competitors.
Strengthening the consistency of your brand's presence across the web, so models know exactly who you are.
Schema and content structured so machines can extract, trust and quote it.
Statistics, definitions and clear positions that give AI answers a reason to reference you.
Coverage and mentions on the sources LLMs already trust.
Ongoing monitoring of your share of AI answers, plus log file analysis to see how AI user agents are actually accessing your website.
Some people call this work answer engine optimisation (AEO), and others call it LLM SEO or AI search optimisation. The name matters far less than the goal: when someone asks an AI assistant a question your business answers, you want to be in the response.
My answer engine optimisation services cover the same ground you've read above, because GEO and AEO are two names for the same shift. Whether your buyers use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot or Google's AI Mode, the assistants all reward the same things: a brand the model can identify with confidence, content worth quoting, and third parties vouching for you.
I fold AEO into every GEO engagement - an audit of what the assistants currently say about you, fixes for the gaps, and tracking that shows your share of answers growing over time.
GEO is young enough that there's no established agency playbook. There's no certification or course yet, and no process manual that a team of juniors can follow. A lot of what's currently sold as a packaged GEO or AEO agency service is classic SEO with a new label, which you may already be paying for elsewhere.
Working with me is different by design. You get one senior specialist who speaks about AI search internationally, tests these systems constantly, and does the work personally rather than handing it off after the pitch. For most brands that means faster answers and less budget lost to agency overheads.
And if you'd rather build the capability in-house, I also train teams on GEO and AI search.
You'll hear people claim SEO is dead and GEO replaces it. That's backwards. The brands winning AI citations are overwhelmingly the ones with strong organic foundations, because language models learned to trust the same signals search engines reward. GEO extends that work rather than replacing it.
In practice I deliver GEO alongside AI SEO and your broader organic strategy: the same investment in authority, entities and content improves your rankings and feeds the AI answers your buyers read. That's the position I argue on stage, and it's the one that keeps proving out in the data.
GEO is the practice of making your brand visible in AI-generated answers - the responses from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews. It focuses on entity clarity, citable content, structured data and third-party corroboration: the signals language models use when deciding which brands to mention.
Near enough. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) and generative engine optimisation describe the same goal of being included in AI answers, with slightly different emphasis. Whatever the industry settles on calling it, the work underneath is the same.
GEO is the narrower of the two. It's specifically about getting your brand mentioned and cited in AI-generated answers, whereas AI SEO is the wider practice of adapting your whole search strategy for the AI era - something I cover across my AI SEO services. The way I see it, GEO is a core part of AI SEO rather than a replacement for it, which is why I plan the two together.
SEO earns you rankings in traditional search results, while GEO earns you mentions in AI-generated answers. The overlap is bigger than the difference, though. AI systems learned which sources to trust largely from the signals SEO builds - strong links, well-organised pages and a brand the web talks about consistently. Strong SEO gives GEO something to work with. The GEO work then makes sure those signals show up in AI answers as well as blue links. I plan them as one strategy, and GEO certainly doesn't replace SEO.
By giving language models what they need to include you in an answer: consistent entity information so they know exactly who you are, clearly stated facts and figures they can quote, structured data they can parse, and third-party sources that corroborate your claims. My process runs from an AI visibility audit through implementation to ongoing tracking of your share of answers.
Visibility where your buyers increasingly are. AI answers only put a handful of brands in front of the person asking, and being one of them puts you in conversations you'd otherwise never enter. It also captures high-intent referrals from people who've already been told you're a good fit. And because GEO strengthens the same signals search engines reward, the work supports your classic rankings too.
By systematically testing AI platforms with the questions your buyers ask, and tracking how often your brand appears, how it's described and who appears instead. Combined with referral data from AI platforms, it gives a clear before-and-after picture.
Some improvements come through quickly - structured data, entity fixes and citable statements can be reflected within weeks as systems recrawl. Reputation-based signals like third-party coverage compound over months, just as they do in classic search.
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