Contents
- GEO, generative engine optimization, is the work of being visible inside AI-generated answers, where SEO targets the list of links.
- You don't measure a rank, you measure a citation frequency: across a fixed set of questions, how often the brand shows up and in what terms.
- No engine publishes a ranking. Measurement means asking repeatedly, not reading a dashboard.
What GEO covers
A growing share of searches no longer ends on a list of links but on a written answer. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's generated overviews produce text that cites a handful of sources, often three to five, and discards the rest.
GEO is the work of being among those sources. The term travels under several labels, including AEO for answer engine optimization, with distinctions that mostly interest the people inventing them. What matters is the practical question: when someone asks an AI the question your client can answer, is your client the one cited?
The difference with SEO isn't technical, it's in what you can observe. In SEO you hold a position, on a keyword, in a country. In GEO you are cited or you are not, and the answer shifts from one phrasing to the next for the same intent.
Why rankings no longer answer the question
A site can hold the top spot on a query and appear in no generated answer on the same subject. The reverse happens too: a page ranked tenth can be cited because it holds the precise figure the model was looking for.
Three reasons for this.
Generative engines don't reuse a page, they reuse a passage. A long, meandering page stands less chance than a self-contained, quantified paragraph, even on a less authoritative site.
The answer depends on phrasing, not on a keyword. "Which reporting tool for a five-person agency" and "best marketing reporting software" are one intent in SEO, and two distinct questions to a model, with different sources.
Finally, a share of citations comes not from your site but from what others write about you: comparison articles, directories, forum threads. You can be recommended without a single one of your own pages being cited.
What to measure
Measurement rests on a simple principle: ask the questions, record the answers, repeat.
- Build a question set. Twenty to fifty phrasings your client's buyers would actually use. Not keywords: full sentences, with the context a person naturally provides.
- Query several engines. ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini don't cite the same sources. A result on one engine says nothing about overall visibility.
- Record three things per answer. Is the brand mentioned; is it cited as a linked source; in what terms, a clear recommendation or a passing mention.
- Repeat. A single answer is not a measurement. Models vary between sessions: only frequency across several runs means anything.
You end up with a citation rate per engine and per question family, and above all the list of competitors cited in your place. That last one is usually the most instructive result.
What makes a source get reused
Nobody knows the formula, and be wary of anyone claiming otherwise. What does stand out is the shape of the passages that get quoted.
They are short, self-contained and verifiable. A one-sentence definition, a formula, a sourced range. That is exactly the logic of a glossary entry: say one precise thing, completely, in one place.
Structured content travels better. Headings phrased as questions, answers immediately below, FAQs where each answer stands without the rest of the page.
Freshness matters on moving subjects. On pricing, features or regulation, content dated to the current year is markedly more reused.
And off-site presence pushes hard. Being mentioned in third-party comparisons often weighs more than a page on your own site, because the model reads it as an independent source.
What you can actually steer
Let's be clear about the limits. There is no direct lever: you don't submit a page to ChatGPT, you don't fix a position. What you steer is the raw material.
You can write the passages you'd like quoted, in a quotable form. You can cover the real questions rather than the keywords. You can correct what engines get wrong about the brand, by publishing the right information where they look. And you can watch for drift: a brand cited in January may have disappeared by June with nothing changed on the site.
That monitoring is exactly what the Adwise GEO Radar does: query several engines against a fixed question set, measure the citation rate, and track it against competitors.
Frequently asked questions
The Adwise team connects Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, GA4 and Search Console so agencies and freelancers can run their campaigns from a single place.