Being mentioned in AI answers is the new share-of-voice for brands and influencers. Being ignored by AI is like being on page 5 of a Google SERP in the old days. We don’t know for sure yet how to optimize for AI, but some guidelines have started to emerge. The only sure advice is to follow the space and track the placement of your own content across the main AI tools.

Optimizing web content for human readers has long been a key focus of both usability and SEO. Now we face a new challenge: optimizing for AI answer engines so that our sites are actually referenced in AI-generated answers. Users are increasingly getting information from AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s Gemini/SGE; often without ever clicking a traditional search result. This shift demands that content creators change from asking “How do I rank on Google?” to prioritizing “How do I get cited by the AI?”. (Spoiler: Resist the urge to create spammy, AI-bait content: the robots might notice, and the users won’t like it either.)

A fundamental shift is happening in users’ behavior. Where they once relied almost totally on search, they are turning more and more to AI to help solve their problems. Not being mentioned in AI responses is the new equivalent of appearing on page 5 of Google’s search hits: you might as well not exist. (ChatGPT)

What to Call It? GEO or AEO?

A primary symptom of this paradigm shift is the sudden and often confusing proliferation of new terminology, as each consultancy engages in vocabulary inflation in an attempt to brand its own solution. Industry professionals are now confronted with an acronym soup that includes AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AIO (AI Optimization), LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), AISO (AI Search Optimization), and even GSO (Generative Search Optimization).

My preference would have been AEO, because I take a usage-centered view, where the shift from search results to answers is the defining characteristic.

However, I am also pragmatic (and the originator of Jakob’s Law), so I’ll go with the majority view and use the term that’s most commonly used on the Internet, because that’s what readers are likely to understand. GEO seems to be the winner, and that’s the term I’m using in this article.

Many acronyms are in use for the basic idea of aiming to be included in AI responses. I settled on “GEO” (Generative Engine Optimization) as my preferred acronym for this article. (ChatGPT)

Besides simply complying with the majority of other influencers’ writing, there’s a conceptual reason to prefer “GEO” when discussing the need for brands to influence AI:

Stronger AI, including reasoning models, does not merely extract answers; it generates new, synthesized responses by consuming, understanding, and combining information from multiple sources. Consequently, GEO is focused on optimizing for synthesis. It is a broader discipline concerned with ensuring content is not only discoverable but also contextually complete, authoritative, and trustworthy enough for an AI to use as a foundational source for creating a new piece of content.

AI synthesizes its replies to user requests by drawing from many sources and integrating them. This means that you can’t hope to be the one and only answer, but you can aim to be included in the synthesis. (ChatGPT)

The tactics of AEO (structuring content for clarity, using schema, and answering questions directly) are foundational for GEO. However, GEO expands this playbook to include a much broader set of strategies focused on building cross-platform authority, demonstrating verifiable trustworthiness, and managing a brand’s entire digital entity to influence how AI models think and communicate.