# Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

> Generative engine optimization (GEO) is making content more likely to be cited or summarized in AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, or Google AI Overviews.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping content so that AI answer engines, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, are more likely to cite, quote, or summarize it when they compose an answer.

**Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping content so that AI answer engines, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, are more likely to cite, quote, or summarize it when they compose an answer.**

The term comes from a November 2023 paper, "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" (Aggarwal et al.), which framed the problem for content creators, built a benchmark of queries and sources, and found that changes such as adding citations, statistics, and quotations could raise a source's visibility in generated answers by up to 40 percent. The paper's framing stuck: where SEO competes for a position in a list, GEO competes for a place inside an answer. The close cousin [answer engine optimization](/glossary/answer-engine-optimization) describes the same goal from the search-engine side, and [AI Overviews](/glossary/ai-overviews) is the surface most marketers mean when they say either.

In practice GEO is mostly SEO fundamentals with a stricter emphasis on being quotable: a direct answer in the first paragraph, one claim per sentence, sources named, structure a model can lift cleanly. Google's own guidance says no new files or markup are needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, which is worth remembering before adopting proposals such as [llms.txt](/glossary/llms-txt). The measurable part is prompt tracking, which both [Surfer and Clearscope](/guides/comparisons/surfer-vs-clearscope) now sell.

The [AI content and search in 2026](/guides/marketing/ai-content-and-search-2026) guide covers what to change in a content plan, and [Claude Code for marketers](/guides/marketing/claude-code-for-marketers) shows how to build the audit into a repeatable workflow.

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_Source: https://agentscamp.com/glossary/generative-engine-optimization — Term on AgentsCamp._