Generative Engine Optimization — The practice of getting a business named, quoted or linked inside an AI-generated answer, rather than ranked in a list of links.
Why the distinction matters
A search results page is a list you choose from. An AI answer is a sentence you accept. When the output is a list, being sixth still gets you seen — some people scroll. When the output is a sentence, there is no sixth position. Visibility stops being a gradient and becomes binary.
That single structural difference is the entire reason GEO exists as a separate discipline. Everything else follows from it.
What it actually involves
- Entity resolution — making it possible for a system to be confident you are one thing
- Third-party corroboration — what other sources say about you, which counts for far more than what you say
- Structured data — so a system does not have to infer
- Extractable answers — a passage that stands on its own and can be lifted
What it is not
It is not a replacement for SEO. Most retrieval still runs through a search index, so the two share most of their inputs and diverge at the edges. It also produces no guaranteed placement — nobody controls these systems, and the same prompt can return different answers to different people on the same day.
The long version: what actually gets you cited in AI answers. Related: AEO, query fan-out, entity resolution.