What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)? A straight answer

GEO - Generative Engine Optimisation - is the practice of getting your business mentioned and cited in AI-generated answers, the kind ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, and similar tools produce. That is the whole definition. And here is the part the hype tends to skip: getting cited in those answers mostly comes down to the same fundamentals as good SEO, not a separate bag of tricks.

The term is new, the acronym is tidy, and a lot of people are selling it as a mysterious new discipline. I want to give you the straight version, including who should actually care and who can safely ignore it for now.

What GEO actually means

Traditional SEO aims to get your page ranking in the list of blue links. GEO aims to get your business referenced inside the AI's written answer - named as a recommendation, or cited as a source the AI drew from.

So when someone asks ChatGPT "who's a good SEO consultant in Auckland?" or Google shows an AI Overview above the normal results, GEO is about being in that answer. Think of it as the difference between being a book on the library shelf (classic SEO) and being the book the librarian actually recommends when someone asks (GEO).

How you get cited in AI answers

This is where the mystery collapses. AI systems are largely trained on and pulling from the open web, and they lean on the same signals search engines have always used to decide who is credible. The things that get you cited are the things that were already good SEO:

• Clear, well-structured pages the AI can actually parse - real headings, direct answers, no fluff burying the point.
• Authority: other reputable sites linking to and referencing you.
• Reviews and a solid reputation across the web.
• Consistent information about your business everywhere it appears - name, location, services, all matching.
• Genuinely useful content that answers the question a person is asking.

Getting cited in AI answers is mostly the same job as good SEO: clear pages, real authority, good reviews, consistent information. There is no separate magic trick.

If you have been doing the fundamentals well, you are already most of the way to being GEO-friendly. If you have not, no amount of "GEO strategy" will paper over weak foundations. The order does not change.

Who GEO actually matters for

This is the part I wish more people led with, because it is not one-size-fits-all. Whether GEO deserves your attention depends on where your traffic comes from, not how big your business is.

If your traffic has been earned through informational, research-heavy content - blog posts, guides, technical explainers - then AI answers are the thing most likely to eat into it. A picture emerges: someone used to Google a question, land on your explainer, and become a lead. Now the AI answers the question directly and they never arrive. For those businesses, GEO and tracking your AI visibility genuinely matter.

If you are a local service business - a plumber, an electrician, a clinic in Brisbane or Hamilton - your traffic was never informational. It lives in your Google Business Profile and in transactional "near me" searches, and AI barely touches those. For you, GEO is monitor, do not chase. I have laid out the full split in who loses traffic to AI search.

So do you need to do anything different?

For most businesses, the honest answer is: keep doing the fundamentals well, and pay closer attention if your traffic is informational. That is close to the whole strategy. I have written a fuller take on the timing question in should you optimise for AI search yet, because the answer really is "it depends who you are."

GEO is a real shift in how people find information, and I am not waving it away. But it is not a new religion with new gods. It rewards the same things good SEO always has - clarity, authority, reputation, consistency. Anyone selling it as a secret separate craft is, I suspect, selling the mystery more than the results. I would be happy to be proven wrong as these systems evolve - but so far, the fundamentals are still the fundamentals.

For what this means specifically for a local business, and whether it is worth spending on, see AI search for local business.