GEO and SEO: what generative engine optimization is and how it differs from SEO

What GEO is

Generative search and answer systems: what we’re talking about

Generative search is a mode in which a system finds materials for a query and composes an answer from them itself, usually with links to sources. The term GEO was coined by the authors of an academic paper presented at KDD 2024. They describe generative systems as systems that answer queries by combining information from multiple sources and summarizing it with large language models.

Which functions of this kind the platforms themselves describe (per their documentation as of October 3, 2026):

• Google Search — AI Overviews and AI Mode. Both functions compose an answer and show links to sites.
• Yandex — Alice AI in Search. Answers appear in the search results and on a separate tab. The system studies relevant pages from Search and prepares an answer with links to sources.
• OpenAI — search in ChatGPT. For it, OpenAI uses a separate crawler that finds sites to show in ChatGPT search results.
• Perplexity — a search engine whose results show links to sites.
• Microsoft — Copilot and AI summaries in Bing, where site pages appear as sources for the answer.

The names and mechanics of these functions can change, so this list is a snapshot as of the article’s date, not a permanent classification.

GEO, AEO, AI search optimization — different names for a closely related idea

The industry uses several names for the same task:

• GEO (generative engine optimization) — optimization for generative systems;
• AEO (answer engine optimization) — optimization for “answer” systems that return a ready-made answer instead of a list of links;
• AI search optimization — optimization for AI-powered search.

The platforms themselves use these terms too. Google, in its guide for site owners, spells out AEO and GEO and writes that, from Google Search’s point of view, optimizing for generative AI is still search engine optimization. Microsoft calls its new report in Bing Webmaster Tools an early step toward tools for GEO. So what matters more than the name is the substance of the work.

We use the term GEO and understand it as optimizing a site’s and a brand’s presence in generative search and answer systems. It’s a continuation of SEO, not a separate technology.

“Geo” in Russian-language SEO: don’t confuse it with regional promotion

In Russian-language SEO, “geo” often means a region: promotion in a specific city, regional search results, tying a site to an area. That’s a separate task with its own tools, and it has nothing to do with generative search.

To avoid confusion, we always spell it out at first mention: “GEO — optimization for generative search.” If you’re looking for regional promotion, this article isn’t about that.

How GEO differs from SEO, and where they overlap

SEO and GEO in one table

	SEO	GEO
Goal	A page shows up in search results for the right queries, and a person clicks through to the site	The site or brand is used as a source, or mentioned, in a generated answer
Unit of visibility	The page’s position in the results list	A source link or a mention inside the answer
Measurability	Impressions, clicks and rankings in Yandex Webmaster and Search Console	Partial. Yandex Webmaster shows the share of queries where the site is mentioned in Alice AI’s answers — for queries where the site already ranks high. Bing Webmaster Tools, in public preview, counts citations in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries. Google folds impressions in its AI features into Search Console’s overall search traffic. The OpenAI and Perplexity documentation we rely on has no report for site owners
What’s known about the mechanics	Detailed search-engine documentation on indexing, quality and spam	Platforms describe it in broad terms: crawler access, indexing requirements, principles for selecting sources
Shared foundation	Accessibility, indexing, a clear structure, useful content, verifiable facts	The same

Why GEO doesn’t replace SEO

The main argument is in the platforms’ own documentation.

Google writes that there are no additional requirements or special optimization for appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode. To become a supporting link in these features, a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet in regular Search.

Yandex writes that Alice AI, when composing an answer, relies on sources that rank high in search. Webmaster collects visibility statistics for Alice AI’s answers only for queries where the site already ranks high enough in results.

The takeaway: if a page isn’t indexed or isn’t visible in search, Google’s and Yandex’s generative features, going by their documentation, don’t draw on it. The SEO foundation is a condition without which GEO doesn’t even start.

But there’s no full overlap either. Links in an Alice AI answer differ from links in traditional Search both in order and in number. Google writes that its AI features can show a wider and more varied set of links than regular search. So a high ranking doesn’t automatically mean making it into the answer, and not appearing in the answer isn’t always an SEO problem.

What from the SEO foundation already works for GEO

Accessibility to search engines and indexing

A page that a crawler can’t load, or that isn’t in the index, is unavailable to Google’s and Yandex’s AI search features too. Among the general SEO recommendations Google names for its AI features as well: allow crawling in robots.txt, help the content get found through internal links, and provide important content in text form. How to check whether a search engine sees the pages you need is covered in the article on site indexing and what gets in its way.

Generative systems have their own crawlers, and they’re managed differently. What the platforms say about what their crawlers are for:

Crawler	Purpose, per the platform’s documentation
Googlebot	Manages crawling for Google Search, including its AI features: Google writes that AI is built into Search, so robots.txt directives for Googlebot are a way to control access
Google-Extended	A separate robots.txt token: controls the use of content to train future Gemini models and for grounding — feeding the model content from Google’s search index at query time so answers are more accurate. It doesn’t affect inclusion in Google Search and isn’t used as a ranking signal
OAI-SearchBot	Shows sites in ChatGPT search results. Sites that disallow this crawler don’t appear in ChatGPT search answers, but may still appear as navigational links
GPTBot	Collects content that may be used to train OpenAI’s models. Disallowing it means the site’s content shouldn’t be used for training
ChatGPT-User	Visits pages at a user’s action inside ChatGPT. robots.txt rules may not apply
PerplexityBot	Shows sites and links to them in Perplexity search results. Not used for model training
Perplexity-User	Visits pages at a Perplexity user’s request; generally ignores robots.txt
YandexAdditional, YandexAdditionalBot	Disallowing these crawlers in robots.txt limits how the site’s content is shown in Alice AI’s answers

What follows from this in practice:

• Check that robots.txt isn’t accidentally blocking generative systems’ crawlers — for example, through a blanket rule for all robots or bot-protection settings. How rules target specific crawlers is covered in the breakdown of User-agent group syntax.
• Keep two decisions separate: allowing content to be used for model training, and allowing the site to appear in search answers. At OpenAI and Google these are different tokens.
• Deciding to block a specific crawler is your right; the consequences are described in each platform’s documentation.

If crawling, indexing and configuration files need a systematic check, that’s a job for checking site accessibility and structured data as part of technical SEO.

Entity clarity and structured data

An entity is a specific thing being discussed: a company, a person, a service, a product, a concept. Entity clarity means the site makes it unambiguous who you are, what you offer, who wrote the material, and how it all connects.

What Google writes:

• for AI features, there’s no need to create new machine-readable files, text files for AI, or special markup, and adding dedicated Schema.org structured data isn’t required;
• among the general recommendations: keep structured data consistent with the page’s visible text.

So markup in GEO isn’t a separate “AI layer” — it’s an ordinary part of the SEO foundation: it describes the same entities visible on the page. How types, properties and relationships are structured via @id is covered in the article on how Schema.org structured data is built.

Recommendations (our own practice, not a platform requirement):

• name the company, services and products the same way on every page;
• keep one page where the company is described fully: what it does, for whom, how to get in touch;
• credit the author of the materials and don’t change their name from page to page;
• avoid contradictions: different addresses, names or descriptions for the same service.

Answer-shaped content, facts and sources

Yandex writes that Alice AI uses pages with high-quality content as sources. When selecting them, expertise, usefulness, originality and substance matter most. Alice AI doesn’t reproduce content from pages verbatim, except for direct quotes. Among Webmaster’s recommendations for visibility in Alice AI’s answers: check whether the content answers users’ questions and covers the topic thoroughly enough.

These are the same requirements as for good SEO copy:

• the main answer at the top of the page, details in the sections below;
• terms explained at first mention;
• every verifiable claim backed by a primary source;
• the page has one job, and it doesn’t duplicate neighboring pages on the site.

How to build such a page step by step is covered in the article on how to write answer-shaped copy for a given intent. If you need to plan which pages should answer which questions, that’s work on content that answers a specific query.

Topical coherence and expertise

One good page rarely covers a topic in full. Among its recommendations for visibility in Alice AI’s answers, Yandex names increasing the number of relevant pages: this can expand the site’s presence in Search. Microsoft, in its webmaster blog, writes that deeper coverage of adjacent topics can strengthen authority, but doesn’t disclose the methodology.

The word “relevant” matters. Dozens of nearly identical pages don’t make a site look expert — they create cannibalization. Coherence is a section where each page answers its own question, the pages are linked to each other, and authorship and sources are visible to the reader.

What’s known, and what’s a hypothesis

The main thing in GEO is not to mix up what platforms have documented with what people say about them. Below are four categories. Status as of October 3, 2026: documentation changes, so double-check every claim before acting on it.

FACT — documented by the systems

• Google: there are no additional requirements for appearing in AI Overviews and AI Mode; the page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet.
• Google: AI Overviews are shown only when the systems decide they add to regular search, so they often don’t appear.
• Google: you can limit the information from pages shown in Search with the nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex directives.
• Yandex: Alice AI relies on sources that rank high in search; when selecting them, expertise, usefulness, originality and substance matter.
• Yandex: an Alice AI answer can contain inaccuracies, and Yandex advises checking the data against the source sites.
• OpenAI and Perplexity: their search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot) are separate from the crawlers used for model training and from visits triggered by a user’s request. At OpenAI, robots.txt settings for each crawler are independent. Visits triggered by a user’s request (ChatGPT-User, Perplexity-User) may not follow robots.txt rules.

OBSERVATION — observations and claims with no confirmed methodology

• Research. The authors of the GEO paper tested content-optimization techniques on their own GEO-bench set of queries and concluded that a source’s visibility in generative systems’ answers can be increased, and that the techniques’ effectiveness varies by topic. That’s an experimental result, not a description of how a specific commercial system works today.
• Platform claims with no methodology. Microsoft writes that clear headings, tables and Q&A sections help AI systems cite content more accurately, and that deeper coverage of adjacent topics can strengthen authority. The methodology behind these claims isn’t disclosed in the post.

HYPOTHESIS — common market assumptions

Below is what’s often presented as GEO rules. In the platform documentation this article relies on, there’s no confirmation for any of it.

• “The more a brand is mentioned online, the more often neural networks name it.” The connection is plausible, but no platform describes it.
• “AI answers have their own ranking factors, separate from search.” Platforms don’t publish lists of such factors. Google and Yandex, on the contrary, tie AI answers to their own search index.
• “A special file or markup ‘for neural networks’ improves your chances.” For its own search AI features, Google writes the opposite: such files and special markup aren’t needed. For other systems, there’s no official confirmation either way.
• “A particular text format guarantees citation.” Format may help (see the observations above), but no primary source confirms this.

RECOMMENDATION — what’s reasonable to do right now

1. Make sure the important pages are accessible to crawlers and are in Yandex’s and Google’s index.
2. Check robots.txt and bot protection: make sure generative systems’ crawlers aren’t accidentally blocked.
3. Describe the company, services and authors the same way on every page; base markup only on the visible content.
4. Write answer pages: the answer up front, verifiable facts, sources, one job per page.
5. Develop a topic through related pages, not near-identical copies.
6. Don’t spend resources on tactics that rest only on the hypotheses listed above.

What GEO can’t promise

Citation and inclusion in AI answers aren’t guaranteed

The decision on whether to show an answer, which sources to use, and how to retell them is made by the system itself. Google states outright that AI Overviews often don’t appear. Yandex says the links in an Alice AI answer differ from search results both in order and in number, and that the answer itself can contain inaccuracies.

So honest GEO work doesn’t promise:

• inclusion in a specific system’s answer — Google, Yandex, ChatGPT, Perplexity or Copilot;
• citation for a specific query;
• a link’s position inside the answer;
• an exact retelling of your materials;
• a timeline for appearing in answers.

You can influence what depends on the site: accessibility, clarity, content quality and factual accuracy. You can’t control what depends on the system.

Faking mentions and synthetic reputation are outside white-hat practice

Since generative systems rely on the materials they find, it’s tempting to “feed” them: mass-post brand mentions, generate reviews, create pages written only for neural networks. We consider this unacceptable. Such actions distort information about the company — information that both people and systems later read.

We work within sustainable, white-hat SEO methods with no manipulative tactics, hidden schemes or mass spam, and for GEO the rules are the same: real entities, verifiable facts, useful content.

How to tell whether your site needs to think about GEO now

The short answer: thinking about it — yes; starting — with the SEO foundation. Go through the questions below.

Question	If the answer is “no”
Are the important pages in Yandex’s and Google’s index?	Start with indexing: without it, generative search features have nothing to draw on
Do robots.txt and bot protection avoid blocking the crawlers you want to let in?	Check the rules against the crawler table above and make the decision deliberately
Does the site make it unambiguous who you are, what you offer, and who wrote the materials?	Get your entities in order: names, an about-the-company page, authorship, markup aligned with the visible text
Do key pages answer customers’ questions from the first paragraphs?	Restructure the pages into an answer format and add the missing topics
Are the facts on the site backed by sources and free of contradictions?	Remove or fix unsupported claims
Are there no several pages answering the same question?	Decide which page stays primary, and update or merge the rest

If the answer to most of these is “no,” dedicated GEO work is premature for now: every “no” is a gap in the SEO foundation, and that’s what needs closing first. If the foundation is in order, the next step is to look at how the site and its topic are represented in generative systems’ answers.

A convenient entry point is an SEO audit that checks the technical foundation, structure and content: afterward it’s clear what’s holding the site back in search and what to fix first.

Frequently asked questions

How does AEO differ from GEO?

Mostly in emphasis. AEO (answer engine optimization) talks about “answer” systems in general; GEO specifically about generative ones that compose an answer using language models. For work on a site, the difference is small: the foundation is the same — accessibility, clear entities, answer-shaped content and verifiable facts.

How can you tell if generative systems are writing about your brand?

Start with a manual check: ask the systems the questions your customers ask, and see whether your site shows up in the answers and is described correctly. Some data comes from official tools. Yandex Webmaster has a “Site visibility in Alice AI” report that shows the share of queries where the site is mentioned in answers. Bing Webmaster Tools, in public preview, offers a report on citations in Copilot and Bing’s AI summaries. An answer you get once reflects one query at one moment, so a manual check is a guideline, not a measurement.

If you block a site from model training, will it disappear from AI answers?

It depends on the system and on which crawler you block. At OpenAI, training and search are separate: GPTBot handles training, OAI-SearchBot handles showing up in ChatGPT search. Google writes that the Google-Extended token doesn’t affect inclusion in Google Search. Check each platform’s documentation before changing robots.txt.

Do you need separate pages or files “for neural networks”?

For Google Search’s AI features — no: Google writes that special files, special markup and extra optimization aren’t required. Pages written not for people but “for neural networks” contradict an approach where content is useful to the reader.

When will a site start appearing in generative systems’ answers?

No one can promise that: the system makes the decision. Yandex collects visibility statistics for Alice AI’s answers only for queries where the site already ranks high enough in results. So the realistic sequence is: the site has to become visible in regular search first.