Classic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) covers all measures that help a website become more visible in unpaid (organic) search results.Open glossary entry → asks whether a website ranks in Google. GEO additionally asks whether a brand is mentioned, described correctly and linked as a source in answers from systems such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or AI Overviews are AI-generated answer boxes from Google that appear above the classic search results. They summarize information from the web and can change click distribution.Open glossary entry →.
Generative answer systems produce formulated answers instead of plain link lists. They gather information from multiple sources and synthesize it with language models. Visibility therefore no longer depends only on ranking position, but on whether content is included and attributed in generated answers.
Key Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) covers measures that improve the chances of a brand or website being found, understood, extracted, classified and used as a source by generative AI answer systems. GEO extends classic SEO rather than replacing it.Open glossary entry → levers include:
- technical accessibility for search and AI crawlers are automated bots that fetch web pages for AI providers in order to find content, make it available for search functions, retrieve it for answers, or, depending on the provider, use it for model training.Open glossary entry →,
- citable, fact-rich content,
- clear An entity is a uniquely identifiable thing or concept, such as an organisation, person, brand, product, place or technical term. Search engines and AI systems process information as entities and their relationships.Open glossary entry → and brand signals,
- clean structure and machine readability,
- external confirmation from credible third-party sources.
GEO does not guarantee mentions. It only improves the probability of appearing in relevant AI answers.