Glossary
What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making a website’s content easy for AI systems that write answers, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews, to find, understand and cite as a source.
Also called GEO, LLM optimization, AI search optimization
Where the term comes from
The name was popularized by a 2023 research paper, “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, written by researchers from Princeton University and other institutions. It studied which changes to a web page made it more likely to be cited by AI-generated answers, and found that adding clear sources, quotations and specific facts helped more than repeating keywords.
A generative engine does not just rank pages. It reads several of them, writes a new answer, and links some of the sources it used. GEO is about being one of those sources.
Why it matters for B2B websites
When a buyer asks an assistant to compare vendors or explain a category, the answer is built from pages the system could reach and trust. A B2B company whose site is vague, hidden behind JavaScript or missing key facts is easy to leave out, even if it ranks well for its own brand name.
GEO also rewards the pages most B2B sites skip: plain pricing explanations, comparisons, security pages and glossaries that answer specific questions.
What helps
- Pages that crawlers can read as HTML, with AI crawlers allowed in robots.txt
- Specific, checkable facts with their source and date
- One clear topic per page, with a short answer near the top
- Consistent names for your company, product and category across your site and other sites
- Mentions and links from other sites the engines already trust
- Structured data that matches the visible text
Example
Ask an assistant “what should a B2B trust center include?”. The answer usually cites a few pages that list the parts in plain words, such as security overview, compliance reports, subprocessors and a contact for security questions. Pages that only say “we take security seriously” are rarely cited.
How we handle it
We build sites that serve full HTML, name AI crawlers in robots.txt, publish an llms.txt file and keep facts in one place so every page says the same thing. For an existing site, our AI search optimization work starts with checking what assistants say about you today.
Last updated 15 November 2026
