For two decades, being found online meant ranking on a page of ten links. That page is changing. On 14 May 2024 Google announced that AI Overviews, generated summaries shown above search results, would begin rolling out to everyone in the United States, and said it expected to bring them to more than a billion people by the end of that year. Other AI assistants answer questions directly and cite a handful of sources.
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the shorthand for making a business visible and citable in those answers. It does not replace SEO. It raises the stakes on the same fundamentals.
What stays the same
- Being crawlable and fast. Systems that cannot fetch or parse a page cannot cite it.
- Answering real questions. Content built around what buyers actually ask performs in both.
- Authority. Being referenced by reputable sources still matters.
What changes
| Classic SEO emphasis | Additional GEO emphasis |
|---|---|
| Ranking a page for a keyword | Being one of the few sources an answer draws on |
| Click-through from results | Being named and linked inside the answer |
| Keyword coverage | Clear, quotable statements of fact, with dates and sources |
| Your own site | Consistent facts about you across third-party sources |
A practical programme
1. Baseline
List 30 to 50 questions your buyers ask. Record which pages rank, whether an AI summary appears, and which sources it cites. Repeat monthly; the answers change.
2. Make facts easy to extract
Specifications, prices, policies, dimensions and definitions in clean text and tables, marked up with structured data where it applies. Avoid putting key facts only in images.
3. Publish evidence, not slogans
Pages that state a fact, its source and its date are easier for any system to trust and quote than pages that only describe a brand. Original data, even small, is cited far more readily than restated common knowledge.
4. Align third-party sources
Marketplace listings, directory entries and partner pages should describe the business consistently. Contradictory facts give answer engines a reason to cite someone else.
5. Measure beyond clicks
Track brand mentions in answers, referral visits from AI assistants, and branded search over time, alongside classic rankings.
For e-commerce sellers, the same logic applies inside marketplaces: complete attributes, clear titles and accurate specifications help both marketplace search and the AI shopping assistants that are being built into them.
Source (checked 11 October 2026). Google: Generative AI in Search, 14 May 2024
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