What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?

For twenty years, "search visibility" meant one thing: ranking on a page of ten blue links. That's no longer the whole picture. A growing share of people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google's own AI Overviews a question directly — and get an answer synthesized from multiple sources, often with no click-through to any website at all.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring content so those systems can find it, understand it, and cite it. It overlaps with classic SEO but isn't identical to it.

What actually changes

A few concrete things AI answer engines respond well to: clear, direct answers near the top of a page (not buried under three paragraphs of preamble), structured data (schema.org markup like FAQPage, Article, and Organization) that explicitly labels what a page is and who published it, and content that reads as a genuine, complete answer to a specific question rather than thin marketing copy.

Why it matters now, not later

Most sites — including, until recently, this one — have zero structured data and no content written to directly answer questions. That's a gap while it's still relatively uncommon; it won't stay a differentiator forever. Starting now is the whole advantage.