GEO and AEO, explained: how to get found in AI answers.

What changed

For twenty years the goal of search marketing was simple: a blue link on page one. That goal still exists, but a growing share of questions now get answered directly. Google's AI Overviews sit above the results. ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude answer in full sentences and cite a handful of pages.

The click still happens. It just goes to the pages the answer trusted. If your site is not among them, you are invisible for that question, even if you rank well in the classic results.

The three overlap heavily. A page built to be cited by an AI assistant usually ranks better too. It helps to think of them as one discipline with three audiences: crawlers, answer boxes, and language models.

How AI answers pick their sources

Most assistants work in two steps. First they search the web, through their own index or through Bing and Google. Then they read the top pages and compose an answer, citing the pages they leaned on. Three things follow from that:

1. You still need to be findable. If a page does not show up in a normal search for the question, the assistant rarely sees it either.
2. The page must be easy to extract from. Direct statements, headings that match the question, facts with numbers and dates. Models skip vague text the same way people do.
3. The source must look trustworthy. A named company, a clear about page, consistent facts about you across the web, and other sites that mention you.

What actually moves the needle

• Answer first, explain second. Put the answer in the first paragraph under the heading. Then give the context.
• One page per question. A page that tries to cover everything gets cited for nothing. Use the question itself, in the words people use, as the heading.
• Add structured data. Organization, Article, FAQPage, and Service markup from schema.org tell both crawlers and models what the page is.
• Keep your facts consistent. Name, address, services, prices, founding year: the same everywhere, on your site, on LinkedIn, in directories. Models cross-check.
• Open the door to the crawlers you want. Decide which AI crawlers may read the site and say so in robots.txt. Publish an llms.txt file that summarizes who you are and what you offer.
• Show evidence. Original numbers, case studies, dates, and clear definitions. Assistants cite specifics, not opinions.
• Get mentioned elsewhere. Press, partners, directories, and industry lists. Every outside mention makes you a more recognizable entity.
• Update on a rhythm. Recency counts. A page refreshed this quarter beats one last touched in 2021.

What does not work

• Stuffing pages with "AI" and "best" and hoping the models notice.
• Walls of generic text. If it could be on any competitor's site, it will not be cited from yours.
• Blocking every bot in robots.txt and then wondering why no assistant mentions you.
• Fake FAQs that ask questions nobody asks.

The short version: be findable, be quotable, and be consistent. Everything else is detail.

How to measure it

There is no single dashboard for AI visibility yet, so build a simple one:

• Write down 20 to 30 questions your customers actually ask. Once a month, ask them in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google, and log whether you are cited and how.
• Track referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, and similar domains in your analytics.
• Watch Search Console. Google folds AI Overview impressions into the normal data, so a rise in impressions without a rise in clicks is often an AI answer.
• Give it time. Changes typically take six to eight weeks to show up in answers.

Where to start

Three steps, in order. First, an audit: which questions matter, and where do you appear today. Second, the foundation: structured data, consistent facts, a real about page, fast pages. Third, a weekly rhythm of content, each piece answering one real question with evidence.

That third step is what our Content Engine does: agents research and draft, our editors shape and approve, and every piece is built for both Google and the answer box.