Generative Engine Optimization: How to Show Up in AI Answers

Google has changed. When someone searches best CRM for small business or how to improve email open rates, they do not always get ten blue links anymore. Often they get an AI-generated answer at the top of the page, written from several sources.

This is Google's AI Overview, which began as an experiment called the Search Generative Experience (SGE). It takes clicks away from the links below it.

If your pages are not cited in that answer, you lose visibility that a classic ranking report does not show. That gap is what GEO, generative engine optimization, is about.

What is GEO?

GEO is the practice of writing and structuring your content so that AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, and Google's AI Overviews, mention it, cite it and quote it in their answers. The term comes from a 2023 research paper by computer scientists at Princeton and IIT Delhi.

Classic SEO works on ranking in a list of links. GEO works on being quoted inside an answer.

The question used to be whether you were on page one. Now it is also whether you are in the answer.

Why GEO Matters Now

The answer comes before the links. Google now shows an AI-generated answer at the top of many research searches. If your page is not cited in that answer, ranking first below it is worth less than it used to be.

Fewer searches end in a click. When the summary answers the question, many people stop there. A 2025 Pew Research Center study looked at how 900 US adults used Google. They clicked a regular search result in 8% of visits when Google showed an AI summary, and in 15% when it did not. Being the source the answer cites is becoming a second way to be found.

Buyers ask assistants directly. Many people now take their research questions straight to ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude: which software suits a small team, which vendors to shortlist. When these assistants search the web, they answer from the pages they find. If your pages are hard to quote, they will quote your competitors instead.

How to Optimize for GEO

1. Structure for extraction

AI assistants read content differently from people. They lift passages, not whole pages, so they need clear statements that make sense on their own. Write so that any sentence or paragraph could stand alone as a cited answer.

• Put a clear definition early in the page
• Write a short summary paragraph for each section
• Use numbered lists for processes and frameworks
• Include specific numbers, dates and timelines, with their source

2. Add an llms.txt file

This is a proposed convention, modeled on robots.txt, that describes your site to AI systems in one plain text file: who you are, what you do and what your pages cover. It is not an adopted standard, and Google says you do not need AI text files to appear in its AI features. It is still cheap to write, and any system that reads it gets a clean summary of your company. Ours is at karoslabs.com/llms.txt.

3. Add structured data

JSON-LD structured data (Organization, Article, FAQPage) gives machines a labeled description of your page: who published it, what kind of page it is and what it covers. That helps search engines read the page correctly. It is not a shortcut into AI answers, though. Google says there is no special structured data you need to add to appear in its AI features.

4. Publish original research and data

AI assistants favor sources that add something new: original data, a clear framework, a first-hand result. If you are rewriting what everyone else says, you are unlikely to be cited. If you publish something the assistant cannot find elsewhere, you become the primary source.

The research points the same way. In the 2023 paper that named GEO, adding statistics, quotations and cited sources made pages up to 40% more visible in AI-generated answers. Stuffing pages with keywords did little or nothing.

5. Optimize for citation, not just ranking

Ask yourself: if an assistant read this page, what would it quote? Make sure that statement is clear, accurate and near the top. Put the answer before the explanation.

Answers also cite other sites, such as reviews, comparison pages and community threads. What those pages say about you matters as well.

GEO vs Classic SEO

GEO does not replace SEO. It is an additional layer. You still need technical SEO (site speed, mobile, crawlability). You still need keyword research and a content strategy. But you also need to think about how AI assistants will read and quote your content.

Keep GEO in proportion. For most small businesses, AI answers are not yet a big source of leads. In an analysis of nearly 20 million inbound leads to small and mid-sized businesses, published by CallRail in January 2026, 0.073% of inbound calls came from AI search.

Most of the work overlaps anyway. A clear, specific page with its own data serves a reader, a search engine and an AI answer at the same time.

How Karos Does GEO

When Karos reads your business, it asks ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude the questions your buyers ask. It checks whether each answer names your company, cites your pages and names you before your competitors. You see where you stand in Results, next to your reach and leads.

When a competitor is named and you are not, that gap becomes a signal. Karos proposes a campaign to close it: a comparison page, for example, or draft replies for you to post from your own account in the threads your buyers read. You approve, edit or skip each piece in your daily review, like everything else.

How to check where you stand

You can run a rough version of this check yourself. Write down five questions a buyer would ask before they know your name. Ask each one in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude more than once, because the same question can get a different answer each time, and note who gets named. Then ask about your company by name. If the assistants know you when asked directly but never name you on the buyer's questions, that gap is where the work is.