Generative engine optimization: how to get cited in AI answers

Generative engine optimization (GEO) means making your pages easy for AI assistants such as ChatGPT search, Google AI Overviews and Yandex's Alice to find, understand and cite. In practice it is ordinary SEO plus a few habits: answer questions plainly, back claims with sources, and get mentioned on other sites. Here is where the term comes from, what the platforms actually document, and a checklist you can apply today.

Published: 2026-10-16 · 6 min read · Satelo

Where the term GEO comes from

"Generative Engine Optimization" was coined in a 2023 research paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and co-authors, first posted on arXiv in November 2023 and later accepted to KDD 2024. The authors built a benchmark of queries, rewrote source pages in different ways and measured how much of each source ended up in an AI-generated answer. The abstract reports visibility gains of up to 40%, and notes that what works varies by domain.

The full paper is worth knowing for three findings:

• Adding citations, quotations and statistics helped most. Pages that cited credible sources, quoted people and included concrete figures were reproduced more in answers.
• Keyword stuffing did not help. The authors found little to no improvement, and on Perplexity it scored below the unoptimized baseline.
• Lower-ranked pages gained most. Citing sources raised visibility sharply for the fifth-ranked result while lowering it on average for the top-ranked one.

Keep the limits in mind: most experiments ran on the authors' own engine (gpt-3.5-turbo over the top five Google results), plus a 200-query check on Perplexity. It is a useful direction, not a ranking formula for every assistant in 2026.

GEO vs SEO: what actually changes

AI assistants with web access mostly work the same way: they turn a question into searches, retrieve pages, and write an answer that links to some of them. That makes SEO the foundation, not a separate discipline.

Our AI search overview covers how each assistant finds sources in more depth.

What the platforms officially say

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode

Google's page on AI features and your website is blunt: to be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, and there are no additional technical requirements. Google says you don't need special schema.org markup or new machine-readable "AI text files." Traffic from these features is counted in Search Console's Performance report under the Web search type. To limit what is shown, you use the usual nosnippet, max-snippet or noindex controls.

ChatGPT search

OpenAI's crawler documentation separates OAI-SearchBot, used to show sites in ChatGPT search, from GPTBot, used for model training. Blocking OAI-SearchBot keeps a site out of ChatGPT search answers; blocking GPTBot only opts out of training. Check your robots.txt: a blanket rule meant for training crawlers can block search crawlers too. Our guide on getting indexed by ChatGPT walks through the setup.

Yandex Alice AI

Yandex's help page on Alice AI answers (in Russian) says Alice draws on sources that rank highly in Yandex Search and names expertise, usefulness, originality and substance as the key qualities. Yandex Webmaster also has a Site visibility in Alice AI report showing how often your site is cited, but only for queries where you already rank fairly high.

The common thread: none of these platforms documents a special GEO switch. Visibility in search comes first.

How to structure a page so it gets quoted

An assistant lifts passages, not whole articles. Write so that any one section can stand on its own:

1. Answer in the first two sentences. Put the direct answer under the heading, then explain. The intro of this article is an example.
2. Make headings real questions or claims. "How long does indexing take?" beats "Timing considerations."
3. Use lists and tables for comparisons and steps. They are easy to extract and hard to misquote.
4. Back facts with linked sources. This matches what the GEO paper found and what readers trust. One claim, one source.
5. Add first-hand detail. Your own numbers, screenshots described in text, a process you actually ran. Generic text has nothing worth citing.
6. Define terms once, precisely. A one-sentence definition is the passage most likely to be reused.
7. Keep it current. Show an updated date and actually update facts, prices and limits.

What not to do: stuff the page with keyword variants, publish dozens of near-identical "AI-optimized" pages, or hide text for bots. The paper and the platforms' spam policies point the same way.

Mentions on other sites

Assistants answer "what is the best tool for X" by reading what other sites say. If no one mentions you, there is nothing to cite, however good your own page is. Practical sources of mentions for a small site:

• Niche roundups and "best of" lists that already rank for your topic.
• Guest articles and partner posts on related blogs.
• Community answers where you genuinely help (and disclose your affiliation).
• Your own data that others can quote.

We explain why a plain mention can matter as much as a link in brand mentions vs backlinks. Satelo can help with one part of this: sites in similar niches publish partner articles about each other in a circle, with links marked rel="sponsored", so you get mentions in relevant context without buying links. It is a public beta and the network is still small.

How to check your AI visibility

Keep a simple log: 10–20 questions your customers ask, checked monthly, noting which sites get cited. More on this in how to get cited by ChatGPT.

Before and after: a worked example (for illustration)

Imagine a small gardening blog with a post titled "Tomato tips." A reader asks an assistant: "When should I start tomato seeds indoors?" Here is how the same section could look before and after a GEO pass. The blog and its numbers are made up for illustration.

Before: a heading "Getting started," then three paragraphs about the author's love of gardening, with the actual timing buried in the middle of the third paragraph and no source.

After:

• Heading: "When to start tomato seeds indoors."
• First sentence: a direct answer that ties the timing to your area's last frost date, with a link to the local extension service or weather source that publishes those dates.
• A short table: frost date, sowing date, transplant date, for three example regions.
• One paragraph of first-hand detail: what happened when the author started seeds too early, with the actual dates from their own garden log.

Nothing here is a trick. The section simply became the clearest, best-sourced answer to one question, which is exactly what an assistant is looking for when it assembles a reply. Do this for the five to ten questions your readers ask most, rather than rewriting the whole site at once.

A GEO checklist for this week

• robots.txt allows Googlebot, Bingbot, YandexBot and OAI-SearchBot (decide separately on training crawlers).
• Your key pages are indexed in Google and Yandex.
• Each key page opens with a direct answer and has question-style H2s.
• Every statistic and rule on the page links to its source.
• There is at least one table or step list per long page.
• About, author and contact pages exist and say who is behind the site.
• You have a list of 10 sites in your niche where a mention would make sense.
• An optional llms.txt is fine, but Google says it is not required.

What to do next

Start with what assistants check first: whether your site looks credible at all. Check your site's Quality Score for free and see, in about 30 seconds, how it looks on mostly open data, with the evidence behind each number. Then use our step-by-step guide to getting mentioned by AI.

FAQ

What is generative engine optimization?

It is the practice of making pages easy for AI assistants to find, understand and cite in their answers. The term comes from a 2023 research paper; in practice it builds on regular SEO.

Is GEO different from SEO?

Partly. The base is the same: crawlable, indexed, useful pages. GEO adds a focus on self-contained passages, cited facts and brand mentions on other sites, and it is measured in citations rather than rankings.

Do I need special markup or llms.txt for AI Overviews?

No. Google says pages only need to be indexed and eligible for a snippet, with no special schema or AI text files required. llms.txt is optional.

How do I get my site into ChatGPT answers?

Allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, make sure pages are indexed in regular search engines, write clear answers with sources, and earn mentions on sites ChatGPT already cites.

How long does GEO take to work?

There is no official timeline. Since assistants rely on search indexes, changes usually show up no faster than regular SEO changes. Track a fixed list of questions monthly.

Can you guarantee a citation in ChatGPT or Google AI?

No. Assistants generate a new answer each time and no platform lets site owners control citations. Anyone promising guaranteed AI placement is overselling.

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