What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimization vs SEO

A search for “website development in Almaty” used to return a list of links. Today an AI-written answer often sits above them, and some buyers skip the results and ask ChatGPT or Perplexity directly. Here is what generative engine optimization is, how it differs from SEO and what to change on your site, based on official documentation from Google, OpenAI, Perplexity, Anthropic, Microsoft and Yandex.

What is generative engine optimization (GEO) in simple terms?

GEO (generative engine optimization) means making your pages easy for AI search systems to find, understand and cite when they write an answer. The goal is not an abstract “position one” but a place among the answer’s sources, and an accurate description of your business.

Say someone asks, “How much does an online store cost?” The system searches, reads several pages, summarises them and links to its sources. A page with a clear, specific, verifiable answer has a real chance of being one of those links. A slow, poorly indexed page that answers in generalities has almost none.

How are GEO, AEO, SEO, AIO and SXO different?

They are five sides of one job, not five separate services. Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features (May 2026) says plainly that AEO and GEO are still SEO: AI Overviews and AI Mode are rooted in the same core ranking and quality systems as ordinary results.

Discipline	What it covers	The question it answers
SEO (search engine optimization)	Technical base, content and authority	Can search engines find the page, and do they trust it?
AEO (answer engine optimization)	A direct answer at the start of each section	Can a short, ready-made answer be taken from the page?
GEO (generative engine optimization)	Facts, first-hand experience and sources	Is there a reason to cite you rather than someone else?
AIO (AI optimization)	Accurate, consistent brand facts everywhere	Does AI describe your business, services and prices correctly?
SXO (search experience optimization)	What happens after the click	Did the visitor find what they came for, and is the next step obvious?

Without SEO, the other four do nothing: a page that is not in the index cannot appear in results or in an AI answer. For the basics, read what SEO is and how it works.

How do Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and Perplexity choose sources?

They all search first and write second: the model grounds its answer in a search index and picks the pages that best answer the question and its sub-questions. AI visibility is therefore an extension of search visibility.

• Google AI Overviews and AI Mode build answers from the Google Search index. They use “query fan-out”, splitting a question into many related searches and choosing supporting pages for each. To be eligible as a link, a page only needs to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet; Google sets no extra requirements. Being eligible does not guarantee being chosen, though.
• ChatGPT search crawls sites with OAI-SearchBot and also uses third-party search providers; OpenAI’s documentation names Microsoft Bing, so your site should be well indexed in Bing too.
• Perplexity builds its own index with PerplexityBot, and Claude-SearchBot crawls pages for Claude’s search results.
• Alisa AI in Yandex Search shows generative answers with cited sources, which matters for Russian-language sites that get traffic from Yandex, as many in Kazakhstan do.

How do you write content that AI systems cite?

Open every section with a one- or two-sentence answer, then add details, a list or a table. That suits both a person skimming the page and a system looking for a precise passage.

1. Answer first. The first sentence under a heading answers its question, with no warm-up about a “fast-growing market”.
2. Headings that are real questions. “How long does it take to build a website?” is more useful than “Our advantages”. Chopping text into tiny fragments for AI is unnecessary, Google says.
3. First-hand experience and your own data. Google’s guide favours unique, “non-commodity” content. An AI has no reason to cite a rewrite of articles it has already read, but your timelines, scope and real projects exist only on your site. That is why the codeyev portfolio describes each project concretely, with the niche, the stack and what was done, like the window manufacturer’s site in Atyrau, rebuilt on Astro with local SEO.
4. Clear authorship. A named author with real experience and an author page shows readers and search systems who stands behind the content, which is the idea behind E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust).
5. Accurate schema.org markup. Organization or Person, Service and Article markup help machines understand who stands behind the page. It is a description, not an entry ticket: Google says generative search needs no special markup, and it stopped showing FAQ rich results on 7 May 2026 (HowTo rich results were removed in 2023).

Why does brand consistency matter for AI search?

An AI system builds its picture of a business from many sources, and when they contradict each other, the answer can come out wrong. That is what AIO is about: the same facts, everywhere.

Check that these match across your website, Google Business Profile, social profiles and directories:

• the business or specialist name, spelled one way;
• the list of services, “from” prices and timelines;
• the cities and countries you serve;
• phone, email and messenger contacts.

I deal with this myself. Ibrahim Aliyev is a common name, so every page and profile describes me the same way: Ibrahim Aliyev (codeyev), full-stack web developer and SEO specialist from Azerbaijan.

The second layer is genuine mentions on trusted sites: industry media, directories, partners, interviews. Google warns against chasing inauthentic mentions, and its spam policies apply to generative AI answers too. Creating a separate page for every variation of a question just to get into AI answers can also break its scaled content abuse policy.

Which technical settings does AI search need?

Two things matter most: do not lock AI search crawlers out, and help search engines learn about changes quickly. This is what I check first:

• robots.txt. Allow OAI-SearchBot (ChatGPT search), PerplexityBot and Claude-SearchBot, plus Googlebot, Bingbot and YandexBot. The training crawlers, GPTBot and ClaudeBot, are a separate decision: blocking them opts you out of model training, not search. Google-Extended controls Gemini training and grounding in the Gemini apps, not Google Search or AI Overviews. If you ever want to keep a site out of AI Overviews and AI Mode, Search Console now has a separate “Search generative AI” setting (available to all sites since 31 August 2026).
• CDN and firewall settings. If the site sits behind Cloudflare, check which AI crawlers AI Crawl Control allows or blocks. A crawler blocked at the CDN is refused even if your robots.txt allows it. Cloudflare now sorts AI crawlers into Search, Agent and Training, and says that blocking Training also blocks multi-purpose crawlers such as Googlebot and Bingbot, so make that choice carefully.
• Bing and IndexNow. Verify the site in Bing Webmaster Tools and submit the sitemap. IndexNow tells Bing, Yandex and other participating engines about new and updated URLs straight away. Google does not take part, so for Google you rely on the sitemap and Search Console.
• llms.txt. This is a 2024 proposal, not an adopted standard. Google Search ignores the file, and there is no confirmation that AI systems use it. I publish one on codeyev.com as a cheap extra, but it is not a ranking or citation factor.
• The technical base. Fast, crawlable and indexable pages with little duplicate content. Google lists this as the foundation for its AI features, just as it is for ordinary results.

How can you check whether AI answers cite your site?

Use the search engines’ own reports, and regularly ask AI assistants your customers’ questions:

• Google Search Console: the Performance report, where AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the “Web” search type, and the separate Generative AI performance report, which for now shows impressions only, not clicks;
• Bing Webmaster Tools: the AI Performance report (public preview since February 2026), showing citations in Copilot and Bing AI answers;
• Yandex Webmaster: the «Видимость сайта в Алисе AI» (“Site visibility in Alisa AI”) report under “Efficiency” (since 7 April 2026), showing how often AI answers cite your site and for which queries;
• a manual check: once a month, ask ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini the same target questions and note which sites they cite.

Where should you start with GEO?

Start with an audit. Is the site indexed in Google, Bing and Yandex? Are AI crawlers blocked anywhere? Do the pages answer real customer questions, and do the brand facts match? Then come technical fixes, answer-first content built on your own cases, and monitoring. Results grow with SEO: technical fixes usually show within 2–4 weeks, organic growth within 3–6 months, and nobody can honestly guarantee a citation.

My SEO services cover AI search from day one, because Google, Yandex and AI assistants all rely on the same foundation. To find out how search engines and AI read your site, fill in the project brief; I reply within 24 hours.