Ai Search Optimization
Use to get a brand and its content CITED and RECOMMENDED by AI answer engines — the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) / AI-search-visibility ski…
By Frank Heijdenrijk, MIT licence. Shared here with credit.
AI Search Optimization (GEO)
Get your brand into the answer when people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI, Gemini, or Copilot a question in your space — instead of watching a competitor get named. This is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization; also AEO/LLMO): optimizing to be cited and recommended by AI engines. It supplements search/SEO; it doesn't replace it.
Four truths shape everything:
- AI answers are built by retrieval + fan-out. Engines retrieve live from search indexes (ChatGPT via OpenAI's own crawler/index, OAI-SearchBot — historically Bing-seeded; Google feeds AI Overviews/AI Mode) and split your topic into sub-queries — so ranking in search feeds AI citation, and you optimize for a constellation of questions.
- AI cites community/social sources most. Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, LinkedIn, listicles and review sites dominate citations — the cited pages are usually not your pages. Earned mentions beat product pages.
- Platforms disagree. ChatGPT skews Wikipedia, Perplexity skews Reddit, AI Overviews lean on E-E-A-T + the community web. Optimizing for one ≠ all.
- Extractable, fresh, well-sourced content gets quoted. Quotations, statistics, citations, Q&A structure, and schema lift citation; stale content gets displaced.
(Full mechanics: references/how-ai-engines-cite.md.)