AEO & GEO: content that AI services can find, understand and cite

What is AEO and GEO?

Generative engines are systems that respond to a question by writing their own answer in full sentences. Large language models sit behind them. Examples include AI assistants with web search and the AI features of Google Search, namely AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, covers every measure meant to make a website appear more often in such answers: as a cited source, a linked page or a named brand. Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is the older term. It refers to content that answers a question directly and briefly. Today many providers use both names to mean the same thing. Neither has a fixed definition, so always ask which specific measures someone has in mind.

The term GEO comes from research. A team led by Pranjal Aggarwal submitted the paper to arXiv on 16 November 2023 (number 2311.09735), and it appeared at the KDD conference in 2024. In the authors' own test system, called GEO-bench, citing sources, adding quotations and including statistics raised visibility in generated answers by up to 40 percent. That figure applies to the study's experimental set-up, and the methods worked to different degrees depending on the subject area. You cannot transfer it to individual AI services or to your own website.

How does AEO and GEO work?

Many AI services use a method called Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG. The service takes the question, looks for suitable documents in a search index and hands them to the language model as a basis. From them, the model writes an answer and refers to some of the sources. An AI service can therefore only use your page if it finds it and is allowed to read it.

At Google, the sources come from the normal search index; other providers usually do not disclose how they choose. AI Overviews have been available in Germany since 25 March 2025, in German and English, for signed-in users aged 18 and over. According to Google's documentation "AI features and your website", they come with no additional requirements. New machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup are unnecessary. A page has to be indexed and eligible to appear as a snippet, and even then there is no promise it will be shown. In its guide to generative AI search (as of 10 July 2026), Google answers the question of whether SEO is still relevant with "In short, yes!".

The key building blocks

Indexing and crawler access

Everything starts with a page that search engines and AI crawlers are allowed to fetch. You control this through the robots.txt file. The large providers often separate crawlers that collect data for model training from crawlers used for search. That lets you exclude training and still show up in AI search. Check your firewall and CDN as well, because bot protection can block AI crawlers without anyone noticing.

Direct answers and clear structure

Unambiguous headings, short paragraphs and an answer right at the start make a page easy for people to read. The same probably holds for machines. Keep the text in the HTML, as not every crawler runs JavaScript. Google's own guide calls it unnecessary to cut texts artificially into small pieces ("chunking").

Facts with evidence

Figures with a source and a date help readers and make claims verifiable. The GEO paper found positive effects from source citations and statistics in its test system. Even so, do not invent statistics just because they supposedly go down well in AI answers.

Original content

Google advises "unique, non-commodity content", meaning content that cannot easily be swapped for something else. Structured data must match the visible content. According to Google, mass-producing pages for every sub-question an AI might ask breaches its policy on "scaled content abuse".

Mentions outside your website

AI services draw on many sources. Specialist articles, reputable directories, forums and reviews can help your business appear in answers. Keep your details there and in your Google Business Profile up to date. Google may ignore mentions that were created artificially.

Common mistakes

• Treating an llms.txt file as mandatory: Google lists it as an example of AI text files that Google Search does not need. Whether other services read it is not reliably documented.
• Publishing masses of AI-written texts for every conceivable question.
• Locking out AI crawlers by accident through bot protection or robots.txt.
• Reading the 40 percent from the GEO paper as a promise for your own website.
• Believing providers who claim insight into Google's AI systems. Google states: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems."
• Using bought mentions or fake reviews.

How to measure progress

Exact measurement is hard, because AI answers change with the wording, the user, the location and the time. You can still get a picture of where you stand. Collect ten to twenty questions your customers typically ask. Put them to several AI services and to Google Search. Note whether your brand is named, whether your website is linked as a source and which competitors appear. While you do this, check whether the statements about your business are correct. Repeat the test at fixed intervals with the same questions. The result stays a sample, though it reveals trends and gaps.

In Google Search Console, clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode count as normal search traffic, according to Google. There is no separate filter for them. Server logs show which crawlers fetch your pages. In your web analytics, visits from AI services can often be recognised by the referring address, provided the service sends one.

Frequently asked questions