Glossary
Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of improving how visible a website is in answers written by AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews. It builds on ordinary SEO: a page still has to be indexed, clear and trustworthy before an AI tool can use it as a source.
The term comes from a research paper first submitted in November 2023, GEO: Generative Engine Optimization. The paper describes generative engines as search engines that gather information from several sources and use large language models to summarise it in an answer to the user's question.
How GEO relates to SEO
SEO aims at a position in a list of links. GEO aims at being one of the sources an AI answer draws on and cites. The two overlap heavily.
Google's documentation on AI features says there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page has to be indexed and eligible to appear in Search with a snippet, and existing SEO fundamentals still apply: crawlable pages, internal links, important content in text form, and structured data that matches what is visible on the page.
Why it matters to a business website
An AI answer is built from the pages the tool can find and understand. A business whose pages are thin, unclear or not indexed gives it little to work with.
Stryx's approach is to get core SEO right first, then add short summaries at the top of pages and clear questions and answers.