What Is Generative Engine Optimisation?

When someone asks Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity or Claude a question, the answer increasingly arrives as a written summary with a few source links, rather than a list of ten blue links. Generative engine optimisation, usually shortened to GEO and sometimes called AI search optimisation, is the work of making your pages easy for those systems to find, understand and cite.

This guide explains how AI answers pick their sources, what you can control and what you cannot. It relies on the platforms’ own documentation, linked throughout, rather than on claims about secret ranking factors.

How AI answers find their sources

Most AI answer engines that cite websites work in a similar way. They take the question, run one or more searches against an index of web pages, read the most relevant passages and write an answer from them, linking to some of the pages they used.

Google describes this directly. Its page on AI features and your website says AI Overviews and AI Mode may use “query fan-out”, running several related searches to find “a wider and more diverse set of helpful links” than a classic results page. The practical point is that to be cited, your page first has to be in the index the platform searches, and then has to contain a passage that answers part of the question well.

What Google says about its AI features

Google’s guidance is short and worth reading in full. The main points:

• “There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, nor other special optimizations necessary.”
• To be shown as a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.
• You do not need new machine-readable files, AI text files or special schema.org markup.
• Normal SEO fundamentals still apply: crawlable pages, internal links, a good page experience and content in text form.
• Traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is included in the Search Console Performance report under the Web search type.

In other words, for Google, GEO is SEO. A site that ranks well and is easy to quote is in the best position to be used.

How other AI platforms find pages

Other platforms run their own crawlers, and each publishes what they do. Blocking or allowing them in robots.txt is the main lever you have.

Two consequences follow. First, if your robots.txt or firewall blocks the search crawlers, those platforms cannot cite you, however good your content is. OpenAI notes that changes to robots.txt can take about 24 hours to take effect in its search results. Second, training and search are often separate, so you can decline training while staying visible in AI search. For Google, the separate Google-Extended control covers use in some of Google’s other AI systems, while Googlebot access governs Search, including AI Overviews.

What you can control

• Access. Allow the search crawlers you want in robots.txt, and make sure your hosting firewall or CDN is not blocking them.
• Indexing. Pages must be indexed and allowed a snippet. Check Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools for pages that are excluded.
• Clear answers. Put a direct answer near the top of the page, then the detail. Use headings that match the questions people ask, and short passages that make sense when quoted alone.
• Original information. Google’s guidance on helpful content asks whether content provides “original information, reporting, research, or analysis”. Your own prices, processes, data and experience are what an AI answer cannot get elsewhere.
• Facts about your business. Keep your name, services, locations and contact details identical across your site, Google Business Profile and directories, so systems that read several sources find them in agreement.
• Authorship and sources. Show who wrote a page and link to the sources behind its claims. Google says trust is the most important part of E-E-A-T.
• Structured data. Use it where it fits, and make sure it matches the visible text.

What you cannot control

• Whether you are cited. Each platform chooses sources answer by answer. A page cited today may not be cited tomorrow for the same question.
• What the answer says. AI answers can summarise your page loosely or combine it with others. You can correct errors at source, on your own pages and listings, but not in the answer itself.
• Whether an AI answer appears at all. Google says AI Overviews only show when its systems judge them useful for the query.
• Clicks. An answer may satisfy the question without the reader clicking through.

Because of this, nobody can honestly promise you AI citations. What a provider can promise is the work: access checks, content changes and measurement.

How to measure GEO

• Search Console Performance data, which includes AI Overviews and AI Mode under the Web search type.
• Referral traffic in analytics from AI platforms such as chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai, where the platform passes a referrer.
• Server logs showing which AI crawlers visit and which pages they fetch.
• A fixed set of test questions asked on each platform at regular intervals, recorded with the sources cited. Treat this as a sample, not a ranking.

How Hostlyx approaches GEO

Hostlyx is a Zorixo Services company. Our delivery team is in Bengaluru, India, and UK customers are invoiced in GBP by Zorixo Ventures Ltd, a UK company, through Stripe. Our generative engine optimisation service and answer engine optimisation service start from the SEO basics in our SEO service, then cover crawler access, content structure and measurement. We do not promise citations. If you are comparing providers, our list of questions to ask an SEO agency applies here too.

If you want your site checked for AI search, send us your site address and we will reply with a fixed written quote in GBP, with the tasks and how we will report on them set out in full.