SERVICES
Generative Engine Optimization
GEO is about being the source a generated summary draws on, not the link someone clicks.
Short answer
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting a page used as a source inside generated results such as Google AI Overviews and AI Mode. It rests on the same foundation as search — indexable, snippet-eligible pages — and adds structure that makes a passage safe to quote out of context.
How it actually works
Google now answers a growing share of searches with a generated summary before any link appears. Being a source that summary draws on is a different objective from ranking beneath it, and it rewards different things.
Google’s own documentation is unusually plain about this: no special optimisation is required. A page has to be indexed and eligible for a snippet, and that is the whole technical requirement. What Google does not say, because it is not its job to, is that the summary is assembled by breaking one question into several and pulling a passage for each. A page that covers a topic seriously gets used for questions it never targeted. A page tuned to one keyword does not.
So the work is editorial rather than technical. Every section has to stand alone when lifted out. Dates have to be visible. Comparisons have to be tables. And the page has to answer the neighbouring questions, not only the headline one.
Google’s AI features documentation, updated May 2026, states that no additional technical requirements or special optimisations are needed to appear in AI Overviews.
What the engagement covers
- Eligibility
- A page must be indexed and eligible to appear with a snippet. Google states there are no additional technical requirements beyond that.
- Topic coverage
- Generated results fan a single question out across subtopics, so comprehensive coverage beats a page tuned to one keyword.
- Passage integrity
- Every section has to make sense lifted out of the page. Pronouns pointing back at a heading are the most common failure.
- Freshness signals
- Visible published and modified dates, in the body and in schema.
How it runs
- Confirm the pages are crawlable and snippet-eligible.
- Map the subtopics a fan-out query would generate.
- Rewrite so each section stands alone.
- Measure presence in generated summaries, not just position.
Is it for you?
It is, when
- Your important pages already rank, and you want to be the source AI Overviews cite rather than the link beneath them.
- Your content is thorough but written as continuous prose that does not survive being quoted.
It is not, when
- Your pages are not indexed. GEO sits on top of search eligibility, not instead of it.
- You are looking for a new technical trick. Google has stated there is none.
Frequently asked
Is GEO a separate discipline from SEO?
Mostly no. Google has documented that no special optimisation is required to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. Where GEO adds something is in writing for extraction rather than for a click, and in measuring presence in summaries rather than position in a list.
Does GEO replace ranking?
It sits on top of it. A page that cannot rank generally cannot be drawn on either, because eligibility for both runs through the same index.
How do you measure it?
By sampling the queries that matter to you and recording which sources the generated summary uses, dated, over time.
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