See whether AI systems can read, interpret, and recommend your site — before a competitor fills the shortlist.
GEO Fix team5 min read
Your SEO platform added a "GEO" tab. A LinkedIn post cites an arXiv paper. A vendor pitches "Generative Engine Optimisation software." Same three letters — three different things.
What is generative engine optimisation when everyone uses the acronym differently? This post maps the landscape neutrally: which "GEO" someone means, what tools exist in each camp, and which layer most businesses should check first.
Generative engine optimisation entered public conversation through an academic paper: GEO: Generative Engine Optimisation (Aggarwal et al., arXiv 2023–2024).
The researchers asked: as answers shift from "ten blue links" to AI-composed responses, how should websites change to get cited inside those answers?
They tested content tactics — adding statistics, credible quotations, simpler phrasing, structures AI can quote accurately. In their benchmark, some tactics measurably increased visibility in AI-generated responses.
What the paper is not:
The paper studies what you write. Many owners need to fix whether OpenAI, Anthropic, or Perplexity's crawlers can read you before content tactics matter.
Example: A consultancy rewrites service pages with statistics and expert quotes — straight from paper-inspired tactics. Google rankings hold per Search Console. ChatGPT still names competitors. A separate check shows OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot blocked — often after enabling Cloudflare's Block AI bots rule, which Cloudflare documents blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and other crawlers site-wide. Content work on an unreadable site doesn't help.
After the paper, vendors adopted "GEO" fast. In the market today, the acronym usually means one of three different jobs — each with established tools and DIY paths:
| Camp | What it does | Examples & alternatives |
|---|---|---|
| Content GEO | Rewrite pages so AI can quote you (paper-inspired tactics) | MarketMuse, Clearscope, SEO agencies, in-house editors |
| Monitoring GEO | Track citation share and brand mentions across AI answers | Profound, Otterly, Peec AI, Scrunch AI, Semrush AI tabs |
| Infrastructure GEO | Test crawler access; deploy llms.txt, robots.txt, schema | Readiness scans, manual robots.txt edits, developer implementation, tools like GEO Fix |
All three are legitimate. None replaces the others automatically.
When a vendor says "you need GEO," ask which row they mean.
Content GEO example: A team uses Clearscope to optimise articles for extractability — stats up front, clearer headings. Useful once crawlers can reach the pages.
Monitoring GEO example: A brand subscribes to Profound to track how often ChatGPT and Perplexity name them vs. competitors on a set of buyer prompts. Useful when access is already confirmed.
Infrastructure GEO example: An owner discovers PerplexityBot is allowed but llms.txt is missing. Options include handing robots.txt to a developer using OpenAI's, Anthropic's, and Google's crawler docs, reviewing Cloudflare bot settings, or using a readiness tool that generates files plus CMS steps.
None of this contradicts the category split between SEO platforms and GEO tools — it clarifies which GEO layer sits on the AI side.
A practical sequence most consultants and vendors agree on — regardless of which product you pick:
Skipping to step 3 or 5 while step 1 is broken is the most common waste we see. Ahrefs and Semrush can report green on Googlebot while step 1 fails for OAI-SearchBot.
If the problem sounds like "how much pipeline am I losing?" start with how buyers use ChatGPT to find vendors. If competitors are cited while you rank higher on Google, see why ChatGPT recommends competitors.
Honest limit: no GEO layer — academic or commercial — guarantees ChatGPT placement. OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity control what their systems cite.
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| SEO | Rank in Google Search (Googlebot, Search Console) |
| GEO | Appear in AI-generated answers (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) |
| AEO | Optimise for direct answers (snippets, AI summaries) |
For why Google rankings don't transfer to ChatGPT automatically, see Chat GPT SEO Google.
It appeared on [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.09735) as a preprint — influential research, not a guarantee for your specific site.
Some content tools (MarketMuse, Clearscope) overlap with paper tactics. Most monitoring and infrastructure tools address different layers entirely.
No. Owners need to know which "GEO" they're buying — content, monitoring, or infrastructure.
Yes. Many teams have a developer update robots.txt using OpenAI's published user-agent rules, add llms.txt by hand, and deploy schema in their CMS. Products exist to speed that up — they're not the only path.
Key takeaways
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