What exactly is (GEO) generative engine optimisation?

Author: Ryan Walsh

Date: 12/05/2025

Introduction

In 2025, even businesses that wouldn’t consider themselves up-to-date with the latest technological innovations will now know what “search engine optimisation” means.

However, a new concept that business owners and marketing managers must understand is GEO. This presents a landmark change in terms of digital marketing.

Where businesses have generally focused on optimising for organic search and Google Business results. Yet now, “Google AI Overviews” are disrupting the status quo, plus more people than ever are using AI to help find businesses.

Quite put, more and more people are finding answers to questions using Gemini, Chatgpt, or other large language models- therefore, as marketers, we must adapt.

So, how do businesses adapt?

As always, Walsh & Partners are inquisitive, and we want to know more about how GEO is now eating into the percentage of what was once organic SEO queries.

So, let’s dive headfirst, let’s start learning about what GEO is, how it’s impacting traditional/organic search engine optimisation.

 

In this guide, we will cover the following:

• What exactly is GEO?
• How does GEO differ from SEO?
• How does GEO work?
• How can a business optimise its content marketing to be more likely to appear as a Google answer?

 

What exactly is GEO?

GEO stands for “generative engine optimisation.”

It’s the process by which businesses aim to get their content marketing, products, or services mentioned in various AI answers. This presents a brand-new opportunity to draw more visitors through AI platforms and be cited as a source of information on Google.

Create a picture: Google Gemini response, for someone asking what the best tennis racquet is for, say, £100.00.

Therefore, e-commerce businesses and other companies will want to get their business mentioned as a source.

We live, therefore, at a time when technology has started to make a giant leap forward. AI is advancing into our everyday lives and helping to make lighter work of some tasks.
This is why Chatgpt, Google’s Gemini, and other AI programmes are now competing for visibility.

 

Are there similarities between GEO and SEO?

This is going to sound a bit of a wishy-washy answer, but it’s true, the answer to whether GEO and SEO are similar is both yes and no.

What we mean by that is that for a business to rank high on Google or be selected as an AI answer, the content marketing needs to be of high quality. For example, Google E-EAT is essential guidance that will more likely lead your answer to appear in Google AI Overviews or as your business ranks higher in Google organic results.

So, if you concentrate on improving your Google E-EAT score, ensure all the pages reflect higher experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness scores. By doing so, you are likely to rank higher organically and, therefore, more likely to have your work cited as a

 

Google AI Overview answer.

We are therefore entering an era whereby if the content marketing is the best it can be, top quality, and offers excellent advice, then you open the opportunity for your business to be used as an AI answer.

Let’s start with how both GEO and SEO are similar

 

Keywords and content marketing

For a business to rank high in Google’s organic SERPS, its content marketing must be high quality.
Well, this is the same for a GEO answer; for it to be used as an answer, the content marketing from which it has scraped the information must be of good quality.

Therefore, our best advice for businesses is this: don’t ever concentrate on quantity at the cost and sacrifice of quality. What does this mean in reality?

Well, instead of say writing say 700 odd words a week, instead consolidate your effort into just writing a single piece of content marketing once a month. Put your time, effort and your expertise into writing long-form, well written content marketing on an area that will bring you in more organic visitors.

An article a week is likely not sufficient if it’s just written quickly. However, an article that’s well written, incorporates a good understanding of Google EEAT, offers solid advice, then this article stands a better chance of being ranked on page one of Google.

 

Authority

Businesses that are authoritative have always tended to rank higher in Google search because they have a good backlink profile.
Now, we are at an early stage with GEO in that no business has truly been able to decipher how and why it selects certain pages to be used as an AI answer. However, it does stand to reason that if a page or blog post has a lot of good quality links, then this can only help the business’s prospects of being used as a Google AI overview answer.

Therefore, we are trying to make the point that content marketing quality, so focusing on improving the Google EEAT score, is still essential.

For now, we can only presume that links are still necessary and probably used by AI companies to decipher the importance of that page.

We know for certain that at the time of writing that Google still uses backlinks as a ranking factor in organic search. It therefore stands to reason that Google would use backlinks as a way of deciphering how good that business is at answering a question, and is more likely to select a company to be used as an AI Overview answer if it has a very good and strong backlink profile.

For example, why would you scrape and present an answer for a question, that’s from a paragraph of text on page 10 of the organic results when you can take an answer off page 1?

So it stands to reason, for now at least, for optimising for AI answers, such as an AI overview answer, that the traditional ranking factors are still important.

 

How do you think GEO differs from SEO?

Synthesised content marketing

Regarding content marketing and improving SEO, we continually and still improve the SEO ranking factors.

For example, SEO agencies will often still spend hundreds of hours trying to build solid and good quality links to a very important landing page. This is so that the page can rank higher in Google’s organic results.

Then even when the shopper is on that page, the work for the marketing company does not stop there. You have to think carefully about the UX, such as the design of the page, improving dwell times and lowering bounce rates. Business refer to these as the “user engagement signals”- since Google’s RankBrain in 2015 these have been important ranking factors to.

However, with AI-generated answers, the answer is often “synthesised, ” meaning that part of the answer might be blended with information from other businesses. This is to form a paragraph of advice, that’s short, to the point but also a blend of advice that could have come from several different websites.

 

Why optimise for AI Overview answers then?

The goal, therefore, is for the business to be mentioned as a source; this means that if the shopper wants to read more information, they click through to a website. This can for the businesses which are successful in getting displayed as an AI Overview answer could therefore possibly open the flood gates to a large amount of visitors wanting to click on the source and to read more about the product or service.

 

The rise of zero clicks

However, here’s the Achilles heel, so to speak, that the answer to a question is sometimes answered directly in the search engine results pages (resulting in zero-click search).

This means that sometimes a shopper who has a question about a product or service doesn’t need to visit a company website for an answer.

Sometimes the answer appears as a Google AI overview answer.
What is a zero-click search?

This results in a “zero click search”, which can pose a problem to businesses, as you would ideally like the shopper to come onto your website, so that you can advertise a product or service.

For example, the shopper may have clicked an internal link, visited a product page and bought an item from you if they were brought to your company website through Google’s organic search engine results pages.

However, zero-click searches sometimes answer to the question if offered there and then in the SERP’s. The shopper then doesn’t visit the company website, sometimes eliminating the possibility of generating brand awareness or trying to advertise a product or service.

 

Technical SEO and NLP

When you think about the process logically, you can see that NLP and technical SEO are still essential. This is whether your marketing strategy is focused on optimising for organic search or to appear in the Google AI Overviews.

The reason being is if you are publishing helpful and well-written content marketing then this can work well for both organic and optimising for AI overview answers. Therefore, the business must consider technical search engine optimisation as well as NLP, so that there is a natural tone when reading the text.

What we mean by that is NLP, natural language processing, and having a good writing style, which are very important.

Plus, layering good technical and on-page signals is still really important. For example, you need good use of H1- H6, meta descriptions, URL slugs and alt text, to clearly communicate what that page is about. Of course it does go without the saying, you need to ensure the page can get crawled and indexed by Googlebot as well.

 

How can a business increase its chances of becoming an AI-generated answer?

 

Keywords

Just as with search engine optimisation, you should carry out keyword research when optimising your site for AI overviews. Regarding how the search engines crawl and index pages (Googlebot), this is similar to how AI scrapers read a page.

The bots will ultimately want to know what the page is about; the key way of doing this is to read the keywords within the content marketing and marked up using on-page SEO. White hat methods apply; however, keywords should be added so that the AI scrapers and Googlebot know what the page is about.

 

Unique statistics and market research

If someone wants to find facts and statistics about a particular product or service, lets say the query relates to the percentage of electric cars sold in Wales.

Now, if your business has carried out unique research with a large enough set of respondents, and you have carried out market research, this work could be cited as AI Overview. Not just that, it could also be used on say, ChatGPT, for example. Therefore, when a shopper is looking for facts/statistics, because your business has carried out unique market research, your company is more likely to be cited within an AI answer.

Therefore, if you were to ask us how more and more businesses will get themselves mentioned in Chat GPT or Google AI Overview answers, they we would say one way to achieve this by undertaking research and publishing statistics.

This does two things: it further cements the business as an expert in that area, which satisfies part of Google EEAT (expertise). On top of that, you also have the chance that your business’s statistics and research are cited more often in Google AI Overview answers / Chat GPT for example.

This could generate more CTR and a better click-through rate and attract more shoppers to your company website.

 

Content marketing quality

Since the early days of Google PageRank, Google has ranked businesses based on their authority (back then it was number of backlinks, its very different in 2025).

The algorithms that power Google are now more sophisticated than ever.
However, the principles remain the same, in that content marketing quality is essential; however, there’s more competition than ever.

Whether it is a Google organic result, or to get your business mentioned as Google AI Overview, you still want a page or blog post mentioned.

However, there are often hundreds of thousands of answers Google can choose from, if not millions.

Therefore, if your business is to rank on page one of Google or be displayed as a source for an AI Overview answer, the content marketing must be top quality.

 

Google EEAT

Google EEAT is essential from an organic search engine optimisation perspective, increasing your chances of your business appearing as an AI overview answer.

Therefore, think about how you can show you’re an expert on what you are writing about.

 

Split the text up

We highly recommend splitting your text into an FAQ style question and answer.

The reason is twofold: it helps the bots, such as Googlebot, better understand that page and the questions you’re answering. It also gives that page a better chance of being used in Chatgpt or as an AI Overview answer.

The reason is that, rather than being one giant slab of text, say 3000 words, you can split the page into more readable sections. This helps a shopper/reader find an answer to their query and allows the bots to understand the page better.

 

Statistics and research

Earlier in this article, we mentioned that the pages which we think will be cited more often by Google AI Overviews and Chatgpt, for example, will be the pages with original research.

This stands to reason, because if you offer a comprehensive answer backed up by data, through market research your business has carried out, it’s much more likely to be cited.

 

Aim to be the best

It’s crucial today that your work is considered the best, whether you want to appear in the Google Business results, organic results or as an AI Overview. Googlebot crawls and indexes millions of pages each day. Therefore, you have to give Google and Microsoft Bing reasons why they should cite your work as an answer to an AI question.

For example, have you carried out high-quality market research?

Is your business a leading business, with a far superior backlink profile?

Has your company found a “content marketing gap” where the topics are so new that you’ve found a gap in the market that you can write about?

Do you have such standout experts within your business that your work is cited? You employ many industry-recognised experts.

 

More competitive than ever

It’s more competitive than ever.

Getting a business listed organically or cited as an AI answer is more competitive than ever.

So, you have to stand head and shoulders above the competition to generate more clicks.

No place for content-thin content marketing

Remember the days when marketing businesses wrote between 300-400-word articles.

 

Those days are gone, how can we say that?

Well, when you generally look at the companies that now rank on page 1 for answering a commonly asked question, the content marketing is often in-depth.

Take, for example, BackLinko, which offers excellent advice, and it’s not uncommon for the blog posts to be more than 3,000 words.

Therefore, the text needs to have a high Google EEAT score, yet this needs to be coupled with a high word count.

 

Raise the authority

Do raise the authority of the page/blog post that you wish to appear as a Google AI Overview.

This means, for example, building quality links or directing your link juice towards that page. This will raise the authority of that page.

This makes it more likely that Google’s algorithms will see that information and page as more authoritative and therefore more likely to use it as a Google AI Overview answer.

Building links and obtaining quality backlinks are still massively advantageous to a business’s organic search engine optimisation.

 

It’s a race, are you ready?

The race has most definitely already started. Businesses will know that AI Overview answers will result in more zero-click searches; therefore, it’s now a race for businesses to get their companies cited as an AI Overview answer, as this can help a business obtain even more visitors.

 

Technical SEO is more important than ever.

If Googlebot can’t crawl and index a page for any time, the page often starts dropping Google’s organic ranks. So, for example, a page that might have ranked number one, if the page goes offline, let’s say due to the URL changing, then this.