What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of optimising content and digital assets to perform well in AI-powered search engines and generative AI platforms. Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking in conventional search engine results pages (SERPs), GEO aims to ensure that your brand and content are effectively represented in AI-generated responses. Many of the underlying optimisation techniques for GEO are the same as SEO, however tracking tools and other elements are different.
As platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude gain popularity, the importance of GEO cannot be overstated. These AI systems draw upon vast amounts of data to generate human-like responses, and ensuring your brand is part of that data ecosystem is crucial for maintaining visibility in the age of AI Search.
What is AI Search?
AI Search refers to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to power search engines and question-answering systems. Unlike traditional search engines that rely on keyword matching and link analysis, AI Search employs natural language processing and deep learning to understand user intent and generate more contextually relevant results. However, AI search also can use a search grounding process which is where information from traditional search engine rankings are used to generate answers.
Some key features of AI Search include:
- Natural language understanding: AI Search can interpret complex queries and conversational language.
- Contextual awareness: It considers the user’s profile settings, search history, location, and other factors to provide personalised results.
- Dynamic content generation: AI Search can create new content by synthesising information from multiple sources.
- Continuous learning: These systems improve over time by learning from user interactions and feedback.
As AI Search becomes more prevalent, marketers must adapt their strategies to ensure their content is discoverable and correctly interpreted by these advanced systems.
FAQ’s
What platforms does Generative Engine Optimisation cover?
GEO encompasses a range of AI-powered platforms, for now the main platforms we track include but not limited to:
- ChatGPT
- Perplexity
- Claude
- Google’s AI overviews and soon Google AI Mode
We can cover tracking in different locations and languages.
Each of these platforms has its unique characteristics, training data, process for grounding, crawling and requirements, making GEO a complex and multifaceted discipline. At ROAST, we’re constantly monitoring these platforms and developing strategies to help our clients maintain visibility across the AI Search landscape.
How can I track brand visibility on ChatGPT?
Tracking brand visibility on AI platforms like ChatGPT presents unique challenges compared to traditional search engines. While there’s no direct equivalent to SEO ranking tools for these platforms, there are several strategies we employ:
- Brand AI Index: Tracking over a large set of queries which brand comes top around a particular topic or industry
- Sentiment analysis: Analyse the tone and content of AI-generated responses mentioning your brand.
- Competitor comparisons: Ask ChatGPT about your competitors and compare the responses to those about your brand.
- Monitor data sources: Keep track of the sources ChatGPT cites when discussing your brand or industry.
It’s worth noting that as AI models are regularly updated, visibility can fluctuate. Consistent monitoring and adaptation of your GEO strategy is crucial.
On top of tracking on the platforms we are also able to track referral traffic and use log file analysis to monitor indexing from the AI platforms.
How is GEO different to SEO?
While GEO and SEO share the common goal of improving online visibility, they differ in several key aspects:
- Content format: SEO often prioritises keyword-rich, structured content. GEO focuses more on natural language and contextually relevant information.
- Ranking factors: SEO considers factors like backlinks and site structure. GEO is more concerned with the accuracy, relevance, and authoritativeness of information.
- User interaction: Google has user interaction data from the SERP data and chrome. While AI platforms don’t.
- Data sources: SEO primarily deals with web content. GEO must consider a broader range of data sources that AI models might access.
- GEO platforms mix between data from their training processes which have a cut-off point and grounded data.
- Update frequency: SEO strategies can be relatively stable but be impacted by ongoing updates to the search algorithms. GEO also have “updates” when a new model is launched, or settings are also changed by the platforms.
- Tracking tools are different and key phrases selection for such tools should be different, on AI search queries are much longer.
Despite these differences, SEO and GEO are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a strong SEO foundation can support your GEO efforts by ensuring your content is discoverable and deemed authoritative by AI systems.
