What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?

Where the term came from

The phrase comes from a research paper by a team based mainly at Princeton University and IIT Delhi, first posted in November 2023 and accepted to the KDD 2024 conference. The authors used generative engine to mean any system that searches for sources and then writes an answer from them, and they asked what a website could change to appear more in those answers.

They tested nine kinds of edits across a benchmark of 10,000 queries from 25 subject areas. The winners were simple: citing credible sources, adding relevant quotations and adding statistics each raised how much of the generated answer drew on the edited page, by roughly a third on the authors' position-weighted word count, and a follow-up test on Perplexity, a live AI search engine, showed gains of up to 37%. Making the writing more fluent and readable helped too. Classic keyword stuffing barely moved anything.

How generative engines choose what to cite

The major AI answer tools work in two steps: retrieve, then write. Google describes its AI features as grounded in its core Search ranking systems, pulling relevant pages from the Search index before generating a response, and using query fan-out, a burst of related searches, to gather more sources. When ChatGPT search uses outside search providers, it typically rewrites the question into targeted searches for them. Even the GEO paper's own test setup fetched the top five Google results for each query before writing.

That has a plain consequence. If search systems cannot find, crawl and rank your page, no amount of GEO wording will get it cited.

What Google says about GEO

Google addresses the term directly in its guide to generative AI features in Search, last updated in July 2026. From its perspective, optimizing for generative AI search is still SEO. The guide says you do not need llms.txt files, special markup, content chopped into small chunks or rewrites aimed at AI, and that chasing inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it may seem.

What it does recommend is non-commodity content: unique, first-hand material rather than recycled tips anyone could write. For a contractor, that means explaining how you actually handle a job, not repeating generic advice.

What GEO looks like for a local service business

Stripped of the jargon, the work is a checklist you can act on this month:

• Make sure search engines and AI crawlers can reach your site, including OpenAI's OAI-SearchBot.
• Put verifiable specifics on service pages: price factors, service areas, license numbers, warranty terms and response times.
• Cite and link your sources when you state facts such as code requirements or rebate rules.
• Show first-hand experience with photos and short write-ups of real jobs.
• Keep your Google Business Profile and other listings accurate, since Google says AI responses can include local business information.
• Measure with Search Console's generative AI performance report, which shows how often your pages appear in Google's AI features.

Be skeptical of GEO sales pitches

No outside tool sees inside these systems. Google states that no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems, and nobody can promise that an AI will cite or recommend you. Be careful with anyone selling a secret formula, a special file or a fixed number of AI mentions.

At Modern Apex we treat GEO as part of writing good service pages rather than a separate product: specific, sourced, first-hand, and easy for both people and search systems to read.

Keep reading

• What is answer engine optimization (AEO)?
• How do I get my business recommended by ChatGPT?
• How do AI Overviews affect local businesses?
• What is local SEO?
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