What is GEO (generative engine optimisation)?
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GEO is the practice of getting your business named and cited inside AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot. Where SEO competes for a position in a list of links, GEO competes to be one of the sources the model quotes while writing its answer. It runs on different signals: entity clarity, structured data, third-party citations, and questions answered directly and early on the page.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO, GEO and AIO?
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SEO optimises for ranking a page in a list of results. AEO optimises for being the single direct answer in featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice assistants. GEO optimises for being cited inside an answer the AI writes itself. AIO is an umbrella term that, in practice, usually means Google AI Overviews. They overlap, but each needs different work and a different measure. Most proposals lump all four into one word.
How do I get my business cited by ChatGPT?
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Four things, in order. Make the site machine-readable: structured data, clean HTML, AI crawlers explicitly allowed in robots.txt. Answer real questions directly, with the core answer inside the first 40–60 words. Build entity clarity so the model knows who you are and what you do. Then earn third-party mentions, because models weigh what other sites say about you. There is no submission form and no paid placement, so anyone selling you one is selling nothing.
Is my business too small to get cited in AI answers?
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Usually you have a better shot here than on Google. 77% of sources cited by AI assistants have a domain authority under 50, and in one study of 48,560 cited domains, more than 33,000 appeared fewer than ten times each (Omnibound, 2026). Models reward specific, well-structured answers to narrow questions, which favours a focused Mumbai business over a broad national brand on exactly the queries you care about.
Can you guarantee I will appear in ChatGPT or AI Overviews?
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No, and be sceptical of anyone who does. Nobody controls what a language model outputs, and citation sets shift between model versions. It is even less controllable than Google rankings, and I don't promise positions there either. What I commit to is the work, the measurement, and a monthly record of which prompts name you and which name a competitor.
Does traditional SEO still matter now that AI Overviews exist?
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Yes, and it is still where most of the traffic is. But it is contracting: Gartner forecast a 25% fall in traditional search volume by 2026, and AI Overviews now reach over two billion users a month. The pages that get cited by AI are usually pages that were already technically sound, so the two layers reinforce each other. Dropping SEO for GEO would be a mistake. Running SEO alone is the more common one.
What is llms.txt and do I actually need one?
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llms.txt is a plain-text file at your site root summarising what your organisation does and which pages matter, written for language models rather than search crawlers. It is a proposed convention, not an official standard, and it is not a ranking factor. It is also cheap and makes your positioning unambiguous, and if it turns out not to matter you have lost nothing. So I ship one on every engagement.
How long before AI citations move?
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Technical and schema fixes often show within two to six weeks, because they change what the crawler can read. Genuine citation share on competitive commercial questions takes three to six months, and it moves in steps as models refresh rather than climbing smoothly. Anyone quoting thirty days is selling something. You see the audit and the work in month one either way.
Do you consult, or do you do it for you?
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This page describes the consulting engagement: audit, roadmap, briefs, sign-off and measurement. You pay for advice and oversight rather than monthly retainer activity. If you would rather it was simply done for you, my agency TNXN runs a done-for-you AI & GEO SEO retainer with published rates from ₹15,000/month, month to month, no lock-in. The method is the same.
