How To: GEO, AEO and AI Visibility, Step by Step

How to do generative engine optimization (GEO)

Short answer: Write down the questions your buyers ask, measure who AI tools cite today, fix crawler access, make key pages answer-first, align your brand facts everywhere, earn third-party mentions, then repeat the measurement monthly.

1. Build a prompt set. List 15 to 20 questions buyers ask when researching your category, phrased the way they would type or say them.
2. Baseline it. Run each prompt in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google AI Mode. Record whether you are named, which sources are cited and the date.
3. Fix retrieval access. Make sure search-style crawlers can fetch your pages. See how to allow AI crawlers.
4. Make priority pages answer-first. Put a one to three sentence answer under a question-style heading. See how to write an answer block.
5. Align brand facts. Use the same name, description, category, address and leadership details on your site and profiles. See Organization schema.
6. Earn third-party mentions. Target the publications and directories the AI answers already cite. See how to earn mentions.
7. Re-measure monthly. Rerun the same prompts and compare against the baseline. Judge by trend, not a single answer.

No one controls AI answers, so treat every step as improving odds, not a guarantee.

Need help? Managed GEO →

How to get cited by ChatGPT

Short answer: Allow OpenAI's search crawler, publish pages that answer specific questions in quotable passages, earn mentions on sources ChatGPT already cites, and check results by running your own prompts with search turned on.

1. Allow OAI-SearchBot. OpenAI documents it as the crawler that surfaces sites in ChatGPT search. Allow it in robots.txt and in your firewall or CDN. Source: OpenAI crawler documentation.
2. Keep GPTBot a separate decision. GPTBot is for model training, and blocking it does not remove you from ChatGPT search.
3. Make passages quotable. Lead with a direct answer, then give specifics: numbers, names, dates and sources.
4. Cover the comparison and "best for" questions. Buyers ask ChatGPT to shortlist. Publish honest comparison pages with clear criteria.
5. Earn third-party corroboration. Ask ChatGPT your prompts with search on, note which sites it cites, and pursue honest coverage on those or similar sources.
6. Check referrals. In GA4, look for ChatGPT sources in your own traffic data. See how to track AI traffic.

Need help? LLM citation services →

How to rank in Perplexity

Short answer: Perplexity shows sources for every answer. Allow PerplexityBot, permit its published IP ranges, and publish clear, current, well-sourced pages that answer the question directly.

1. Allow PerplexityBot. Perplexity says it is used to surface and link sites in Perplexity search results, not to train foundation models. Source: Perplexity crawler documentation.
2. Permit its IP ranges. Perplexity publishes ranges as JSON and recommends combining user-agent matching with IP verification in a firewall. Update the list periodically.
3. Know Perplexity-User. This fetcher acts on a user's request and generally ignores robots.txt, so it will not be controlled by those rules.
4. Answer directly and cite sources. Pages with a clear answer, named sources and recent dates are easier to quote.
5. Build the same third-party footprint. Check which domains Perplexity cites for your prompts and earn honest mentions there.

Need help? LLM citation services →

How to get your brand mentioned in AI answers

Short answer: Mentions come from clarity and corroboration: a consistent description of what you do, plus independent sources that say the same thing.

1. Write a one-sentence identity. State who you are, what you do and who for. Use it on your homepage, about page and profiles.
2. Make facts consistent. Names, categories, locations, pricing and leadership should match everywhere.
3. Publish citable facts. Original data, definitions and benchmarks give assistants something specific to attribute.
4. Collect independent references. Editorial coverage, directories, review sites and industry lists corroborate what you say.
5. Test and correct. Ask assistants about your brand, log errors and fix them at the source page. See how to run an accuracy audit.

Need help? AI visibility intelligence →

How to optimize for Google AI Overviews

Short answer: Google says there is nothing special to do beyond SEO fundamentals: your page must be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. Focus on crawlability, helpful original content and accurate structured data. Source: Google Search Central.

1. Let Googlebot in. Check robots.txt, firewall and login walls.
2. Confirm indexing. Use Search Console's URL Inspection on key pages.
3. Keep snippets eligible. Avoid nosnippet or restrictive max-snippet unless you chose that deliberately.
4. Put the main content in text. Do not hide it in images or scripts that fail to render.
5. Link internally. Help crawlers and readers find related pages.
6. Match structured data to visible content. Do not mark up what readers cannot see.
7. Write for people. Original, specific, expert content with sources.

You do not need an llms.txt file or special AI markup for AI Overviews, according to Google.

Need help? AI Overviews optimization →

How to rank in Google AI Mode

Short answer: AI Mode can break one question into several related searches (query fan-out). Cover the sub-questions around each topic so your site can answer more than the head term.

1. Pick a priority topic, such as "GEO for SaaS".
2. List the follow-up questions a buyer would ask next: cost, timeline, tools, risks, alternatives, how to start.
3. Give each sub-question its own heading and a direct answer, on one page or linked pages.
4. Interlink the cluster so each page points to the next logical question.
5. Test by asking AI Mode the head question and its follow-ups. Note which sources it cites and which questions you do not answer yet.

Need help? AI Overviews and AI Mode →

How to measure AI Overviews traffic in Search Console

Short answer: Google counts clicks and impressions from AI features in the Web search type in Search Console but does not break them out separately, so measure change over time and annotate what you changed.

1. Open Search Console, then Performance, and keep the search type as Web.
2. Export queries and pages for a baseline period, for example 28 days.
3. Mark the dates you publish or change key pages.
4. Compare impressions, clicks and click-through rate for the same queries before and after.
5. Pair it with a fixed prompt set to see whether you are cited inside the overview.

Expect lower click-through on queries where an overview appears: one 2026 field experiment found about 38% fewer outbound organic clicks (working paper).

Need help? AI visibility reporting →

How to track AI visibility

Short answer: Track a fixed set of prompts on a schedule across AI platforms, and record mentions, citations, sentiment and accuracy. Trends over many prompts matter more than any single answer.

1. Write buyer-persona prompts across funnel stages: awareness, comparison and decision.
2. Run the same prompts monthly on each platform, ideally in a clean session and a consistent location.
3. Record the date, platform, answer, sources, brand mention, link and sentiment.
4. Compute simple metrics: share of voice (prompts where you appear, divided by total prompts) and citation share by platform.
5. Benchmark named competitors on the same prompts.
6. Use tools such as xFunnel.ai or Profound to automate, and validate key prompts by hand.

Answers vary by user, location and time. Repeat prompts several times before reading a change as real.

Need help? AI visibility intelligence →

How to track AI traffic in GA4

Short answer: Segment sessions whose source is an AI assistant, then tie them to conversions. Source names change, so build the list from your own data.

1. In GA4, open the Traffic acquisition report and set the dimension to session source or source / medium.
2. Search for sources such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com, copilot.microsoft.com and claude.ai, and note which actually appear in your data.
3. Create a custom channel group or an Exploration segment that matches those sources, for example with a regular expression.
4. Compare engagement and key events for this group against organic search.
5. Add a "how did you hear about us" field to forms to catch visits that arrive with no referrer.

Some AI clicks arrive without a referrer and appear as direct traffic, so GA4 will undercount.

Need help? Reporting →

How to run an AI accuracy audit

Short answer: Compare what AI tools say about your pricing, products and leadership with your own source of truth, then fix each error at the page that caused it.

1. Create a fact sheet: prices, plans, features, locations, leadership and policies.
2. Ask each AI platform factual questions about your brand.
3. Log every mismatch with the platform, the prompt and the source it cited.
4. Trace the source: your own page, a directory, a news article or an outdated listing.
5. Correct the source where it lives, and update your own pages so they are unambiguous.
6. Retest next month and track open errors.

Need help? AI visibility intelligence →

How to add Organization schema for entity clarity

Short answer: Organization markup tells machines who you are with consistent name, logo, URL, contact and profile links. It helps disambiguate your brand but does not by itself cause citations.

1. Collect the exact name, URL, logo, description and contact details you want machines to use.
2. Write an Organization JSON-LD block with those values and your official profile links in sameAs.
3. Place it on your homepage and reference the same @id from other pages.
4. Make sure every value appears on the site or in profiles, so they agree.
5. Validate it with the Schema Markup Validator and Google's Rich Results Test.

Need help? Structured data and entities →

How to keep content fresh for AI search

Short answer: Update pages that answer time-sensitive questions on a schedule, and change the visible date only when the content really changed.

1. List pages that contain prices, statistics, rules or tool names that go stale.
2. Set a review cadence, for example quarterly, and assign an owner.
3. Update facts and sources, remove dead links and add what changed.
4. Show a real last-updated date and keep dateModified in schema consistent with it.
5. Resubmit the URL in Search Console when a key page changes.

Need help? Content freshness →