GEO: how to show up in AI Overviews and ChatGPT search

When ChatGPT search launched at scale and Google rolled AI Overviews into their main results, a lot of marketing people had the same panicked thought: is SEO dead?

It is not dead. It just got more interesting. The classic ranking factors still matter. But there is a new game on top, called GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), and most of the people you compete with have not started playing it yet. That is the opportunity.

Here is what I have learned from optimising client sites for AI search over the past year.

What is actually different#

Classic Google SEO ranks a list of pages. The user clicks one. You compete for the top spot.

AI search synthesises an answer from multiple sources, then cites them. The user often does not click anything. You compete to be one of the sources cited.

The difference is profound:

• Click-through rates fall when the AI answers the question without sending the user to your site. This is the so-called “zero-click problem.”
• Brand mentions become a leading metric. If ChatGPT names your brand in an answer, that is value, even without a click.
• The content patterns that AI prefers are different. Direct answers, clear structure, factual confidence. AI hates hedge words and waffle.

What still works (the classic stuff)#

Before you chase shiny GEO tactics, get the boring stuff right:

• Crawlability: AI crawlers (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) need to read your site. Check your robots.txt is not blocking them.
• Schema markup: Structured data still helps both Google and AI systems parse your content. Article, FAQ, HowTo, Product schema are all worth implementing.
• Page speed and Core Web Vitals: Still ranking factors. AI systems also seem to prefer fast, accessible sites for citations, though this is correlational.
• E-E-A-T signals: Author bios, real names, real expertise, references. AI systems weight these even more than classic Google does.

If you have not done the basics, do them first. GEO is the icing on a cake. There must be a cake.

The five things to do this week#

Once the basics are in place, here is what I would do to improve AI citation rates, in order of impact:

1. Add a llms.txt file to your domain#

This is the AI search equivalent of robots.txt + sitemap. Lives at yoursite.com/llms.txt. Lists your most important pages with short descriptions. AI systems use it as a guide to your content.

Most sites do not have one. Adding it takes 30 minutes. It is the highest-leverage thing on this list.

2. Write content with passage-level citability#

AI systems do not cite whole pages. They cite passages. So write in self-contained chunks where each section can stand alone as an answer.

Practically: each H2 section should be three to five paragraphs that answer one specific question, with the answer in the first sentence. The rest of the section supports the answer.

3. Lead with the direct answer#

If someone asks “what is X,” your H1 should be “What is X” and your first sentence should answer “X is…”. AI systems weight the first 1-3 sentences heavily when extracting an answer.

Classic SEO content tries to delay the answer to keep users on page. GEO inverts this: give the answer immediately, then expand. The user who needed only the answer gets it. The user who needs depth keeps reading.

4. Build comparison and “vs” pages#

AI search loves comparisons. “X vs Y” content gets cited at much higher rates than generic informational content. If you are in a category where buyers compare you with alternatives, write the comparison content yourself. It will get cited.

This is also defensive: if you do not write the X-vs-Y page, your competitor or a third-party site will, and the AI will quote that version.

5. Watch your brand mentions across AI platforms#

You cannot improve what you do not measure. Once a month, ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity questions in your category and see if your brand comes up. Tools like Ahrefs Brand Radar and DataForSEO’s AI visibility checks automate this.

If you are not getting mentioned, the brand needs more authority signals (mentions on other sites, citations, reviews) before AI systems will surface it.

What I would not do#

A few things I see clients (and other agencies) chase that I do not think are worth the time:

• AI-generated content at scale. Google’s spam policies penalise it. AI search systems also seem to penalise it indirectly: they detect circular sourcing and downrank.
• Stuffing FAQ schema with low-quality questions. Only add FAQ schema where the questions are actually relevant and the answers are substantive. Padding is detectable.
• “Optimising for the algorithm.” AI search is moving fast. Anything you optimise narrowly for ChatGPT today might not work in Gemini tomorrow. Write for humans first, with the structural patterns above. Lasting moats are content quality, schema correctness, and authority.

The big picture#

GEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is an extension. The same fundamentals (crawlable, structured, fast, authoritative content) underpin both.

What is changing is that the outcomes of good SEO are shifting. Less direct traffic, more brand mentions, more being-the-answer rather than being-the-result. The companies that adapt their measurement to this new world will see they are doing better than the dropping click numbers suggest. The ones that keep optimising for clicks alone will conclude SEO is dead, when really only their version of it is.

Do the five things above. Watch what happens in the next two quarters. Send me an email if you want a sanity check on your AI search visibility. The audit is free.