What is generative engine optimisation (GEO)? A plain guide for business owners

Search used to mean ten blue links. Increasingly it means one answer, written by an assistant, with a shortlist of names inside it. Generative engine optimisation is the work of getting on that shortlist.

What GEO is

When someone asks ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity "who does VAT registration in Dubai", the assistant does not return a page of results. It reads a handful of web pages, writes an answer, and names two or three businesses. If you are not named, you were never in the running, and no ranking report will ever tell you.

GEO is everything you do to be the business that gets named: on your own site, in what others say about you, and in how clearly your pages answer the question.

How it differs from SEO

SEO aims at a position in a list. GEO aims at a mention in an answer. They overlap more than people think, because the assistants read the same pages Google ranks, but the emphasis shifts:

Direct answers beat keyword density. A page that says plainly who the service is for, what it costs to start and what the law requires is quoted. A page that repeats a keyword is not.
Sourced facts beat claims. Assistants are trained to prefer statements that cite regulators and official bodies. "Corporate tax returns are due nine months after year end (FTA)" gets used; "we are the best" gets ignored.
Structure matters. Clear headings, FAQ blocks, service schema and consistent business details across the web help the assistant understand what you are.
Being named elsewhere counts. Directories, associations, press and reviews that mention you by name and service feed the answer.

What the assistants actually read

Live-grounded answers (Gemini with Google Search, Perplexity, ChatGPT with browsing) fetch pages at answer time. Which pages? Mostly the ones that rank in the top results for the question and its variants, plus authoritative sources on the topic. That is why GEO without SEO rarely works: if your page is on page three, it is not read at all.

How to measure it

You cannot manage what you do not measure, and most agencies do not measure this. The method is simple: write down the ten or fifteen questions your buyers ask, ask each assistant every night with grounding on, and record whether your site is cited and who is cited instead. Over weeks you get a citation rate and a share of voice per question. That is the number to move.

What to do this month

List your buyer questions, in the words a customer would use.
For each, check whether a page on your site answers it directly. If not, write that page.
Add the source to every factual claim about law, tax or regulation.
Fix the basics that keep pages off page one: titles, internal links, schema.
Measure nightly, not quarterly.

Seenoria does all five for every site it runs, and reports the citation rate next to Google clicks so you can see both move together. How the AI visibility feature works.