Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of making your brand and content easier for AI-powered search tools to understand, retrieve and reference in generated answers.
Since the widespread adoption of AI, many marketers have proclaimed that ‘SEO is dead’, but rather than replace SEO, GEO extends the job that search already does. Your website still needs to be technically sound, useful and authoritative enough to rank. The difference now is that buyers are increasingly asking AI tools to explain problems, compare approaches and shortlist suppliers before they ever reach a vendor website.
Forrester’s 2026 buyer research found that 94% of business buyers use AI somewhere in the buying process, which changes the question from “Where do we rank?” to “When AI helps a buyer understand this market, does it understand us properly?”
Generative Engine Optimisation is the process of improving how a brand, website or piece of content is surfaced or referenced within generative AI search experiences. You may also see people refer to Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO), AI search optimisation or LLM optimisation.
Where AEO focuses on making your content easy to extract as a direct answer to a user’s question, GEO is a broader strategy that shapes how models such as ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity understand, cite and recommend your brand across generated responses.
Google says GEO and AEO are terms people use for visibility in AI search, but from its perspective, optimising for generative AI search is still part of SEO.
There is no quick GEO ‘switch’; pages still need to be crawlable, indexable and useful. What has changed is how that information can be retrieved and assembled into an answer.
Traditional SEO helps the right page rank for the right search and earn the click, and GEO adds another layer: can an AI system understand your expertise well enough to include your business in the answer?
That might mean being cited as a source, mentioned in a comparison or recommended when someone asks for suppliers in your market.
A B2B business should not switch SEO off and move the budget into something labelled GEO, as Google’s generative AI features still rely on its existing Search index and ranking systems.
Our earlier guide, SEO Is Not Dead, But Your Website Has a New Job, looks at that wider shift in more detail.
B2B buyers already do a large amount of research before speaking to sales, and Generative AI makes that research faster and more conversational.
A buyer can ask for suppliers, compare them and check relevant experience without filling in a form or appearing as a known lead. Search has not disappeared, but the journey has become less linear.
The biggest change is not the acronym, but the standard of information a business needs to put into the market.
Be specific about what you do
If your website cannot clearly explain who you help, what you do and where you have relevant expertise, AI has less reliable material to work with.
As such, you need to be clear enough that a buyer and a search system can understand the business without decoding vague brand language.
Create something worth retrieving
Google still recommends valuable, non-commodity content with genuine expertise, first-hand experience and information that goes beyond what a generative AI tool could easily produce itself.
A generic article on “five benefits of CRM automation” is easy to replace, but a piece based on what you learned implementing CRM automation for real clients, backed by examples or data, is harder to replicate.
The same applies to case studies, original research and expert commentary.
Strengthen proof beyond your website
AI systems and buyers can both look beyond what you say about yourself. Customer evidence, reviews, trade coverage, partnerships, awards and credible third-party mentions all help create a clearer picture of the business, and can be aggregated into an AI response.
GEO therefore cannot sit with SEO in isolation. Brand, PR, content and subject-matter expertise all contribute.
Answer commercial questions
Keyword research still matters, but B2B content should also come directly from the buying process.
What does sales get asked repeatedly? What makes opportunities stall? What does an internal champion need to justify the decision?
Those questions sit closer to a real buying decision and are exactly the kind of prompts buyers can now put into AI tools.
This is also where Answer Engine Optimisation comes in: look at the questions buyers are already asking your sales team, typing into search engines or putting into AI tools, and make sure your website answers them clearly.
It could involve using question-led headings, adding relevant FAQs to service pages or giving a direct answer before expanding on the detail. You don’t need to turn every page into one enormous FAQ, but important information should be easy for both people and search tools to find and understand.
If somebody asks what your service costs, who it is for or how your approach differs from another option, burying the answer halfway through a page of generic copy is not helping the buyer or the answer engine.
GEO has already created plenty of new hacks and shortcuts.
For example, in Google Search, you do not need special GEO schema or an llms.txt file to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. You also do not need a separate page for every possible prompt. However, publishing more AI-generated content does not create authority simply because there is more of it.
A practical B2B GEO plan
Start with the topics that matter commercially, then look at how your brand and competitors appear across the AI tools your buyers are likely to use.
Treat the results as observations rather than fixed rankings because answers can vary.
Ask:
Are our core services clear?
Are we associated with the markets we want to win?
Is there credible evidence behind our claims?
Are competitors appearing where we are absent?
Then work backwards.
Some gaps will be technical, and others may expose weak positioning, thin service pages, missing case studies or a lack of third-party validation.
How do you measure GEO?
AI search measurement is still developing. Look at visibility and citations for commercially relevant topics, identifiable AI referral traffic, branded search and whether target buyers are engaging with the business.
Then connect those signals to enquiries, pipeline and customer feedback where possible.
A simple question such as “How did you research us before getting in touch?” can reveal influence your CRM will never capture automatically.
B2B businesses still need strong technical SEO and useful content, and also need enough clear, distinctive and verifiable information for AI systems to understand and represent them accurately.
The buyer may still visit your website, but now they may have formed an opinion about you before they get there.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. SEO remains the foundation. GEO extends search visibility into AI-generated answers, citations and recommendations.
What is the difference between GEO and AEO?
GEO usually refers to optimisation for generative AI engines, while AEO is a broader term for optimisation around direct answers. In practice, the two overlap heavily.
How do you optimise B2B content for AI search?
Start with good SEO foundations, then strengthen the content with clear expertise, first-hand evidence, useful answers, case studies and credible external proof.
Need help adapting your B2B search strategy for AI?
Marmalade Marketing helps B2B businesses improve search visibility, content, brand and wider marketing performance.
If you want to understand how your business currently shows up in traditional and AI-driven search, get in touch with the Marmalade Marketing team.