Knowledge Base
What Tools are Available for Implementing Generative Engine Optimization?
To practice GEO, it’s important to know the major AI-driven platforms and tools through which users are searching. Generative AI has expanded search beyond the traditional engines, so businesses must optimize for a variety of AI “answer engines.” Here are some of the big ones to focus on:
- ChatGPT (OpenAI): The popular conversational AI that people use to ask all manner of questions. ChatGPT (especially with web browsing enabled) can pull information from the internet and its training data to answer queries. Optimizing for ChatGPT means ensuring your content is high-quality and factually solid (so it ends up in its training data or is fetched via plugins/browsing) and structured in a way that the model can easily digest. For instance, ChatGPT’s answers often include explanatory paragraphs or bullet points – if your content provides a clear, well-summarized answer to common questions, ChatGPT is more likely to incorporate it. Keep in mind that ChatGPT doesn’t always cite sources by default, but providing notable facts or unique insights (with proper references on your site) can increase the chance it attributes or at least mentions your brand in responses.
- Google AI Overviews (AIO): Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE), now commonly called AI Overviews, integrates AI summaries at the top of search results. When a user searches a question, Google may display a synthesized answer with key points highlighted, along with citations linking to the sources. Optimizing for Google’s AI Overviews means aligning with Google’s search guidelines even more closely: content that matches the query intent, uses schema markup, and demonstrates authority is favored. For example, if someone searches “best coffee shop in Philadelphia”, the AI Overview might show a short list of coffee shops with a sentence about each. To be included, a local café’s website would need to have strong local SEO signals and good reviews that Google’s AI can draw on.
- Google AI Mode: Beyond the integrated overviews, Google has introduced a full AI Mode in search (accessed via a special tab or at google.com/ai) which is an end-to-end conversational search experience. In AI Mode, Google dispenses with the traditional link list entirely and gives only AI-generated answers with citations. This mode uses Google’s next-gen model (Gemini) and even performs a “fan-out” search technique, issuing multiple queries at once to construct a comprehensive answer. It also has specialized capabilities (like “Deep Search” for detailed answers with citations, “Live” for real-time info, “Shopping” for product queries, etc.). To optimize for Google AI Mode, you should ensure your content is extremely clear and well-structured, with schema markup (like Product, How-To, FAQ, LocalBusiness schemas) that Google can easily parse. Because AI Mode can’t be tracked in analytics easily and doesn’t show your site unless cited, the goal is to get cited. This means focusing on the same factors as SEO (helpful content, authority links, mobile speed) plus the new twist: making your content easy for AI to extract and trust (concise answers, bullet lists, up-to-date info, and factual accuracy).
- Perplexity AI: An AI search engine that provides conversational answers and always cites its sources. Perplexity is like an AI-powered research assistant: users ask questions and it returns a detailed answer with footnote references to the websites used. For GEO, Perplexity is a great platform to monitor because if your content is well-optimized, you can literally see it being cited. To optimize for Perplexity, focus on answering questions clearly in your content (Perplexity tends to pull direct snippets), and make sure your pages have descriptive headings and relevant keywords so that its search component finds you. Perplexity also favors current information – it has a mode to include up-to-date news – so regularly updating content can help. Seeing your site’s name in a Perplexity footnote is a strong sign that your GEO efforts are working, since it means the AI found your content worthy of inclusion in its synthesized answer.
- Other AI Assistants: There are other platforms and assistants to be aware of: Bing Chat / Microsoft Copilot, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 and can search the web (important for businesses, since Bing integrates with Windows and many users); Google Bard, Google’s standalone chatbot (which can also cite sources and is increasingly being tied into Google’s ecosystem); Claude (Anthropic) and Grok (x.ai), etc., which some users turn to for advice. While you may not actively “optimize” content for each of these individually, the key is to have a broadly AI-friendly content strategy so that any LLM-based system can understand and pull from your information. The encouraging news is that strong SEO fundamentals carry over to GEO – high-quality, well-organized content will be recognized by most AI models. In fact, many AI tools start by looking at sites that rank well in traditional search as likely trustworthy sources. So by succeeding in SEO, you’ve laid a foundation to succeed in GEO; from there, you adjust with the additional GEO best practices to really stand out in AI-driven results.
Sources:
What Is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
SEO vs. GEO vs. AEO: Navigating the New Search Landscape for 2025 & Beyond
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2311.09735