Generative Engine Optimization: Get Cited by ChatGPT and Gemini (2026)

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of shaping your website and brand information so that AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can find it, understand it and cite it in their answers. In 2026, GEO does not replace SEO. Google states that a page only needs to be indexed and eligible for a snippet to appear in AI Overviews, so technical SEO is still the entry ticket. GEO adds answer-first writing, clear entity information, verifiable facts and a way to measure AI referrals.

What GEO and AEO mean, and how they differ from classic SEO#

Three related terms describe different goals:

• SEO (search engine optimization) is improving a website so it ranks in classic search results and earns clicks.
• AEO (answer engine optimization) is formatting content so a search engine or voice assistant can lift a direct answer from it, such as a featured snippet or a spoken reply.
• GEO (generative engine optimization) is making your content the source that a large language model chooses to quote, summarise or link when it writes an answer.

The term GEO comes from the research paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, first released in November 2023 by researchers from Princeton University and IIT Delhi and later presented at the KDD 2024 conference.

Why GEO matters for businesses in Jordan and the GCC in 2026#

The audience is already large. Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in July 2025 that AI Overviews had more than 2 billion monthly users, as reported by TechCrunch, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in October 2025 that ChatGPT had reached 800 million weekly users, also reported by TechCrunch.

For a clinic in Amman or a supplier in Dubai, this changes how buyers build a shortlist. A prospect asks an assistant “Which agencies in Amman build Laravel web applications?” and reads a few names before visiting any website. If the assistant cannot confidently describe your business, you are not on that list. Language matters too: buyers in Jordan and the Gulf switch between English and Arabic, and an English-only site gives AI systems little to quote for Arabic queries.

How AI assistants pick their sources (what is publicly documented)#

Google AI Overviews and AI Mode#

• Google’s “AI features and your website” guidance says there are “no additional requirements” to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. The page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet.
• Google says no special schema.org structured data is needed for AI features, and that any structured data should match the visible text on the page.
• AI Overviews and AI Mode may use “query fan-out”, running several related searches across subtopics to build one answer. Pages that answer specific sub-questions therefore get more chances to be cited.
• Snippet controls such as nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex also limit what AI features can show from your page.

ChatGPT search#

OpenAI’s publishers FAQ says any public website can appear in ChatGPT search, and that sites should not block the OAI-SearchBot crawler if they want their content included in answers. Check your robots.txt and your firewall or CDN bot rules as well.

Microsoft Copilot#

Copilot answers draw on the Bing index, so verifying your site in Bing Webmaster Tools is now part of GEO.

What the GEO research found#

The Princeton and IIT Delhi team tested optimisation methods on GEO-bench, a set of 10,000 queries. According to the paper, adding citations to reliable sources, quotations and statistics were among the most effective methods and could raise visibility in generative answers by up to 40%. Keyword stuffing performed worse than the unoptimised baseline. Treat these lab results as direction, not a guarantee.

Practical GEO steps: a 2026 checklist#

1. Lead every page with the answer#

Open each service page and article with a two- or three-sentence answer that makes sense on its own. Define the term, state who it is for and give the key condition or range. Then use H2 and H3 headings named after real buyer questions. Our copywriting team writes service pages this way so each section can be quoted on its own.

2. Make your business an unambiguous entity#

An entity is a uniquely identifiable thing, such as your company, that machines can describe with facts. State your name, what you do, where you are based, when you were founded and which markets you serve, in the same words, on your home page, About page and footer. Link your official LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Business Profile.

3. Add structured data that matches the page#

Schema markup in JSON-LD helps machines read your Organization, LocalBusiness, Service, Product and Article details. It is not a special AI requirement, but it removes ambiguity. The golden rule is that every value in the markup must also be visible on the page.

4. Keep NAP consistent everywhere#

NAP means name, address and phone number. Use one spelling of your business name in English and one in Arabic, one phone format with the country code (+962 for Jordan, +966 for Saudi Arabia, +971 for the UAE) and one address across your website, Google Business Profile, Bing Places, social profiles, WhatsApp Business and directories.

5. Publish original data and cite your sources#

AI answers lean on facts they can attribute. Publish what only you can say: your process, typical timelines or results of your own customer surveys. When you quote a number, name the source in the sentence and link to it, which mirrors the methods that performed best in the GEO paper.

6. Publish real Arabic content for MENA queries#

Create native Arabic pages on their own URLs, not machine translations hidden behind a language switcher. Google recommends separate URLs for each language version with hreflang annotations, and says it detects language from the visible content rather than the lang attribute. Write Arabic for Jordanian and Gulf readers, with the terms they actually type, such as “تصميم مواقع” and “متجر إلكتروني”.

7. Keep pages crawlable and fast#

Make sure Googlebot, Bingbot and OAI-SearchBot can reach your key pages, that the main text is in the HTML rather than loaded late by scripts, and that the site loads quickly on mobile. A website audit is the fastest way to find blocked crawlers, broken canonicals and slow templates.

8. Treat llms.txt as an optional experiment#

llms.txt is a proposal, not a web standard. Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI published it in September 2024 as a Markdown file that lists a site’s most useful pages for language models. Google’s Gary Illyes said in July 2025 that Google does not support it, and in June 2026 Search Engine Journal reported John Mueller calling it “purely speculative”. Adding one is cheap, but it never replaces the steps above.

How to measure GEO results#

Combine four sources of data:

• Referral traffic in GA4. Create a custom channel group for AI assistants that matches referrers such as chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai, gemini.google.com and copilot.microsoft.com. OpenAI says ChatGPT adds utm_source=chatgpt.com to links it sends.
• Google Search Console. Clicks and impressions from AI Overviews and AI Mode are counted in the Performance report under the “Web” search type. In June 2026 Google announced dedicated Search Generative AI performance reports showing impressions by page, country, device and date, rolling out to a subset of websites first.
• Bing Webmaster Tools. Since February 2026, an AI Performance report in public preview shows citations in Copilot and AI summaries, cited pages and grounding queries.
• Prompt tracking. Keep a fixed list of the questions your buyers ask, in English and Arabic, and check each month whether assistants mention or link to you.

Finally, judge GEO by leads, not mentions. Track form submissions, calls and WhatsApp clicks from AI referrals. Google’s John Mueller has written that clicks from AI Overviews are higher quality, but some independent studies dispute this, so trust your own conversion data.

Common GEO mistakes to avoid#

• Stuffing keywords or writing for bots. The GEO research found keyword stuffing performed below the baseline.
• Blocking AI crawlers by accident through a firewall, CDN or security plugin.
• Publishing thin AI-generated pages with no original information.
• Inconsistent business names, phone numbers or addresses across platforms.
• Ignoring Arabic and leaving MENA queries to competitors.

Consult One has helped businesses in Jordan, the GCC and the USA with search visibility since 2004. Our SEO service now covers classic rankings, answer engines and AI assistants in English and Arabic. Tell us about your site and we will show you where you stand today. Get a free quote

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