Generative engine optimization basics for small sites

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your pages and your brand easy for AI assistants to understand, quote and recommend. For a small site it comes down to clear pages, facts that can be checked, and mentions on other sites, and no one can guarantee that any of it earns a citation.

Fig.AI sources in the same table as search and social. Sample data, not a real site.

What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?

SEO aims at a ranked list of links. GEO aims at being included in a written answer. Many of the fundamentals overlap: pages that are crawlable, clear and trustworthy help both. The difference is the unit. A search engine ranks a page. An assistant picks out a passage, or a brand name, and builds a sentence around it.

That has a practical effect on how you write. A passage that makes sense on its own, with the answer first, is easier to lift than a long page that builds to a point.

Be skeptical of vendor statistics about AI citations. Most come from tools selling GEO services, the methods are rarely public, and the assistants change often. Treat them as hypotheses.

What do assistants seem to rely on?

Nobody outside the labs knows the full recipe. What we can say with reasonable confidence is limited:

• Assistants repeat what third-party pages say. That includes review sites, directories, forum answers, lists and articles that mention you, so off-site mentions can matter more than your own copy.
• Clear, specific pages are easier to summarize than vague ones.
• Facts that agree across your site and your profiles are easier to repeat correctly than facts that conflict.

Beyond that, we are inferring. We say so because overclaiming here is how people end up paying for nothing.

The seven-step small-site version

1. Write one facts paragraph. What it is (one category phrase), who it is for, price, how setup works, what it is not. Use identical wording everywhere.
2. Put the answer first. The first two sentences of each page should answer the question in the title.
3. Add a table of checkable facts. Prices, limits, supported platforms, dates. Only include facts you can stand behind.
4. Make comparison pages fair. "X vs Y" pages with dated, accurate facts are useful to readers and easy to quote. Never rank yourself first on a list you wrote about your own category.
5. Claim your profiles. Directories and listing sites, with the same facts paragraph, linked to each other and to your site.
6. Earn real mentions. Answer questions in communities as yourself, disclose who you are, and ask for corrections when someone gets a fact wrong, politely.
7. Check weekly, adjust slowly. See below.

Example (made-up numbers for illustration)

Here is a 15-minute weekly check for a fictional invoicing tool called "ExampleInvoice". The numbers are invented.

Reading: the brand query works, the category query does not. The category answer cites two list articles, so the realistic action is to get included in those lists by being useful to their authors, not to rewrite your homepage. Pick at most three actions. As rough rules of thumb (our own, not measured), judge mentions at about 30 days and pages at about 90.

How do you measure GEO for free?

• Run 10 to 20 prompts in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google's AI results, in a private session. Log whether you were mentioned, whether you were linked, which competitors appeared, and which sources were cited.
• Look at brand-name queries in Search Console.
• Check any AI-related reports your search tools offer, if they have them. Features here change often, so look at current docs.
• Look at AI referrers in your own analytics. See the guides on tracking ChatGPT traffic and Perplexity traffic, plus how to track ChatGPT referrals and Perplexity traffic: what to expect.

Answers vary between runs, so log patterns across weeks, not single results. Ownlytics keeps ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot visits in an AI channel, covered on the AI traffic analytics page. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode send visitors from google.com and stay in Organic Search, so they are not separable there.

Fig.AI assistants as their own channel in the source table. Sample data, not a real site.

What should you skip?

• Tricks. Hidden text, stuffed prompts or fake reviews will hurt trust and may break platform rules.
• Paid GEO audits as a first step. Do the free weekly check first and see if you even have a problem.
• Rewriting everything for bots. If a page is good for a person, it is mostly good for an assistant.
• Treating llms.txt as a requirement. Our post on llms.txt explains why it is optional.

When does GEO not apply?

If your customers do not use AI assistants to find tools like yours, or you sell mainly through referrals and direct outreach, spend your hours elsewhere. GEO is also slow, and results are hard to attribute. It makes more sense as a side effect of good content than as a project.

At a glance

There is a checklist version in the answer engine optimization checklist. If you want to see AI visits next to revenue, the live demo shows a sample site.

FAQ

Is GEO different from SEO?

They overlap a lot. Crawlable, clear, trustworthy pages help both. GEO adds a focus on being quotable as a passage and on being mentioned on other sites.

Can I guarantee ChatGPT will mention my site?

No one can. Assistants change, answers vary between runs, and the selection process is not public. You can improve your odds with clear pages and real third-party mentions, but not promise results.

How long does it take to see an effect?

We judge brand mentions at around 30 days and page-level changes at around 90. These are working rules, not guarantees, and a quiet result is common.

Do I need a paid GEO tool?

Not to start. A weekly set of prompts and a simple log tells you whether you appear. Pay for a tool only if you find yourself unable to keep up with the manual check.

Keep reading

• Answer engine optimization checklist for small sites
• Do AI-referred visitors convert better? How to check
• How to track ChatGPT referrals in your analytics