What Is GEO? Generative Engine Optimisation Explained for UK Businesses
More buyers now ask AI assistants for recommendations before they ever touch Google. GEO is how your brand becomes the answer.
GEO in one paragraph
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your brand visible and citable in AI-generated answers — the responses people get from ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Where classic SEO wins a ranking on a results page, GEO wins a mention or citation inside the answer itself.
Why it matters now
A growing share of commercial research starts in an AI assistant: 'best accountant in Manchester', 'which agency should I hire for PPC'. These answers are assembled from sources the model trusts — and if your brand isn't in those sources, you're invisible at the exact moment of recommendation.
Google's AI Overviews already sit above classic results for millions of UK queries, compressing traditional click-through. Brands cited inside the overview capture attention that once went to position one.
How GEO actually works
AI engines favour content that is clearly structured, factually specific and attributable. In practice that means: answer-first pages that resolve a question in the opening paragraph; consistent entity signals (name, address, services, credentials) across your site, schema markup and directories; statistics and concrete claims that models can quote; and authoritative mentions on third-party sites the models crawl.
The good news for UK SMEs: GEO rewards clarity and genuine expertise over domain size. A well-structured specialist site frequently out-cites bigger brands in AI answers.
Where to start
Start with your money pages: give each one a direct, quotable answer to its core question, add FAQPage and Organization schema, and tighten your entity consistency everywhere your business is mentioned online. Then measure: ask the major assistants your key commercial questions monthly and track whether — and how — you appear.