What is the difference between GEO and AEO?

In common usage the terms are near-synonyms, and many practitioners use them interchangeably. We draw a working distinction: AEO covers the full problem of AI visibility including crawler access, rendering, entity consolidation, and third-party source presence, while GEO focuses specifically on optimising the content itself so that retrieved material gets used in the generated answer. Access problems and usage problems have different fixes, and separating them stops you spending on the wrong one.

Is there actual evidence that GEO works?

Yes, though less than the marketing suggests. The founding 2024 research tested nine optimisation methods and found the strongest improved visibility by 41% on position-adjusted word count and 28% on subjective impression, while keyword stuffing performed poorly. A more recent critical survey of the field notes that measurement remains contested and long-run efficacy is unproven. Our position is that the evidence justifies the methods and does not justify certainty, which is why we test on your content rather than applying findings as fact.

Which GEO techniques actually work?

The methods with the strongest published support are adding relevant statistics, adding quotations from credible sources, citing sources explicitly, and optimising fluency, with the combination of fluency and statistics performing best in testing. Structural formatting such as tables and defined answer blocks has moderate to strong support. Keyword stuffing was explicitly tested and found not to work. Techniques that involve injecting instructions to manipulate models are adversarial and we will not do them.

How much do generative engine optimization services cost?

GEO typically costs $1,500 to $3,500 for a content audit, $4,000 to $9,000 for a test programme on a defined page set, and $2,500 to $6,000 per month ongoing. Most clients are better served buying GEO combined with AEO at $4,000 to $12,000 per month, since splitting them means running two engagements against one funnel.

How do you measure GEO results?

By running a defined prompt set across generative engines on a schedule and measuring not only whether you appear but how much of the answer derives from your content. That distinction matters: being listed as a source while contributing nothing to the text is a different outcome from being the passage the answer is built on. We hold control pages unchanged so change can be attributed to the work rather than to engine drift.

Can I do GEO without doing SEO?

Not effectively. Generative engines retrieve candidate sources largely through conventional search infrastructure, so if your pages are not being retrieved, optimising their wording changes nothing. GEO improves the odds that retrieved content gets used. It cannot create retrieval that is not happening.

Does adding statistics really improve AI citation?

It is among the best-supported findings in the literature, and it is consistent with what we observe. The mechanism is intuitive: a specific, sourced figure is more useful in a generated answer than a qualitative claim, and it is safer for a model to reuse because it is attributable. The caveat is that fabricated or unsourced statistics are worse than none, both ethically and practically, since inaccurate claims damage the trust signals GEO depends on.

Is GEO the same as prompt injection or manipulating AI models?

No, and the distinction is important. GEO improves content so it is genuinely more useful and more usable in generated answers. Prompt injection and similar techniques attempt to manipulate model behaviour through hidden instructions, which is adversarial, unreliable, and against the policies of every major provider. Research exists on both, and they are separate fields with separate ethics. We work only on the first.

How long does GEO take to show results?

Changes can appear in generative responses within three to ten weeks of going live, faster than typical SEO timelines because retrieval is live rather than dependent on reindexing cycles. Confident attribution takes longer, eight to sixteen weeks, because generative answers vary between runs and a single improved response proves nothing.

Does GEO work for small websites?

For the usage problem, yes, often very well. A small site with genuinely specific, well-sourced, well-structured content can be used in answers alongside far larger competitors, because passages compete rather than domains. The constraint for small sites is usually retrieval rather than usage. If you are not being retrieved, that is an authority and access problem to solve first.

Will GEO still work as AI engines change?

Some of it will, and some will not, which is why we treat it as a testing discipline rather than a fixed method. The findings most likely to persist are those grounded in how these systems fundamentally work: clear, specific, well-attributed, self-contained content is easier to extract and safer to reuse, and that is unlikely to reverse. Tactics dependent on a particular engine's quirks are the ones that expire.

Generative engine optimization services

Generative engine optimization services, grounded in evidence

Generative engine optimization services improve how likely your content is to be used, quoted, and cited inside AI-generated answers — by restructuring the content itself using methods with measured effect rather than assumed effect. We run GEO as a testing discipline: apply methods with published evidence behind them, measure the change in generative responses, and keep what works on your content specifically.

The GEO market has a credibility problem. Most of what is sold as generative engine optimisation is recycled SEO advice with new vocabulary, delivered with a confidence nobody has earned. The field is barely two years old. There is a real evidence base underneath it, though, and it is more interesting than the marketing around it.

Get my free GEO content test See the evidence grading

We apply evidence-backed methods to three of your pages and show you the measured before-and-after · five business days

Retrieved, or used? diagnose

Three ways this goes. Only one of them is a GEO problem.

Source list on the answer

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In practice

What the work looks like

Screens from live engagements, with client details removed.

The main view

Definition

What is generative engine optimization?

Generative engine optimization is the practice of modifying content so that generative AI systems are more likely to incorporate, quote, and cite it when composing an answer. A generative engine, as the founding research defines it, is a system that uses generative models to gather and summarise information in response to a query, synthesising across multiple retrieved sources rather than returning them as a list. ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, Gemini, Perplexity, and Claude all fit that description.

The distinction that matters is what you are optimising.

Getting retrieved Getting used

Both matter, and they are sequential. A page that cannot be retrieved never gets the chance to be used. But a retrieved page that offers nothing quotable gets passed over in favour of one that does, and that second problem is what GEO addresses.

If you have not yet confirmed that AI crawlers can reach your site, start with answer engine optimisation instead. Optimising the wording of a page no engine can fetch is wasted effort.

Try it · interactive

Apply the methods to a real passage and watch it change

This is what the free test does to three of your pages. Toggle each method on and the passage rewrites itself. Note that keyword stuffing is in the list and makes things worse — that is not an accident, it is a finding.

The score is a directional illustration of the published findings, not a measurement of your site. Measuring your site is what the test is for.

passage · pricing page, section 2

Likely to be used {{ scoreLabel }}

The passage as it stands

What changed

Tested and found not to work

Keyword stuffing was one of the nine methods in the original study and it underperformed. It also degrades the fluency that does work, so it costs you twice.

The evidence

What the research actually shows

The founding study simulated a two-stage generative engine — retrieving top sources via search, then synthesising an answer with citations — and tested nine optimisation methods against that pipeline across nine datasets and seven domains, on a benchmark of roughly ten thousand queries. The strongest performers improved visibility by 41% on position-adjusted word count and 28% on subjective impression. Keyword stuffing, carried over from traditional SEO, performed poorly.

That result is the starting point of our work, not the end of it. Below is our honest grading of the methods, based on published evidence plus what we observe in our own testing. Pick one.

What it means in practice

Why this grade

Do we do it

A caveat we will not bury

A recent critical survey of the GEO literature notes that the discipline remains young, its measurement is contested, and its long-run efficacy is unproven. The original experiments ran against a specific engine configuration that has since changed. Anyone presenting GEO findings as settled fact is overstating what exists. This is precisely why we test on your content rather than applying a checklist.

The equaliser effect

The gains are not evenly distributed. The research suggests sources ranked lower in the underlying retrieval benefit disproportionately from optimisation, an effect described in the literature as an equaliser. If you are consistently retrieved but rarely used, you are the profile with the most to gain.

Symptoms

Signs you have a GEO problem specifically

These are distinct from general AI visibility problems.

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Test three of your pages →

Scope

What is included in our GEO services

Six workstreams. Narrower than our AEO service by design, because this is the content-side discipline rather than the full programme.

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Passages lifted per answer

Your site

Competitors

Review sites

Forums

Section rewrite self-containment

NEEDS CONTEXT

STANDS ALONE

Passage rules per section

✓Answers before the next heading,Named entities, not pronouns,Verifiable claim with a source,Machine-readable table

Engines sampled 5x

ChatGPTPerplexityGeminiCopilot2variance

Retrieval odds modelled

Chunk clarity87%

Entity density79%

Source authority58%

Freshness66%

Generation chain per query

Week 1

Week 4

Week 8

Week 12

Prompt clusters tracked

best tool for X9 liftsX vs Y11 liftsis X worth it5 lifts

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Boundaries

GEO vs AEO vs SEO

Terminology in this space is genuinely muddled. Here is how we use it, and we will use your definitions if you prefer yours.

SEO AEO GEO

In practice most clients buy these together, and they should. GEO without AEO means optimising content nothing can fetch. AEO without SEO means chasing citations while the retrieval layer that feeds them is broken. We will tell you which layer is your actual constraint before you spend anything.

Process

Our GEO process

Four phases. Phase three is the whole argument for working this way.

Phase StartEarlyMidLateOngoing

You receive

⚖

Applying a published checklist to your entire site and hoping is what most of this market sells. Testing on a subset, measuring, and scaling only what moved is slower for about six weeks and considerably better after that.

Deliverables

What you actually receive

Nine artefacts. The most valuable one is the playbook of what works on your content, which nobody else can give you.

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Passage audit

Which passages get lifted, and whose

60 prompts · 4 engines · passage-level

01Passages retrieved per answer 02Whose pages they came from 03Why yours were skipped 04Rewrites, before and after 05Re-test schedule

B The diff is the deliverable

Rewrite queue

Passages lifted 4 months +1,300%

Pricing

GEO services pricing

Most clients should buy this combined with AEO, and we price it that way.

01 · What do you need

02 · How big

03 · Anything else

Estimate

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Get this scoped properly

An estimate, not a quote. Fixed price follows a scoping call, and where requirements are genuinely uncertain we scope a paid discovery first.

Where GEO matters less

Transactional and navigational categories where people go directly to a site rather than asking an assistant, and highly local service categories where the answer assembles from listing and review data rather than from page content. For those, local SEO and answer engine optimisation are better first investments, and we will say so.

Timelines

How long does GEO take to work?

Change appears faster than SEO. Confident attribution takes longer.

Change can appear faster than in traditional SEO, because retrieval is live rather than dependent on reindexing and ranking cycles. Confident attribution is slower, because generative responses vary between runs and a single improved answer proves nothing. We measure repeatedly for that reason.

Free · five business days

Get your free GEO content test

Not a report. An actual test. We rewrite sample passages from three of your pages and show you the before-and-after.

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What happens next: confirmation within one business day. Test results and a Loom walkthrough within five business days, including the rewritten sample passages — which are yours to use whether or not you work with us.

✓

Request received.

Confirmation within one business day. Your baseline, passage-level diagnosis, and rewritten sample passages land within five business days — and the rewrites are yours to use either way.

Evidence

Before and after

The same view, before the work and after it.

Before

Well-written pages that only make sense read top to bottom.

After

Same information, restructured so any single section survives being lifted out.

Our stack

Billion Game runs your work through the same instruments the best in-house teams use.

Licences are on us, and every export we pull from them is yours to keep.

✎

Be wary of any agency whose reporting is a tool dashboard with their logo on it. Tools measure; they do not decide what matters, and every one of these will happily generate a hundred findings that change nothing. What you are paying for is the judgement about which three of those hundred are worth your developers’ time.

FAQ

Generative engine optimization FAQs

Anything not answered here, ask us directly.

This page uses every method it grades as strong: specific figures, named research attribution, explicit sourcing, and self-contained answers. If it did not, you should not believe the rest of it.

Being found is one problem. Being used is another.

Free GEO content test on three of your pages, with measured before-and-after and rewritten sample passages you keep.

Get my free GEO content test Talk to us instead

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