GEO defined
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is a term coined by academics at Princeton, Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute in a 2023 paper. It describes the practice of optimising content so it performs well in AI-generated responses.
How RAG systems work
When you ask Perplexity a question, it searches the web in real time, reads the most relevant pages it finds, and generates a response. The pages it drew from become the citations. GEO is about making your pages the ones that get retrieved, read, and cited.
The key GEO techniques
GEO vs SEO
| | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| **Goal** | Rank in results | Be cited in answers |
| **Key signals** | Links, authority, keywords | Facts, structure, entities |
| **Measurement** | Ranking position | Citation frequency |
| **Update cycle** | Months | Weeks |