Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)
Get recommended by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot.
- Appearing in AI-generated shortlists for your category
- Accurate brand description across assistants
- Early position in a channel competitors have not yet contested
What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making a brand visible and favourably represented inside AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Copilot. It works by shaping the sources those models retrieve from and the consensus they encounter about your brand across the web.
When someone asks an AI assistant to recommend a digital marketing agency in Melbourne, it produces a shortlist. Being on that shortlist is now a distribution channel — and almost nobody is deliberately competing for it yet.
Generative engines do not crawl and rank the way Google does. They retrieve from a mix of live search, licensed sources and training data, then synthesise. Influencing that means influencing what the broader web says about you, not just what your own site says.
What you get
- Appearing in AI-generated shortlists for your category
- Accurate brand description across assistants
- Early position in a channel competitors have not yet contested
What GEO includes
Every engagement is scoped to your situation, but these are the components we work through.
Baseline visibility audit
We prompt the major assistants with your real buying questions and record whether you appear, how you are described, and who beats you.
Source surface strategy
Presence built on the sources these models actually retrieve from — Wikipedia-adjacent references, industry directories, review platforms, Reddit and high-authority publications.
llms.txt implementation
A machine-readable summary of your site published for AI crawlers, alongside sensible crawler access policy.
Consensus building
Consistent, factual descriptions of your business across every surface, so models encounter agreement rather than contradiction.
Structured factual content
Comparison tables, specifications, pricing transparency and defensible claims — the formats models preferentially extract.
Prompt-based rank tracking
Monthly monitoring across assistants, tracking share of voice against named competitors.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) — common questions
01What is GEO in digital marketing?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimisation — optimising a brand's presence inside AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini. It differs from SEO in that there is no ranking position to win; the goal is to be retrieved, synthesised and recommended within a generated answer.
02Can you actually influence what ChatGPT says about my business?
Indirectly, yes. These models draw on live retrieval and on the broader web's consensus about a brand. By strengthening the sources they retrieve from and making factual information consistent across the web, you can meaningfully change how a brand is represented. Nobody can directly edit a model's output, and any agency claiming otherwise is misleading you.
03Is GEO worth investing in yet?
For most Melbourne businesses, as a complement to SEO rather than a replacement. AI assistant referrals are still a small share of traffic but growing quickly, and the cost of establishing presence now is far lower than it will be once the channel is contested.
04How is GEO different from AEO?
AEO targets answer surfaces within traditional search — featured snippets, People Also Ask, voice. GEO targets standalone generative assistants. The techniques overlap substantially, but GEO depends far more on off-site consensus and source authority than on your own page structure.
GEO across Melbourne
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) delivered locally, wherever your customers are actually searching from.
GEO by industry
Ready to talk about GEO?
Start with a free audit. You will get the findings in writing whether or not you work with us.