AI Overview optimization

AI Overview optimization, also called GEO and AEO

Getting your pages cited in Google's AI Overviews and by assistants like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

What this is

Search increasingly answers the question instead of listing places to find the answer. When it does, it names a small number of sources. Being one of them is the new version of ranking.

This work is also sold as generative engine optimisation (GEO) and answer engine optimisation (AEO). Same job, three names, and the acronym does not change the work.

What you get

What actually moves this

  • 01

    Content in the page source

    Most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript. If your text is drawn in by a script after the page loads, it is invisible to them regardless of how it looks in a browser. This is the single most common reason a site is absent from AI answers.

  • 02

    A direct answer near the top

    A passage that answers the question on its own, without needing the paragraph before it for context. That is the unit these systems extract, so it has to stand alone.

  • 03

    Specific, checkable facts

    Prices, timescales, materials, service areas, constraints. Systems summarising a topic favour sources that commit to specifics over ones hedging in generalities.

  • 04

    Structure a machine can parse

    Real headings, short paragraphs, and proper lists. Detailed work on this is answer-ready content writing.

  • 05

    A clear business entity

    Consistent details across your site, your Google profile and your listings, plus schema markup stating what you are. A system deciding whether to name you benefits from being certain who you are.

  • 06

    Corroboration elsewhere

    These systems favour businesses mentioned on sources other than their own website. That is AI citation building.

What nobody can promise you

There is no submission process, no ranking report, and no verified placement. AI answers vary between users, between phrasings of the same question, and between one week and the next. Anyone selling you a guaranteed position in an AI Overview is selling something that does not exist.

What is genuinely knowable is whether you are being cited at all today, and whether that changes over months. Establishing the first is an AI search visibility audit.

Google has also said there are no special files or markup required for AI Overviews. Anyone selling you a magic file is selling you nothing.

What it costs

Quoted after a free consult, because what it takes depends entirely on what you already have. Book a call, I will tell you what is involved, and you get a number before anything starts. Website plan details are on the pricing page.

How this differs

This page is about your pages being cited as a source: the content, the structure, the facts. It is the umbrella service for the whole discipline and it is where the GEO and AEO terminology lives.

AI citation building is the off-site half: earning mentions on the sources these systems retrieve from.

AI search visibility audit is the diagnostic that tells you where you stand before any of this starts.

Questions

What people ask

Is this just SEO with a new name?

It overlaps heavily and it is not identical. Good SEO helps. What is different is the emphasis on passages that stand alone, on content being in the page source rather than injected by script, and on being corroborated somewhere other than your own site.

Do I need a special file like llms.txt?

No. Google has stated there are no special files or markup required for AI Overviews. If someone is selling you one as the solution, that alone tells you something.

How would I know if it worked?

By asking the assistants the questions your customers would and seeing whether you come up, repeated over time. It is less precise than rank tracking and it is the honest measure available.

Is it worth doing yet?

It is worth doing the parts that are also just good practice: real content in the source, direct answers, specific facts, consistent business details. Those help in ordinary search regardless of what AI does next, so the downside is limited.

Be the source it names

Tell me what is going on and I will tell you whether this is what you actually need. No pitch deck and no pressure.

Book a free consult