Generative Engine Optimization: How to Get Cited by ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews

You typed your own category into ChatGPT last week, something like “best travel agency in Dhaka for Umrah”, and it named three companies. None of them was yours. You rank on page one of Google for that phrase. You’ve paid for the website, the content, the links. And the AI still quoted someone else.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of fixing that. It means making your pages easy for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews to find, trust and cite. In practice it’s good SEO plus three extras. Answers written to be quoted. A clear brand identity across the web. And tracking of where AI tools mention you.

I’ll stick to what the platforms themselves say, plus one peer-reviewed study. Where something is only an opinion or a proposal, I’ll say so. By the end you’ll have a four-week plan, and most of it costs nothing but time.

Generative engine optimization, defined without the hype

GEO means shaping your content so AI answer engines use it as a source. The goal isn’t only a blue link any more. It’s a mention, a quote or a citation inside the AI answer itself.

The term comes from a research paper. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization was written by researchers including Pranjal Aggarwal and Karthik Narasimhan. It was published at KDD 2024, one of the main data science conferences.

Today people use the word for four kinds of AI answers. Each works a little differently.

You’ll also hear answer engine optimization (AEO). It’s an older, close cousin that grew up around featured snippets and voice answers. GEO is about AI-written answers. The foundation under both is the same as in my guide to SEO for Bangladeshi businesses.

How do ChatGPT, Gemini and AI Overviews pick what to cite?

They search an index of the web, pick a few pages that answer the question well, then write a summary that links to them. If your page isn’t in that index, it can’t be cited. Simple as that.

Google is clear on this. Its AI features guide for site owners says a page “must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet”. It adds that “there are no additional requirements” and no “special optimizations necessary”.

Google also describes a step called query fan-out. The AI runs many related searches across subtopics and then builds one answer. That’s why a single AI Overview can cite pages that rank for slightly different questions.

For ChatGPT, OpenAI’s crawler documentation is blunt. “Sites that are opted out of OAI-SearchBot will not be shown in ChatGPT search answers.” That’s a direct quote. OpenAI also notes it can take about 24 hours for its systems to react to a robots.txt change.

So how to get cited by ChatGPT starts with a boring check: is the crawler allowed in? After that, the same quality signals apply as on Google.

GEO versus SEO: mostly the same job

Most of the work is normal SEO done well. The rest is about being easy to quote and being known beyond your own site. Anyone selling you GEO as a separate discipline with its own secret rules is selling the word, not the work.

The useful new evidence is the GEO paper. The researchers tested nine ways of rewriting web pages and measured how visible each page became in AI answers.

In the paper’s words, “including citations, quotations from relevant sources, and statistics can significantly boost source visibility.” Keyword stuffing scored below the unchanged page. Google has been saying that about keyword tricks for years.

So treat GEO as an extra layer on top of SEO, not a replacement. If your pages aren’t indexed, crawl at a snail’s pace on mobile data, or say nothing new, no GEO trick saves them.

Step 1Step 1: let the crawlers in

Check this first. A blocked crawler means zero citations, and plenty of sites block AI bots without knowing it, through a security plugin or a CDN switch.

1. 1Open yoursite.com/robots.txt in a browser.
2. 2Look for lines that disallow Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot or PerplexityBot.
3. 3Check your CDN or firewall. Some hosting panels have a one-click “block AI bots” switch.
4. 4In Google Search Console, run URL Inspection on your key pages. Confirm they’re indexed.
5. 5Add your site to Bing Webmaster Tools too. Copilot draws on Bing’s index.

You might want to block AI training but still appear in AI search. That’s possible. OpenAI separates GPTBot, which collects training data, from OAI-SearchBot, which powers search. Google offers a token called Google-Extended to limit use in its other AI systems, while normal Googlebot rules control Search.

On cheap shared hosting, check speed as well. A page that times out for a crawler is as good as missing.

Step 2Step 2: write the sentence an AI would lift

Short, direct answer at the top of each section. Facts and sources underneath. AI tools pull clean, self-contained passages. A rambling page gives them nothing neat to lift, which is exactly what happened to the Banani agency.

This is the core of AI Overviews optimization. It’s also what Google’s helpful content guidance has always asked for: original information, clear expertise, content made for people first.

Write the answer a stranger would quote

A reader asks how much a trade licence costs in Dhaka. Your first sentence should answer that, with the source. The detail can follow. If your answer starts with history, the AI quotes someone else.

Add what nobody else has

AI answers summarise the common view. The pages they cite usually add something extra: a price list, a local test, a photo, a clear table. A furniture shop in Mirpur that lists real delivery times by area has more to offer than a generic buying guide.

Cover the follow-up questions

Because of query fan-out, the AI looks at related questions too. Add a short FAQ with the next questions your customers ask. Use their words, including Bangla and Banglish phrasing where it fits.

Step 3Step 3: schema and your entity

Schema helps Google understand who you are. Google also says no special schema is needed for AI features. So use it to make your identity clear, not as a magic switch.

This is where entity SEO comes in. An entity is a thing Google can identify: your business, your founder, your product. The clearer the entity, the easier it is for AI tools to connect mentions back to you.

• Organization markup. Google’s Organization structured data guide says it helps Google understand your administrative details. Use the sameAs property to link your Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube profiles.
• Match the page. Google’s AI features guide asks that structured data match the visible text. Don’t mark up reviews or prices you don’t show.
• One name, one address, one phone. Same business details on your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
• Author pages. A real person with a real bio is easier to trust than “Admin”.

The honest answer on schema markup for AI, then: it’s good hygiene that helps search engines read your site. It doesn’t force any AI tool to cite you.

Step 4Step 4: brand mentions, the digital word of mouth

Being mentioned on other trusted sites helps. AI tools build answers from many sources. If ten reviews and two news stories name your clinic, an AI has more reasons to include it.

Google says for local results that prominence, meaning how well known a business is, affects ranking. It makes sense that AI answers built on the same index reward the same thing. I can’t prove the exact weight, and nobody outside Google can.

Don’t buy links or fake mentions. Google’s spam policies treat links bought to manipulate rankings as link spam. Paid placements must be marked as sponsored or nofollow.

Do you need an llms.txt file?

No. Not for Google, and there’s no public proof that any major AI tool relies on it. It’s cheap to add, so add it only if you’ve got time left over.

llms.txt is a proposal by Jeremy Howard, first published in September 2024. It suggests a Markdown file at /llms.txt that summarises your site and links to key pages for AI agents.

Google’s AI features guide says you don’t need “new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup” to appear. Google’s John Mueller compared llms.txt to the old keywords meta tag in April 2025, as reported by Search Engine Journal.

My view: spend your first hours on content and mentions. An llms.txt file won’t fix a weak page, and I’ve never seen it fix anything else either.

Perplexity, ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini: the small differences

The basics are shared. Be crawlable, be clear, be cited by others. What differs is which crawler and which index each tool uses.

• Perplexity SEO. Perplexity says it respects robots.txt for PerplexityBot. It shows numbered sources in every answer, so pages with clean facts and tables do well.
• ChatGPT. Allow OAI-SearchBot. ChatGPT may also visit a page live when a user asks, through ChatGPT-User.
• Copilot. Make sure Bing has indexed you. Many Bangladeshi sites never submit to Bing at all.
• Gemini. It draws on Google Search, so Google SEO covers most of it.

Language matters too. Google’s help centre lists Bangladesh and Bengali among the places and languages where AI Overviews work. A Bangla page that answers a local question clearly can be cited in a Bangla AI Overview.

How do you measure AI search visibility?

Use the free reports from Google and Bing first, then add manual checks. You can’t improve what you never look at.

In June 2026 Google introduced Search generative AI performance reports in Search Console. They show how often your pages appear as sources in AI Overviews and AI Mode. At launch they showed impressions, not clicks or queries. Industry coverage reported the rollout reached all sites by the end of August 2026.

Clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode are already counted inside your normal Performance report, under the Web search type. Google says these visitors tend to be “higher quality”, meaning they spend more time on the site.

Microsoft added an AI Performance report to Bing Webmaster Tools in February 2026 as a public preview. It shows citations in Copilot and Bing AI answers, which pages were cited, and the grounding queries behind them.

For manual checks, write 20 questions a buyer might ask, like “best dental clinic in Dhanmondi for braces”. Ask them in ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity once a month. Note who gets named. For deeper tracking, see my tracking and analytics service.

Generative engine optimization mistakes I keep finding

Most GEO failures come from shortcuts. Here are the ones that turn up most.

• Blocking AI crawlers by accident. A firewall rule can remove you from ChatGPT search overnight.
• Mass-producing AI articles. Google calls many pages made mainly to manipulate rankings “scaled content abuse”.
• Stuffing keywords. The GEO study found it did worse than doing nothing.
• Faking stats or reviews. AI tools cross-check sources. Fake numbers destroy trust when found.
• Chasing tools before basics. No dashboard fixes an unindexed page.
• Ignoring Bing. Copilot and some partners rely on it.
• Pages with no reason to click. If the AI answer says everything, give a calculator, price list or booking link.

FAQ: Generative Engine Optimization

Four weeks, four jobs

Access first, then answers, then reputation. This is the order I’d follow, and the order the Banani agency followed once the owner stopped blaming ChatGPT.

1. 1Week 1: check robots.txt, firewall and indexing. Add Bing Webmaster Tools.
2. 2Week 2: rewrite the top of your five most important pages with a direct answer.
3. 3Week 3: add Organization markup with sameAs links, and fix your business details everywhere.
4. 4Week 4: write your 20 test questions and record who AI tools cite today.

AI is changing how people in Bangladesh find businesses. I wrote more on that in how AI is changing digital marketing in Bangladesh. Want someone to run the four checks above on your site? I’m Amanat Mossalli Taju, and that takes me about 15 minutes.