Search is moving from Google to AI engines — and an AI answer names only a few companies. GEO is about being one of them.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the work of making a business visible and citable in the answers of AI engines such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Copilot, so that it is named when someone asks the engine who to contact. Where SEO is about ranking on Google, GEO is about being named inside the AI answer itself.
Why GEO is different from SEO
SEO is about climbing a results page where the user chooses between many links. GEO is about being included in one combined answer that the engine writes on the user's behalf.
Good SEO helps GEO, but it is not enough on its own: a company can rank high on Google and still be absent from the AI answers.
How do AI engines decide who to name?
AI engines do not look up an official ranking. They build answers from patterns in the text they were trained on and from content they retrieve along the way. Some signals weigh more than others:
- Clear, structured information about what the business does, for whom, and in which areas.
- Consistency across sources — name, facts and descriptions match on the website, in registers and in third-party mentions.
- Structured data (Schema.org) that lets the engines read the business and its services by machine.
- Content that answers the questions buyers actually ask, written so it can be quoted without rewriting.
An AI engine can know your business well and still not name it. Being known is not the same as being suggested.
Can GEO be measured?
Yes — and that is what separates serious GEO work from loose claims. You ask the same questions your buyers use, in each engine, without personalization, and count in how many answers the business is named. The result is a frequency (X of N) that can be followed over time.
We measure our own business, MotorikkLab (Oslo), with the same protocol: four buyer questions × four engines, two draws. 8 of 16 cells held in both draws on 11–12 August 2026. A figure without a date and a denominator is not a measurement — the series and its caveats are here.
What a business can do
- Measure the starting point. The buyer questions your customers actually ask, in each engine, without personalization — and how often you are named.
- Clean up the foundation. Make name, facts and services unambiguous and consistent on the website and in registers.
- Add structured data. Schema.org markup makes the content readable for the engines.
- Publish citable content. Precise answers to the questions your customers actually ask.
- Measure again. GEO is ongoing work. Visibility is followed as a frequency that can rise or fall.
A sober premise
No one can guarantee a place in an AI answer: the engines change continuously. What can be done is to measure how often the business is cited today, work systematically on the signals that affect it, and document the change over time.
Our free GEO analysis is a technical check of whether AI engines can read your website, answered within 48 hours. Where you stand against competitors is what the GEO-sjekk measures.