Search stopped sending links. Now it writes the answer and you need to be in it

Generative engine optimization is the practice of making your brand legible and credible to large language models so you get named, quoted and linked inside the answers assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google AI Overviews write for your buyers. Traditional search returns a list of links for the user to choose from; a generative engine writes one answer, so being absent from that answer is very different from ranking tenth.

The underlying craft overlaps heavily: entity clarity, structured data, clean architecture, genuinely useful content and earned mentions matter in both. What differs is the target and the measurement. SEO optimizes for a ranked position on a results page; GEO optimizes for inclusion inside a written answer, and is measured by citation share across a set of prompts rather than by keyword rankings. We run both from the same team because separating them produces contradictory work.

No, and we would be lying if we said otherwise. Model outputs vary between sessions, change with every model update, and are not a ranked index anyone can buy a position in. What we can do is measurable and honest: make your content retrievable by AI crawlers, make your entity coherent, earn the third party citations models lean on, and then show you whether your citation share moved, using the exact prompts and the exact answers.

We build a fixed prompt set that matches how your buyers actually ask about your category, then run it across the major assistants on a schedule. Each run records whether you were cited, which competitors were cited instead, and what the model says about you when asked directly. Reporting shows the verbatim answers before and after, so the change is visible rather than asserted.

Our plans start at 1,800 US dollars per month for a baseline and repair programme, 3,600 dollars for competitive growth work with a wider prompt set and monthly content, and 7,000 dollars and above for category defence including original research and digital PR. That range sits in line with what credible providers charge for this work; anything dramatically cheaper is usually an SEO retainer with a new cover page.

Access and entity fixes can change what a model says about you within weeks, because they alter what is retrievable right now. Citation share in competitive categories moves more slowly, usually across quarters, because it depends on earned third party sources and on model update cycles you do not control. We report monthly regardless, including the months where nothing moved.

Yes. Classical search still sends the majority of qualified traffic for most businesses, and generative engines retrieve heavily from pages that already rank well, so strong SEO is one of the inputs to GEO rather than a competing spend. The two are best bought together, which is why we run them off one strategy and one report rather than selling them as separate programmes.

That is one of the most common findings in a first baseline, and one of the most valuable to fix. Models often carry outdated descriptions, wrong service lists, wrong locations or details from a previous version of a business. The repair is entity work: consistent facts across your own site, correct schema, and updated third party profiles the models retrieve from, followed by re-testing until the description changes.