GEO: get your brand into the answer, not just the results
By Vishal · Updated 13 October 2026
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of getting AI answer engines — Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — to mention and cite your brand when people ask them for a recommendation. seoclock measures where you stand across all of them, shows which competitors they name instead, and gives you the specific changes that earn citations. The GEO audit is ₹5,999, delivered in 48 hours.
The problem, in one number
Ask Google AI Mode or ChatGPT "best <your category> in India" and count how many brands it names. Usually three to five. If you are not one of them, a growing slice of buyers never sees you — even if you rank on page one, because Google's AI features pull from a wider set of sources than the top ten and a page that ranks third can be skipped for a more specific one. In our tracking, roughly a fifth to a half of AI Overview citations come from outside the organic top ten. That is the gap GEO works on.
What the GEO audit measures
| Section | What we do | What you learn |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt panel | 20 buyer prompts in your category, run in Google AI Mode, ChatGPT (search), Perplexity and Gemini, fresh sessions, India locale | Your citation share per engine; which page of yours gets cited; the competitors named instead and how often |
| Source analysis | Which sites the engines cite for your category — reviews, directories, Reddit, publishers, competitors | Where mentions have to come from for you to be recommended |
| Page readiness | Your top 20 pages checked for answer-first structure, self-contained sections, extractable facts, named author, dates, schema, crawlability for AI bots | A page-by-page rewrite list, with the first 60 words drafted for the five that matter most |
| Entity check | How consistently your brand and people are described across your site, LinkedIn, directories, Wikipedia/Wikidata, press | The corroboration gaps that stop engines trusting you |
| Controls | robots.txt, Search Console generative AI control, snippet directives | Whether you have accidentally opted out of being cited |
What the work looks like afterwards
GEO is not a separate channel with its own tricks. Google's documentation is explicit: no special files, no special markup, the same crawling and quality rules. What changes is what you emphasise. From the audits we have run, the changes that move citation share, in order:
- Answer-first rewrites of the pages that match buyer prompts: the direct answer in the first 60 words, then each sub-question as its own section that stands alone when lifted.
- Original evidence: pricing you publish, tests you ran, data you collected, photos you took. Engines prefer the source to the summary.
- A real expert with a bio page, credentials and consistent profiles elsewhere — the thing the December 2025 and May 2026 core updates made decisive, and the thing engines corroborate before recommending.
- Mentions off your site: comparison articles, Reddit and community answers, reviews, podcasts, press. For recommendation prompts this is most of the signal.
- Technical hygiene: AI crawlers allowed, content in HTML, truthful structured data, Search Console AI control on Include.
The audit gives you this as a ranked list for your site. You can run it yourself, hand it to your agency, or have 021 Digital run it.
We publish the benchmark
Every quarter we run the same panel across 200 Indian brands in ten sectors and publish who gets cited and from where: the India AI Visibility Index. If you want to know how your sector behaves before auditing your own brand, start there.
Order your audit
Pick a plan, tell us the site, pay by card or UPI. The PDF lands in your inbox within 48 working hours.
Questions people ask
What are GEO services?
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) services make a brand more likely to be mentioned and cited by AI answer engines — Google AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini — when people ask them for recommendations. It covers measuring current visibility, restructuring content so engines can quote it, building the entity signals they trust, and earning mentions elsewhere on the web.
Is GEO different from SEO?
It builds on SEO. Google has said there are no extra technical requirements for AI Overviews or AI Mode; the same indexing and quality rules apply. What changes is emphasis: answer-first passages, self-contained sections, named expertise, original evidence and off-site mentions matter more, and a page can be cited without ranking in the top ten.
How much do GEO services cost in India?
Agencies in India are quoting ₹25,000 to ₹1,50,000 a month for GEO/AEO retainers, usually bundled with SEO. seoclock sells the measurement first: a GEO audit for ₹5,999 (included in the Pro plan) so you know your baseline before paying anyone a retainer.
Do I need llms.txt or special markup?
No. Google has stated it does not use llms.txt and that no special markup is needed for AI features. Standard structured data that matches your visible content is enough. Spend the effort on content structure and entity signals instead.