What is GEO? Generative engine optimisation, explained for Indian businesses

By Vishal · Published 13 October 2026

A working definition

When someone types "best payroll software for a 30-person company in India" into Google in 2026, the top of the page is often an AI-generated answer naming three to five products and linking to a handful of sources. The same question in ChatGPT or Perplexity produces a similar short list. GEO is the work of being one of the names in that answer, and one of the links under it.

Two things are being optimised. Mentions — whether the engine names your brand at all, which depends mostly on what the rest of the web says about you. Citations — whether it links to one of your pages as a source, which depends mostly on whether your page answers the question in a form the engine can lift.

GEO vs AEO vs SEO

In practice AEO and GEO describe the same work and most agencies in India sell them as one bundle. Treat the labels as marketing; treat the mechanics below as the thing.

What Google actually says

Google's "AI features and your website" guidance is unusually plain. Paraphrased: there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode; pages must be indexed and eligible for a snippet; follow the usual content and spam policies; keep content as text, with structured data that matches what is visible; no special markup or AI-specific files are needed. In June 2026 Google added that it does not use llms.txt. In May 2026 it clarified that its spam policies apply to content shown in generative AI responses too — so GEO "tricks" that would be spam in classic search are spam here.

Two things in that guidance explain why rankings and citations diverge. Query fan-out: for one question, the AI features run several related searches across sub-topics and pull supporting pages for each. Different models: AI Overviews and AI Mode may use different models and therefore cite different links. The consequence is that a page ranking third for the head term can be left out of the answer while a narrower page from a smaller site is cited for one of the sub-questions.

How engines choose what to cite

From Google's guidance, the published research on citation behaviour, and the panels we run, the sources that get cited share traits:

• They answer the exact question early — a declarative one-to-three-sentence answer at the top of the page or section, not "it depends" followed by 600 words.
• Each section stands alone — the engine lifts a passage; if the passage needs the paragraph above it to make sense, it is skipped.
• They contain extractable facts — numbers, prices, dates, definitions, in plain sentences and in tables.
• They are corroborated — the brand and author appear consistently elsewhere (LinkedIn, directories, press, reviews, Reddit). Engines are cautious about recommending entities nobody else mentions.
• They are the source, not a summary — original data, tests, photos, published pricing. A rewrite of another site's content loses to the original.
• They are fresh and dated — truthful updated dates, facts that match the current year.
• They are crawlable by the engine's bot — GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended not blocked; content in HTML.

The five levers, in the order they pay

1. Rewrite the pages that match buyer prompts so the first 60 words answer the question and each sub-question has its own self-contained section. This is the cheapest change with the biggest effect on citations.
2. Publish evidence — your prices, your tests, your data, your photos. Then you are the thing being cited rather than the thing citing.
3. Make the expert real — a bio page with credentials, consistent profiles elsewhere, Person and Organization schema that match. The December 2025 and May 2026 core updates pushed named expertise beyond health and finance into nearly every competitive query.
4. Earn mentions off your site — comparison articles, community answers, reviews, podcasts, press. For recommendation prompts ("best X"), what others say about you is most of the signal.
5. Hygiene — AI crawlers allowed, Search Console's generative AI control on Include, structured data truthful, no snippet restrictions on pages you want cited.

Measuring it

GEO without measurement is a slogan. The baseline is a prompt panel: ten to twenty buyer questions run in each engine, scored on whether you are mentioned and cited and who is named instead; the number to track is citation share per engine. Google now gives you one official instrument — Search Console's generative AI performance report, with AI Overview and AI Mode impressions by page — and GA4 can segment referrals from chatgpt.com, perplexity.ai and gemini.google.com. The free AI visibility check builds the panel for you; the GEO audit runs it at twenty prompts and four engines with a page-by-page fix list.

Does it matter in India yet?

Yes, and the demand data says so. In Google Keyword Planner (India, October 2026) "geo seo", "ai seo", "answer engine optimization" and "generative engine optimization" each register 1,000–10,000 searches a month, and the cost-per-click advertisers pay for "ai visibility" and "llm seo" is ₹150–₹293 — among the highest in the SEO category. Agencies are already charging ₹25,000–₹1,50,000 a month for GEO retainers. The engines themselves are in English-first markets, and English-language Indian queries are where AI Overviews appear most often. If your buyers research in English, the answer is already being generated; the only question is whose name is in it.