GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work that makes a website easy for AI assistants to read, understand and cite in their answers.
ChatGPT search, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews fetch pages with their own crawlers, extract the text and decide which sources they quote. A page that the crawler may not fetch, that only shows its content after JavaScript runs or that hides its content from snippets has little chance of being cited.
Classic SEO decides whether a page ranks. GEO decides whether an AI answer uses and names it. Both build on the same basics: a fast, indexable page with a clear title, clean structure and reliable facts.
The website check looks at these GEO signals:
There is no switch that guarantees a citation. AI providers do not publish their ranking. The check therefore only measures conditions that are documented by the providers or by web standards, and it names the source for each rule.
No. Blocking training crawlers such as GPTBot, ClaudeBot or Google-Extended is a legitimate choice and costs only a few points. Search and user crawlers such as OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User and PerplexityBot should be allowed if you want to be cited.
llms.txt is a proposal (llmstxt.org), not an official web standard. It is cheap to provide and helps assistants find the important pages, so the check rates it as a low-weight recommendation.
No. AI assistants rely on the same crawlable, indexable and well-structured pages. GEO builds on SEO and adds signals for entity, snippets and AI crawlers.