Frequently asked questions
Short, sourced answers to the questions people ask most about search visibility in Google and AI answer engines. Each answer links to the full page.
What is search visibility?
How often and how prominently a site or brand is seen in search results and AI answers. See the full definition page.
What is generative engine optimization?
The practice of earning visibility in AI-generated answers. The term comes from a November 2023 paper (arXiv 2311.09735) published at KDD 2024.
What is answer engine optimization?
Making content easy for answer engines to retrieve, trust and cite. It predates generative AI and now overlaps almost entirely with GEO.
Is GEO different from SEO?
Google says optimizing for its generative AI features is still SEO. Independent research found retrieval rank drives AI citations more than GEO-style rewrites.
Did the GEO paper prove a 40% visibility boost?
It reported up to 40% on a word-count metric in a simulated engine using gpt-3.5-turbo. A 2025 benchmark measuring citation rank found most of the same tactics ineffective.
How do I measure AI visibility?
Use Search Console’s Generative AI performance report and Bing’s AI Performance report, plus a prompt tracker for engines with no first-party data.
Do I need llms.txt?
Not for Google: Google says Google Search ignores llms.txt. It neither helps nor hurts there.
Do I need special schema for AI Overviews?
No. Google says no special schema.org structured data is needed.
Which crawlers must I allow to appear in AI answers?
Googlebot for Google Search features, OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT search and PerplexityBot for Perplexity.
Do AI summaries reduce clicks?
Pew’s March 2025 data found clicks on traditional results in 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without.
What matters most for brand visibility in AI answers?
In a 2025 Ahrefs study of 75,000 brands, branded web mentions had the strongest correlation with AI Overview brand visibility. Correlation is not causation.
Can anyone guarantee AI citations?
No. Google says indexing and serving are not guaranteed, and no third-party tool has access to its internal ranking or AI systems.