AI Overviews / GEO
Google and other search engines increasingly answer search queries directly with an AI-generated summary, the AI Overview. GEO, Generative Engine Optimization, is the practice of preparing content so that it is cited there as a source.
Today, anyone who googles something often no longer sees a list of blue links first, but the AI Overview, with an AI-generated answer directly above the search results. For businesses, that changes the rules of the game: ranking first is no longer enough if the AI answer already covers the question and cites other sources.
What AI Overviews are
AI Overviews are Google's AI-generated summaries that appear above the classic results for many search queries. They combine several sources into one answer and link to some of them as evidence. Similar AI search formats now also exist in ChatGPT and Perplexity, each with its own selection of cited sources.
For users, this often means a faster answer without a click. For businesses, it means less traffic but greater brand visibility when they are named as a source. This effect is known as zero-click search.
What GEO means
Generative Engine Optimization, GEO for short, carries the idea of classic search engine optimisation over to AI search and its AI-generated answers. Instead of optimising for rankings alone, the aim is to structure content so clearly, with such solid evidence and in such a machine-readable way that an AI selects and cites it as a trustworthy source for its answer.
In practice, that means clear question-and-answer paragraphs, concrete figures and facts instead of vague marketing language, structured data that Google and other systems can classify directly, and visible trust signals such as real people to contact, an address and reviews.
What businesses can do in practice
Structured data using Schema.org helps AI systems classify a business correctly: which service, which location, which contact details. Clearly worded question-and-answer paragraphs are often cited by AI systems, but according to Google's own guidance no special markup such as FAQPage is needed for this; what matters is the readable text. And content that answers a question directly in one or two sentences, instead of opening with a long introduction, is quoted more often than rambling text.
Related terms
The technical foundation for GEO is Schema.org, embedded as JSON-LD.
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