When a user searches for "best CRM," they no longer see 10 links — they get a ready-made answer with 3–4 sources underneath. The question is: will your site be among those sources?
This direction is called GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) or AEO. But let me state one important point right away.
This Isn't a Separate Field
Google's official documentation clearly states: optimizing for generative search is still SEO. The names "AEO" and "GEO" are new labels for the same work.
Google also says the following do not work: an llms.txt file (Google Search completely ignores it), rewriting content "for AI," and artificially increasing brand mentions.
So the foundation is the same: a technically sound site, useful content, and a trustworthy source. The difference is the emphasis.
Brand Mentions Matter More Than Backlinks
Ahrefs' research across 75,000 brands found an interesting result: the strongest correlations with AI citations are mentions on YouTube (correlation ~0.74) and discussions on Reddit. Domain rating (backlinks) has a weak correlation — only ~0.27.
The reason is clear: language models "know" based on how often a brand name appears in text and in what context. The name, not the link, matters.
Practical takeaway: one high-quality YouTube video or a genuine discussion on a professional forum is more useful than dozens of cheap backlinks.
What Makes a Quotable Passage
When generating an answer, AI does not take the entire page — it takes one passage from it. So content should be written so that each section carries standalone meaning.
A format that works in practice:
- At the beginning of a section, a direct answer to the question — in the first 40–60 words
- Passage length of 134–167 words
- With a specific number, date, and source
- Heading in question form ("How long does it take?")
And an important detail: about 44% of citations come from the first 30% of the page. Do not hide the most valuable answer at the bottom.
Freshness Matters
SE Ranking analyzed 1.3 million citations and found: content newer than 3 months gets about 3 times more citations in AI answers. Pages not updated for more than 6 months gradually lose citation eligibility.
So regularly updating older articles may yield more results than writing new ones. When updating, also change dateModified.
Technical Requirements
AI crawlers do not execute JavaScript. If your content is rendered with JavaScript, GPTBot sees an empty page. You need server-side rendering (SSR) or static HTML.
Check bot access — make sure they are not blocked in robots.txt:
GPTBot,OAI-SearchBot— OpenAIClaudeBot— AnthropicPerplexityBot— Perplexity
Be especially careful with sites behind Cloudflare: in new zones, AI bots may be blocked automatically. You can check this with a simple curl:
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" -A "GPTBot/1.0" https://sizningsayt.uz/
If it does not return 200, it is blocked.
Platforms Are Not the Same
Only 11% of domains are cited simultaneously by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews. In other words, they choose differently:
| Platform | Main Sources |
|---|---|
| Google AI Overviews | Pages that rank well in classic search |
| ChatGPT | Wikipedia (~48%), Reddit |
| Perplexity | Reddit (~47%), Wikipedia |
Conclusion: classic SEO works for Google, while entity presence (Wikipedia/Wikidata) is decisive for ChatGPT.
Where to Start
- Check that AI bots can access your site (using the
curlcommand above) - Check how content appears without JavaScript — is there text in the page source?
- Add a self-explanatory 150-word bio/description block to your homepage
- Connect your entity with Schema.org (
sameAs— all your profiles) - Create a schedule for updating old content
The rest is regular SEO. You do not need to learn a new discipline.