performance marketing

Generative Engine Optimisation GEO

Get your brand cited, referenced, and recommended when buyers ask AI a question.

GEO agency

Your customers are starting their research inside ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. If your brand is not the one they surface, then a competitor is. That’s why Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is the work of making sure that brand is yours. As a Sheffield agency that builds, writes and optimises for a living, we help you become a source these engines trust.

In fact the brands these tools surface are not always the biggest. Instead they are the ones an engine can read, trust and quote. GEO makes yours one of them.

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What is generative engine optimisation?

Traditional SEO gets you ranked in a list of links. GEO gets you named inside the answer an AI model gives back. The two overlap, but they are not the same. AI engines synthesise their answers from sources they judge to be authoritative, clear and well structured, so the work is about being readable by a machine as much as by a person.

AI engines do not rank ten blue links. They read across many sources, decide which are clear and credible, and build a single answer from them. GEO is the work of making your brand one of those trusted sources, so when the answer is written, your name is in it.

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Why GEO matters now

Search behaviour is changing fast. More buyers now put their question straight into ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity, or read Google’s AI Overview instead of scrolling the results. In those answers there is no page two. There is one response, built from a handful of sources.

If your brand is not among them, you are invisible at the moment a buyer is forming a shortlist. GEO protects your visibility as search shifts from links to answers.

Who GEO is for

GEO matters most to brands in considered, competitive markets, where buyers research before they buy and a single recommendation carries weight. If your customers ask AI tools for options, suppliers or advice in your field, GEO puts you in that conversation.

How a GEO programme runs

We run GEO in clear phases, so you always know what is happening and why.

Audit

We assess how AI engines currently read and describe your brand, and where the gaps are.

Foundations

We put the technical groundwork in place: schema, entity content and crawlability signals.

Measurement

We track how your visibility in AI answers changes over time and report on it plainly.

Content and citations

Content and citations. We restructure key content for extraction and build the third-party mentions engines trust.

Two Vivid colleagues, one reviewing website performance and analytics on a laptop in the Vivid office.

How we approach GEO

We use AI tools every day to research, structure and test content, which frees our team to focus on the judgement and craft that machines cannot replace. That practitioner experience is the point. We are not guessing at what these engines reward, we are working with them daily and applying what we learn to your brand.

AI tools do the heavy lifting on research and structure. People do the judgement, the accuracy checks and the writing that carries your brand voice. That balance matters, because a machine can produce confident text that is subtly wrong, and getting the facts right is the whole point when an engine is about to repeat them.

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What a GEO programme covers

Structured data and schema, so engines can read your business with confidence rather than guessing at it.
Consistent facts across your website and your third-party profiles, so engines are not reading two versions of you.
Author and expert attribution, so opinions and expertise are attached to named, credible people.
Clear, factual entity content about who you are, what you do, and where, the kind of information AI models extract and cite.
Content restructured for extraction, with question-led headings and direct answers.
Third-party coverage and citations. AI models weigh what others say about you, so independent mentions carry real weight.
Knowledge-graph presence and AI-crawlability signals, including a maintained llms.txt.
Monitoring of how AI platforms describe and cite your brand, so you can see what is working.

How GEO fits with your wider marketing

GEO is not a standalone trick. It builds on the same foundations as good SEO and shares its content with your AEO work, your blog, and your social. As a full-service agency, we join these up, so one piece of work earns visibility in several places at once.

Why work with Vivid on GEO

We were early to this. Our own thinking on the shift from SEO to AEO and GEO is published on the Vivid blog, and we maintain AI-crawlability signals on our own site. We apply the same discipline to your brand.

We apply the same discipline to your brand that we apply to our own: factual, well-structured content, named expertise and a clean technical base, checked by people who know the difference between confident and correct.

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GEO Frequently Asked Questions

Because Generative Engine Optimisation is still a relatively new discipline, it’s natural to have questions about how it works and what it means for your business.
That’s why we’ve answered the questions we’re asked most often below. Whether you’re exploring GEO for the first time or looking to improve your AI visibility, you’ll find practical answers here.
However, if you can’t find what you’re looking for, our team is always happy to help.

Which AI platforms does GEO cover?

The main generative engines your customers use, including ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Gemini and Perplexity. The underlying work, clear structure, trusted facts and strong citations, helps across all of them rather than gaming any single one.
How long does GEO take to show results?

Some changes, such as schema and entity content, can be read by engines quickly. Building the citations and authority that AI models trust takes longer. We set expectations clearly at the start and report on progress as we go.
Do you only do GEO, or the wider work too?

GEO works best as part of an integrated approach. As a full-service agency we combine it with SEO, content, paid media and brand, so the foundations and the visibility build together.
What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the process of making your website content easier for AI tools such as ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity to understand and reference.

Instead of showing a list of websites, these platforms often generate their own answers. GEO helps improve the chances of your content being used as part of those answers.
Why does GEO matter?

People are searching differently than they did a few years ago. Many users now ask questions directly in AI tools instead of using a traditional search engine.

If your business relies on being found online, it’s worth thinking about how your content appears in these new environments.
Does GEO replace SEO?

No.

Good SEO is still important and GEO works best alongside it. In fact, many of the things that help with SEO—clear content, strong expertise and a well-structured website—also help with GEO.
What content works best?

Content that answers questions properly.

This could be FAQs, guides, blog posts, definitions, industry insights or product explainers. If your content is useful, accurate and easy to follow, AI tools are more likely to use it as a source.
How can I tell if GEO is working?
It’s not always as obvious as tracking rankings or website traffic.

Some common signs include:
- More mentions of your brand in AI-generated answers
- Increased branded searches
- Growth in direct website visits
- Greater visibility across AI search tools
Who can benefit from GEO?

Almost any business that answers customer questions online.

That includes professional services, healthcare providers, SaaS companies, manufacturers, ecommerce brands and education providers. If people search for information related to what you do, GEO can help.
Do we need to rebuild our website for GEO?

Usually not. Most GEO work happens through structured data, content and citations rather than a rebuild. If your site has deeper technical problems we will tell you, but GEO itself does not require starting again.
What are the benefits of GEO?
Some of the main benefits include:
- Better visibility in AI-generated results
- Increased brand awareness
- More value from existing content
- Greater credibility within your industry
- Preparation for future changes in search
What's the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?

SEO helps websites rank in traditional search engines.

AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation) focuses on appearing in direct answers and featured snippets.

GEO is aimed at AI tools that generate their own responses using information gathered from multiple sources.

In reality, there’s a lot of overlap. The strongest strategy is usually one that combines all three rather than treating them separately.

Generative Engine Optimisation GEO

Get your brand cited, referenced, and recommended when buyers ask AI a question.

GEO agency

What is generative engine optimisation?

Why GEO matters now

Who GEO is for