How to Get Cited by ChatGPT
Most advice on this starts with how to write. That is the third thing that matters. The first two are whether a crawler can reach you, and whether anyone else mentions you.
GEO vs SEO: what actually changes, and what does not
Generative engine optimisation is being sold as a new discipline requiring a new budget. Most of it is not. Around three quarters of GEO advice is ordinary technical SEO and clear writing, repackaged.
The remaining quarter is genuinely different, and worth isolating precisely so you can spend on it without paying for the repackaged part twice.
The one difference everything else follows from
SEO optimises a page to be chosen from a list of ten. GEO optimises a passage to be extracted into an answer that cites three or four sources.
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Unit of success | The page | The passage |
| What you win | A position | A mention in the answer |
| Who decides | A ranking algorithm | A model choosing what to quote |
| Rewards | Authority, links, relevance | Clarity, specificity, self-contained claims |
| Measured by | Rank and clicks | Whether you appear, tested by asking |
| Feedback speed | Weeks | Months, and no referrer |
The practical consequence: a paragraph that only makes sense after reading the three above it can rank perfectly well and will almost never be quoted. Lifting it into an answer would produce something incoherent, so the model does not lift it.
What is identical, and you should stop paying twice for
If someone is quoting you separately for these as "GEO services", you are being sold your own SEO back.
- Server-rendering your content so it exists without JavaScript.
- Fast, stable pages. Crawlers have budgets and low patience, same as always.
- Structured data. FAQPage and Article markup were useful before and are useful now.
- A clean information architecture and internal linking.
- Writing genuinely useful content rather than keyword-stuffed filler.
Google's own SEO starter guide covers most of this and has not needed rewriting for the AI era, which tells you something.
What is genuinely new
Crawler access is a separate question now
Googlebot and the AI crawlers are governed independently, and CDNs increasingly block the latter by default. A site can be perfectly indexed by Google and invisible to every AI engine, which was not a failure mode that existed before. Test it per crawler — here is how, and what we found on our own site.
Unlinked mentions count
For classic SEO a link passes authority and a bare mention does little. For GEO, a mention in a comparison article or a forum answer can be enough, because the model ingests the text either way. This meaningfully changes where outreach effort pays: being named in a roundup beats chasing a directory backlink.
The passage is the unit
Structure each section to survive being read alone: lead with the answer, repeat the subject rather than using pronouns, and put concrete numbers in the text. A good test is to copy any single paragraph into a blank document and ask whether it still makes a complete, checkable claim.
Measurement has no referrer
You cannot see a citation in analytics. The only reliable method is to ask the engines your buyers' questions on a schedule and record the answers, which is manual and feels unscientific — and is still the best available. How to get cited has the routine.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No, and the framing is wrong. AI answers have taken a share of informational queries — the ones that used to end in a click on a definition page. Commercial and navigational search is holding up, because someone ready to buy still wants to see the site, the pricing and the proof themselves.
The practical read: informational content now works harder for citation than for clicks, and your commercial pages still need to rank the old way. Those are different jobs for different pages, not a migration.
How to split the effort
For most sites, the honest allocation is roughly:
- Technical foundation, serving both — half the effort. Server rendering, speed, schema, crawler access.
- Writing in liftable passages — a third. Costs nothing extra once it is a habit, and it improves the page for human readers too.
- GEO-specific work — the remainder. Crawler-by-crawler testing, third-party mentions, monthly citation checks.
Anyone proposing a GEO programme that inverts those proportions is selling the novelty rather than the result. If you want a second opinion on where your site actually sits, that is what our AI-search SEO work starts with.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between GEO and SEO?
SEO optimises a page to be chosen from a list of results; GEO optimises a passage to be extracted into an AI-generated answer that cites a few sources. The practical consequence is that a paragraph which only makes sense in the context of the ones before it can rank well but will rarely be quoted, because lifting it would produce something incoherent.
Is GEO just SEO with a new name?
About three quarters of it is. Server rendering, page speed, structured data, internal linking and genuinely useful writing serve both and were always good practice. Three things are genuinely new: AI crawler access is governed separately from Googlebot and is often blocked by CDN defaults, unlinked mentions count because models ingest text rather than follow links, and measurement has no referrer so you have to test by asking.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No. AI answers have taken a share of informational queries, but commercial and navigational search is holding up because a buyer still wants to see the site, the pricing and the proof. Informational content now works harder for citation than for clicks, while commercial pages still need to rank conventionally. They are different jobs for different pages.
How should I split effort between SEO and GEO?
Roughly half on the technical foundation that serves both — server rendering, speed, schema, crawler access — a third on writing in self-contained passages, which costs nothing extra once it is a habit, and the remainder on GEO-specific work: per-crawler access testing, third-party mentions, and monthly citation checks.
References
- SEO Starter Guide — Google Search Central
- FAQPage structured data — Google Search Central
- OpenAI bots and user agents — OpenAI
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