GUIDE

What is generative engine optimization

The KDD 2024 GEO paper found a 41% gain from adding quotations, and ChatGPT cited 51.2% of retrieved vendor pricing pages in our October 2026 study.

Updated October 30, 20265 min read

+41%Position-adjusted word count gain from adding quotes (KDD 2024)
51.2%Vendor pricing pages cited when retrieved (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)
55.5%First-search position 1 results cited (FoundByChat, Oct 2026)

In short

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the practice of structuring and writing web pages so AI engines like ChatGPT retrieve and cite them in answers, the subject of a paper by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, first posted in November 2023 and published at KDD 2024.
In the KDD 2024 study across 10,000 queries, adding quotations raised the position-adjusted word count score by 41% (from a 19.3 baseline to 27.2), while traditional keyword stuffing fell below the baseline to 17.7.
In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 4,203 retrieved search results in 211 ChatGPT answers, ChatGPT cited retrieved vendor pricing pages 51.2% of the time and retrieved company-owned pages 20.1% of the time, compared with 3.9% for retrieved third-party pages about the company.
In our October 2026 study of 218 ChatGPT answers, the position 1 result in ChatGPT's first search was cited 55.5% of the time, compared with 8.1% for positions 6 to 10.

SparkToro and Similarweb clickstream data from January to April 2026 showed 68.01% of Google searches ended without a click, and Pew Research (March 2025 data) found links inside an AI summary got a 1% click rate, while users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without one. AI assistants sent 0.43% of website traffic versus 26.82% from search across 115,254 sites in September 2026 (Ahrefs), and BrightEdge reported ChatGPT sent 95.1% of AI referral traffic in August 2026, growing 101% since January 2026. When those visitors click through, Adobe reported AI visitors to U.S. retail sites converted 90% better and brought 83% more revenue per visit than non-AI visitors in September 2026.

What generative engine optimization means and where it came from

Generative engine optimization (often called GEO SEO) is the process of making your website pages easy for generative AI engines to find via web search, extract facts from, and cite in their responses. See our breakdown of GEO vs SEO.

The term appears in "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" by Pranjal Aggarwal (IIT Delhi), Vishvak Murahari (Princeton), Tanmay Rajpurohit, Ashwin Kalyan, Karthik Narasimhan (Princeton) and Ameet Deshpande (Princeton), posted on arXiv on November 16, 2023 and published at KDD 2024 in Barcelona. The researchers built GEO-bench (10,000 queries across 25 domains) and tested text edits in an AI search engine simulated with Google's top 5 sources and gpt-3.5-turbo, plus Perplexity.ai.

Method tested in KDD 2024	Position-adjusted word count score	Outcome vs baseline	Specific findings from Aggarwal et al. (2024)
Baseline	19.3	Baseline	Baseline score
Adding quotations	27.2	+41%	Top method; also gave +22% on Perplexity.ai
Adding statistics	25.2	Top-tier gain (30-40% range)	Scored 25.2 vs the 19.3 baseline
Citing sources	24.6	Top-tier gain	Gave +115.1% for rank 5 pages, but -30.3% for rank 1
Keyword stuffing	17.7	Below baseline	Scored below the 19.3 baseline

Top methods gave 30% to 40% relative gains ("up to 40%" is the best case, not an average). The authors noted visibility metrics are proxies rather than clicks, and methods may need to adapt as engines change.

How to do generative engine optimization for ChatGPT in 4 steps

Optimizing for ChatGPT combines the KDD 2024 findings with how ChatGPT search works.

1. Let OAI-SearchBot crawl your plain HTML

Allow OAI-SearchBot and keep core text in HTML without requiring JavaScript. The GEO audit checks robots.txt rules for three bots: GPTBot (training crawler), OAI-SearchBot (search crawler), and ChatGPT-User (fetches pages for users). Blocking GPTBot does not remove a site from ChatGPT search, so allow OAI-SearchBot in robots.txt, keep core text, title, H1 and JSON-LD in plain HTML without JavaScript, and ensure bot protection allows OAI-SearchBot.

2. Put concrete facts on your own pricing, product and help pages

In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 4,203 labelled search results across 211 ChatGPT answers, pages on a company's own site were cited 20.1% of the time when retrieved, against 3.9% for third-party pages about it (odds ratio 13.1).

Citation rates by retrieved page type broke down as follows:

Vendor pricing pages: 51.2% cited.
Vendor product pages: 28.4% cited.
Docs and help pages: 23.0% cited.
Vendor blog posts: 14.5% cited.
Third-party listicles and reviews: 7.5% cited.
"A vs B" comparison pages: 4.2% cited.
PDFs: 0.4% cited.

Put plain numbers and direct answers on HTML pricing, product and help pages. See our guide to ChatGPT citations.

3. Rank in the top 3 search results for the query

In FoundByChat's October 2026 study of 218 ChatGPT answers with web search, ChatGPT cited 2.2 different URLs per answer on average and cited 10.3% of retrieved web results. Citation rates by first-search position:

Position 1: 55.5% (95% CI 49.1% to 61.9%).
Position 2: 34.9%.
Position 3: 27.5%.
Positions 4 and 5: 14.4%.
Positions 6 to 10: 8.1%.
Positions 11 to 15: 2.4%.
Position 16 and lower: 0.4%.

Traditional rankings remain the foundation of ChatGPT SEO.

4. Keep menu and cookie text out of your roughly 200-character snippet

ChatGPT's search keeps your page title and a snippet of about 200 characters. Keep cookie banners and navigation menus out of the top of your HTML, and place a factual opening sentence right after your H1 so key facts sit up front.

How to check if your GEO work is reaching ChatGPT

Test any page with our free GEO audit (5 audits a day, no account needed). It fetches your page with the OAI-SearchBot user agent, rebuilds the title and ~200-character snippet ChatGPT keeps, looks the page up in ChatGPT and scores it out of 100 across HTML text without JavaScript, snippet leaks, facts up front, JSON-LD, llms.txt and robots.txt rules.

One check is never proof that a page change caused a citation change. With FoundByChat, you add your website and customer questions, and it asks ChatGPT those questions with web search on every 2 hours as a user in the United States (English) or the Netherlands (Dutch). It records whether your page was found, cited, and its usual position, and emails you when a page enters the index or its snippet changes. Free to start with Google or an email link.

Common mistakes in generative engine optimization

Stuffing keywords: Scored 17.7 versus the 19.3 baseline in KDD 2024.
Chasing Reddit over your own site: Reddit was 28% of retrieved results in our study of 218 answers, but only 2 of 2,462 citations.
Putting specs in PDFs: Cited 0.4% of the time when retrieved, versus 23.0% for docs and help pages.

FOUNDBYCHAT

Know the moment ChatGPT picks up your pages

We ask ChatGPT your questions every 2 hours and mail you what its index picked up or rewrote. Free to start: sign in with Google or an email link.

Start free Or run the free GEO audit

Questions

Is GEO replacing traditional SEO?

No. Gartner predicted in February 2024 that traditional search volume would drop 25% by 2026, but Google reported over 5 trillion annual searches in March 2025, its highest year-over-year query growth rate in five years in Q3 2026, and 17% year-over-year growth in Google Search and other revenue in Q2 2026.

How much website traffic comes from AI assistants right now?

Conductor measured AI referrals at 1.08% of traffic across 1,215 enterprise sites (May to September 2025), and Marie Haynes found across 100 sites that ChatGPT sessions equaled 0.62% of Google organic sessions. Similarweb counted 770.7 million monthly AI referral visits worldwide (June 2025 to May 2026), up 117.4% year over year.

Does traffic from ChatGPT convert better than organic search?

In a Visibility Labs study of 94 ecommerce brands in 2025, ChatGPT visitors converted at 1.81% versus 1.39% for non-branded organic search. A 2026 Marketing Science study of 973 sites placed ChatGPT-referred conversions above paid social but below the other traditional channels.

What is the difference between GEO and AEO?

The paper "GEO: Generative Engine Optimization" was first posted in November 2023. Google reported more than 2.5 billion monthly AI Overviews users in May 2026 and more than 1 billion monthly AI Mode users; AI Mode queries are 3 times longer than traditional searches. See AEO vs GEO.

If I block GPTBot, will my site disappear from ChatGPT search?

No. GPTBot is OpenAI's training crawler, and blocking it does not remove a site from ChatGPT search. Allow OAI-SearchBot (OpenAI's search crawler) in robots.txt to appear in ChatGPT search, and allow ChatGPT-User so ChatGPT can fetch pages for users.