The GEO guide: getting your brand cited by AI engines

Everything you need to understand Generative Engine Optimization and act on it, in one document: how AI engines choose their sources, how to measure your visibility, what to optimize first.

Free guidePDF, 32 pagesIn FrenchBy Guillaume Bourdon

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The guide in three answers

  1. What is GEO?

    GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) covers the techniques that help a website get cited in the answers of AI engines: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Overviews. SEO ranks a link; GEO puts your brand inside the answer itself.

    The term was formalized by researchers from Princeton and Georgia Tech (Aggarwal et al., KDD 2024). According to that study, adding source citations, expert quotes and statistics improves a piece of content's visibility in generative engine answers by 30 to 40%.

    Chapter 1 of the guide

  2. How do AI engines choose their sources?

    When an AI engine searches the web, it uses RAG (Lewis et al., NeurIPS 2020) in three steps. Retrieval: the question is rewritten into queries sent to one or more web indexes. Selection: the model keeps the passages that answer best. Generation: it writes the answer and, depending on the engine, shows its sources.

    A clear, factual, sourced passage that makes sense without context is more likely to be kept. For ChatGPT, a site that blocks the OAI-SearchBot crawler does not appear in sourced answers (OpenAI documentation).

    Chapter 2 of the guide

  3. Which AI tools do French users rely on?

    Nearly 33 million French people used an AI service in April 2026, or 57% of the population. ChatGPT accounts for 76% of the time spent on these services, ahead of Claude (5%), Gemini (4%) and Perplexity (3%), according to the Arcom barometer published in June 2026 (Médiamétrie data).

    ChatGPT is the priority, but not the only target: an AI tool that weighs little on average can weigh much more among your own customers.

    Chapter 3 of the guide

Contents

  1. Part 1 — Understanding GEO (chapters 1-5)

    What GEO is, how AI engines choose their sources, which AI tools French users rely on (Arcom barometer), why it is urgent in 2026, and ChatGPT ads versus organic visibility.

  2. Part 2 — The GEO score: one prerequisite and 6 criteria (chapters 6-12)

    Readable by AI (prerequisite), answer structure, content depth, evidence and data, freshness, entity clarity, external signals: what sets cited pages apart according to our September 30, 2026 study of 317 pages, and how to improve on each criterion.

  3. Part 3 — The action plan (chapters 13-16)

    The baseline audit, high-impact quick wins, the mid-term strategy and how to measure progress.

  4. Part 4 — Industry cases (chapters 17-20)

    E-commerce, B2B SaaS, brochure sites and local businesses, regulated industries (legal, health, finance).

  5. What next?

    18 referenced sources, around forty links to go further, and the next steps: your free score, then an AI visibility audit.