Chapter 10 · Explainers
What GEO means, and what Serpio's AI readiness checks
Generative engine optimisation is the practice of writing so that AI assistants can find, understand, and cite your pages. Here is what that involves and how Serpio measures it.
Updated Sep 19, 2026 · 3 min read
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Search engines rank pages. AI assistants answer questions. When someone asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Google's AI Overview about a problem your product solves, the assistant reads a handful of pages and composes one answer. Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of making your pages easy for that process to use.
How an assistant reads a page
An assistant with web search runs a query, opens a few results, and pulls out passages that answer the question directly. It prefers passages that stand on their own: a definition, a numbered procedure, a short table, a sentence with a source behind it. Long introductions, marketing framing, and answers buried three scrolls down tend to get skipped.
- Mention
- The assistant names your brand in its answer.
- Citation
- The assistant links to one of your pages as a source. Citations are rarer and more valuable than mentions.
- Answer-first structure
- The first paragraph under a heading answers the question in the heading. Context comes after, not before.
What GEO-friendly content looks like
- A short summary near the top, so the whole article can be represented in two sentences.
- Headings written as the questions people actually ask, each followed by a direct answer.
- Definitions of the terms your audience searches for, in plain sentences.
- Statistics and claims with a named source, so the assistant can trust and attribute them.
- A short FAQ at the end, marked up with
FAQPagestructured data. - Comparison tables where a comparison is the honest answer.
How Serpio measures it
Serpio reports AI readiness at two levels. Both are audits of structure. Neither is a measurement of traffic, rankings, or actual citations.
| Level | Where you see it | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
| Site | AI citation readiness in the Site Report | Structured data coverage, organisation and FAQ schema, an llms.txt file, outbound citations, summaries, and clear headings across sampled pages. |
| Article | GEO score on each draft | Answer-first paragraphs, FAQ coverage, definitions, sourced statistics, a summary block, and quotable sentences in the article itself. |
The Site Report reads its two scores on one scale: 85 and above is strong, 70 to 84 is good, 40 to 69 needs work, below 40 is critical. Article scores use their own colour bands. Read the per-article rules in SEO and GEO scores.
What to do with a low score
- 1
Open the report
Start with the Recommendations tab. Fixes are grouped by priority and each one explains what to change.
- 2
Fix the site-wide items first
Missing structured data and a missing
llms.txtaffect every page. Publishing them once moves the site score more than editing a single article. - 3
Let new articles carry the structure
Articles Serpio writes already use answer-first headings, a summary, and an FAQ. Approving and publishing them raises coverage over time.
Common questions
Is GEO a replacement for SEO?
No. AI assistants with web search still start from search results, so classic SEO still decides whether your page is a candidate. GEO decides whether the assistant can use it once it gets there.
Does a high GEO score mean ChatGPT will cite me?
No. The score checks the structure of your content. Whether an assistant cites you depends on the question, the competition, and the assistant itself. Serpio never predicts citations.
Related guides
SEO and GEO scores explained
What the two article scores measure, the exact rules behind the SEO score, what the GEO score looks at, the colour bands, and what neither score can tell you.
Read guideReading your Site Report
The Site Report is Serpio's audit of a sample of your pages. Here is how to open it, what the two scores mean, and what each card on the Overview tab is for.
Read guideWhat llms.txt is and how to publish one
llms.txt is a plain-text file at /llms.txt that tells AI crawlers what your site is and which pages matter. Why Serpio checks for it, a minimal example, and how to publish and verify it.
Read guide