---
title: "Generative engine optimization (GEO)"
type: "glossary-term"
category: "Discovery for agents"
canonical_url: "https://www.graphcanon.com/glossary/discovery-for-agents/generative-engine-optimization"
updated: "2026-07-09"
---

# Generative engine optimization (GEO)

_Also known as: GEO, AI SEO_

**GEO is optimizing content so AI answer engines cite it accurately - the AI-era companion to SEO, focused on being quotable and verifiable, not just ranked.**

**Generative engine optimization (GEO)** is the practice of making content easy for AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, and agents) to retrieve, quote, and attribute correctly. Where SEO targets ranked blue links, GEO targets being the source a generated answer relies on.

In practice GEO means clear, factual, well-structured content: sourced claims, dates, structured data, and clean machine-readable surfaces.

## In GraphCanon

GraphCanon's whole discovery layer - markdown twins, llms.txt, JSON-LD, sourced and dated facts - is a GEO strategy: make the graph the citable source for questions about AI dev tools.

## See also

- [llms.txt](/llms.txt)
- [MCP & agent docs](/docs/mcp)

## Related terms

- [Structured data (JSON-LD)](/glossary/discovery-for-agents/structured-data.md)
- [Markdown twin](/glossary/discovery-for-agents/markdown-twin.md)
- [Sitemap](/glossary/discovery-for-agents/sitemap.md)

[Discovery for agents](/glossary/discovery-for-agents.md) · [All glossary terms](/glossary.md)

---

**Machine-readable endpoints**

- JSON: [`/api/graphcanon`](/api/graphcanon)
- LLM index: [/llms.txt](/llms.txt)
- Full corpus: [/llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt)

_GraphCanon - The knowledge graph for AI development. https://www.graphcanon.com/_