The term comes from the paper “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization” by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, first posted to arXiv in November 2023. The authors describe generative engines, systems that search for sources and write an answer from them, and propose GEO as a way for content creators to improve how visible their content is inside those answers.
The paper introduced a benchmark of user queries across many domains and tested changes to web content. The authors report that some changes increased visibility in generative engine responses in their experiments, and that how well a strategy works varies across domains. That last point matters: there is no single checklist that works for every category.
Today GEO and AEO are used almost interchangeably for the same goal: being named and cited in AI answers. Whatever the label, the honest way to know where you stand is to ask the questions buyers ask, more than once, and count what comes back. See how to measure AI visibility without a made-up score.