Generative Engine Optimisation
The work of increasing how often a brand is mentioned, recommended, and cited by AI answer engines, by shaping its digital footprint, the structure of its pages, and the density of verifiable facts it publishes. The term was formalised in a 2023 paper from researchers at Princeton, Georgia Tech, and the Allen Institute for AI.
Analogy Mental model
Visitors used to walk into the library and choose a book themselves, so you polished the cover and pushed it to the front shelf. Now they ask the librarian at the door which option is most reliable, and your job is to make sure the reference material she consults already contains your data, your reviews, and a clear answer with your name on it.
In practice What you actually do
That research measured something practical: adding authoritative citations, specific statistics, and direct quotations to a page increased its visibility in generated answers substantially, while keyword stuffing reduced it. So build pages that state checkable facts, attribute them, and quote named people, rather than pages that repeat a phrase.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
This does not replace conventional search. Retrieval systems still draw the overwhelming majority of their candidate pool from the top of ordinary results, so ranking is the entry ticket and the citation is the prize. Believing otherwise leads to abandoning the work that makes citation possible.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →