79% of B2B buyers now use AI tools during vendor research. GEO is the practice of making your content easy for ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI to cite. This guide explains the concept and gives you the exact fixes that matter most.
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the practice of making your website content easy for AI-powered search engines to find, understand, and cite in their generated answers.
Traditional SEO optimises for Google ranking — getting your page to the top of the search results list. GEO optimises for AI citation — getting your content quoted or referenced in the answer that ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overview, or Bing Copilot generates when someone asks a question relevant to your business.
The distinction matters because AI search is changing how buyers research. A procurement head asking ChatGPT "which B2B marketing agencies in India specialise in manufacturing" does not see a list of ten links — they see a generated answer. If your agency is not cited in that answer, you do not exist for that buyer in that moment.
In 2024, Google AI Overviews began appearing in 30% or more of B2B search results. By mid-2026, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google AI Mode collectively process tens of millions of B2B research queries every day. Being cited in AI-generated answers is now more important than ranking first in classic Google for most industrial and B2B buyer queries.
For Indian B2B companies — manufacturers, exporters, service companies — the opportunity is significant precisely because most Indian websites are not GEO-optimised. The Indian B2B company that invests in GEO now builds a citation advantage that will compound for years, because AI models train on and reference sources that cite them back.
AI search engines evaluate content across six primary dimensions when deciding what to include in a generated answer:
This is the single highest-impact GEO fix available. Your website likely already has Organization schema (JSON-LD) in the head. Add sameAs links to your LinkedIn company page, YouTube channel, and any other verified profiles. This tells AI systems that your website = your LinkedIn = your brand entity — making you a verifiable, real organisation rather than an anonymous website.
Effort: 30 minutes for your developer. Impact: +5 to +8 GEO points.
llms.txt is to AI crawlers what robots.txt is to Google — a file that tells AI systems what to read and prioritise on your site. If you have one and it is invalid, fix it. If you do not have one, create it. The format is simple: a plain text file listing your key pages with brief descriptions. Validate at llmstxt.org before publishing.
Effort: 60 minutes. Impact: +2 to +4 GEO points.
Anonymous content is treated as lower authority by AI systems. Adding the author name, credentials, and a brief bio to every article — along with Author schema in the JSON-LD — immediately signals expert, attributed content. For Big Leap articles: "Written by Monil Bhardwaj, Founder of Big Leap Marketing. 15 years in B2B sales and marketing at Adobe, Wipro, UHG, and SHL."
Effort: 2–3 hours. Impact: +3 to +5 GEO points on all articles.
AI systems extract from the first substantive paragraph. If your first paragraph is scene-setting context ("Indian manufacturers face many challenges in todays competitive market..."), it will not be cited. If it is a direct answer ("B2B marketing for manufacturers is the systematic process of reaching procurement heads and plant managers at target companies through structured outreach, content authority, and account-based engagement"), it will be.
Effort: 1–2 days to update priority pages. Impact: +5 to +8 GEO points site-wide.
Wikidata is how ChatGPT and Perplexity verify that a company is real. Unlike Wikipedia, Wikidata has no notability requirements — any real business can create a free entry. Add: company name, industry, founding year, founder, official website, and LinkedIn URL. Then add the Wikidata URL to your sameAs schema. This single action significantly improves AI brand recognition.
Effort: 2–3 hours. Impact: +3 to +5 GEO points on Brand Authority.
The content format that AI systems prefer is fundamentally different from the long-form narrative content that performs well in classic SEO. AI prefers:
Beyond on-page content, AI systems verify brand identity through off-page signals. The platforms that carry the most weight:
| Platform | Weight in Brand Authority | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| High — especially for B2B | Complete company page, active posts, website URL verified | |
| YouTube | High — 25% of brand score | Channel with matching handle, 3+ videos, complete profile |
| Wikidata | Very high — entity verification | Create free company entry with all standard properties |
| High — 25% of brand score | Genuine participation in relevant subreddits | |
| Wikipedia | Highest — but requires notability | Get media coverage first, then create article |
| Crunchbase / G2 | Medium | Create free company profiles |
Schema (do this week):
Content (do this month):
Brand signals (do this quarter):
We ran a GEO audit on our own site and identified 15 specific fixes. We can do the same for yours.
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