Service · GEO and AEO
GEO agency: generative engine optimization services
Cited is a GEO agency: we do generative engine optimization (GEO), also called answer engine optimization (AEO), for brands that want to be named in AI answers. We map the sources each engine cites for your buyers’ questions, then publish and earn the content that puts you in them.
Updated · By the Cited team
What GEO work is
Generative engine optimization is the practice of getting your brand mentioned, recommended and cited inside answers written by AI engines. Answer engine optimization is the same discipline under another name. If you are new to the terms, start with what GEO is and what AEO is.
A GEO agency differs from an SEO agency in what it works on. Rankings still matter, but the unit of work is the answer: one prompt, on one engine, and the handful of sources that engine read to write it. Change those sources and you change the answer.
Our GEO method, prompt by prompt
Every engagement runs on evidence from real answers, not guesses about what models like. For each prompt you care about, we record the answer on every engine, the brands it names and in what order, how it describes you, and each source it cites. That record becomes the brief.
| Signal | What it shows | What we do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Cited sources | The pages the engine trusted to write the answer | Earn a mention on them, or publish a better page of our own |
| Brands named | Who the engine recommends instead of you, and in what order | Find what those brands have on the cited pages that you don’t |
| Description | The claims and tone the engine repeats about you | Correct wrong facts at their source: your site, profiles and listings |
| Fan-out searches | The searches ChatGPT and Claude ran before answering | Make sure a page of yours answers each of them plainly |
What you get
- A prompt set and baseline, split into target prompts we work on and control prompts we leave alone.
- Source maps for every target prompt, showing which cited pages mention you and which mention only competitors.
- Answer-ready pages written by our copywriters: direct answers in the first lines, statistics and sources, honest comparisons.
- Placements on the sources engines cite: listings, profiles, reviews, roundups and community answers where they fit.
- A weekly report from your strategist, and lift measured against the control prompts.
How it works
- Audit. A free AI visibility audit on the first call: your prompts, across the engines, against your competitors.
- Map. We record every cited source for your target prompts and rank the gaps by how often engines use each source.
- Write. Our copywriters brief and write the pages your prompts are missing. Our content marketing services page shows how.
- Earn. We fix your profiles and listings and pursue mentions on the third-party pages engines cite.
- Prove. Target prompts are compared with control prompts every week, so you see what the work changed and not market noise.
The research behind our GEO method
The best-known study of GEO, published at KDD 2024, rewrote web pages with nine methods and measured how much of the AI answer each page then supplied. Compared with the unedited page, adding quotations from credible sources raised that share by about 41%, adding statistics by about 31% and citing sources by about 28%. Keyword stuffing lowered it by about 8%. Our copy is written to those findings: evidence, sources and plain answers rather than repeated phrases.
What we don’t do
- No hidden instructions to models. Text that tries to tell an engine what to say is fragile, and Google’s spam policies forbid hidden text.
- No fake reviews or planted posts. Community answers are written openly, as the brand.
- No mass-produced pages. A hundred thin pages earn less trust than ten pages that answer the question properly.
- No guarantees about what an engine will say. We promise the work and honest measurement of its effect.
GEO agency or GEO tool?
A GEO tool shows you the gaps; a GEO agency closes them. Some teams buy a tool first and find that nobody has time to act on it. Our plan includes our own tracking platform, so you don’t pay twice. If you are comparing tools, our roundup of the best AI visibility tools is honest about when a tool alone is enough.
Read how this fits our wider AI SEO and GEO agency work.
Questions
Is a GEO agency the same as an AEO agency?
In practice, yes. Generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) both mean earning mentions and citations in AI-written answers. We use both names because buyers search for both.
Which engines does your GEO work cover?
ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Perplexity, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Claude. Each one cites different sources, so the source map is built per engine.
How long does generative engine optimization take?
Changes in AI answers usually take 60 to 90 days, because engines need to find, read and trust new content. Profile and listing fixes can show in Google Maps within weeks.
Do you use llms.txt or other AI files?
We can add one, but it is not where results come from. Google says no special files are needed to appear in its AI features. Our llms.txt guide explains what the file does and doesn’t do.