GEO Best Practices 2025: Boost Brand Mentions in AI Search

AI answers are turning into the front door of discovery. When a model cites your brand inside its response—whether in Google’s AI Overviews/AI Mode, ChatGPT with Browse, or Perplexity—you earn visibility, trust, and often the click. The volume is still smaller than classic organic search, but the growth curve is steep: industry tracking shows AI referrals have risen sharply in 2024–2025, with platforms reporting rapid acceleration and improving session quality. For example, Similarweb reported AI referrals reached roughly 1.13B in June 2025 (+357% YoY), even if they remain a small share compared to traditional search according to a TechCrunch summary of the dataset. See the context in the TechCrunch recap, 2025: the AI channel is growing fast while still maturing.

So how do you increase the odds that AI systems mention—and correctly attribute—your brand?

GEO vs. AEO—what you’re actually optimizing for

• GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) focuses on getting generative AI systems to cite your brand or content inside synthesized answers. The emphasis is on entity clarity, corroboration across authoritative sources, and citation likelihood.
• AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) focuses on structuring content so engines can extract concise, definitive answers for snippet-like surfaces.

You’ll often pursue both. If you need a deeper primer on concepts and differences, see our explainer on AI visibility and brand exposure in AI search for definitions and practical context: AI visibility and brand exposure in AI search.

The GEO success path: a repeatable workflow

1) Technical and entity audit

• Build a complete JSON-LD graph: Organization, Product/Service, Article/BlogPosting, and Person (author) types with robust properties (sameAs, about, mentions). Keep bios and author credentials public and consistent across your domain.
• Confirm crawl and training controls are intentional (robots directives for GPTBot and Google-Extended, and X-Robots-Tag where needed). You don’t want accidental opt-outs blocking discovery or, conversely, uncontrolled training access.
• Normalize brand entities: consistent naming, canonical home for definitions, and cross-site signals from partner profiles and directories. Think of it as making your brand “machine legible.”
• Keep to what Google has officially confirmed about structured data visibility: HowTo and most FAQ rich results no longer display broadly; keep the markup for machine understanding, but don’t expect SERP boxes from these alone. Google’s sitelinks search box was also deprecated in late 2024.

2) Structure for extraction

• Answer specific questions directly within your pages using H2/H3 question headings followed by 2–3 sentence answers. Break down complex topics into scannable sections.
• Use quotable, source-backed statements and short bulleted steps for how-tos. Tables help engines assemble concise comparisons.
• Attribute claims inside the content. Engines that display sources are more likely to pick clear, verifiable statements.

3) Content and PR engines already trust

• Publish original research with charts/tables; pitch it to tier‑1 publications and relevant associations. Strong third‑party coverage increases corroboration.
• Earn citations on Wikipedia where notability and sourcing standards allow. Participate in expert communities such as topic-appropriate Reddit subs and Q&A forums.
• Refresh evergreen guides quarterly to satisfy recency bias and keep links current.

4) Platform‑specific tuning (the nuances that matter)

• Google AI Overviews/AI Mode: Comprehensive coverage of sub‑questions and fresh updates perform better; include clear sources and schema for organization, products, and authors. Google notes that AI features include a “wider and more diverse set of helpful links,” and impressions/clicks from these surfaces are included in Search Console’s Web reporting.
• ChatGPT with Browse: Expect fewer citations per answer and a tilt toward encyclopedic and major news sources. Make your claims quotable and well-sourced; consistency across multiple reputable references helps.
• Perplexity: Highly transparent citations and multi‑source answers. Provide succinct, current explanations; include updated references and summaries that are easy to lift.
• Gemini/Claude: Emphasize recency and clarity. While public details vary, clean entity graphs and well‑structured content transfer well across both.

Quick wins by platform

Measurement that ties mentions to outcomes

If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. But measuring AI mentions isn’t the same as tracking rankings. Here’s a practical framework:

• AI Citation Count (by platform): number of times your brand is linked in AI responses over a period.
• AI Share of Voice (SOV): your citations divided by total citations across a peer set for the same queries.
• Citation Quality Index (CQI): a weighted score for source authority, freshness, sentiment, and excerpt accuracy.
• AI Referral Sessions: identifiable sessions from AI engines (e.g., chatgpt.com or perplexity.ai referrers, or UTM tags).
• Visibility Score: a composite (e.g., w1SOV + w2CQI + w3Referral Sessions Growth + w4Sentiment Delta) aligned to your goals.

Where do the signals come from?

• Search Console: Google confirms that impressions and clicks from AI Overviews and AI Mode roll into Web performance reporting. That means you can see the lift when your page is one of those helpful links, even if the query surface is AI‑powered.
• Analytics: Real‑world publishers have traced meaningful AI referrals using referrers and UTM tagging; one public example documented a large year‑over‑year surge from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and others, alongside conversions.

For a broader context on what “AI visibility” covers and how to track it beyond clicks alone, see our guide: AI visibility and brand exposure in AI search.

Tooling: monitor, benchmark, iterate

You’ll likely mix an AI visibility tracker with your analytics stack and PR monitoring. A neutral snapshot of the space in 2025 includes specialized trackers, enterprise SEO suites adding GEO/AEO modules, and analytics/attribution platforms. Compare on coverage (which engines/models), update frequency, sentiment accuracy, competitive views, and pricing.

Disclosure: Geneo is our product. In one workflow we run, Geneo tracks cross‑engine mentions and citations (ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews/AI Mode, Perplexity), logs sentiment, and benchmarks competitors—useful for spotting which pages or sources are actually getting cited so you can prioritize updates. Learn more at geneo.app.

For platform changes that can swing visibility, keep an eye on our update notes and playbooks, for example: Monitoring Google algorithm shifts (October 2025 guidance).

A 30–60–90 day rollout you can start now

• Days 1–30: Run an entity and schema audit on top 20 pages (Organization/Product/Person/Article). Add Q&A blocks to rank‑worthy pages. Refresh two cornerstone guides with current sources and a short “executive summary” paragraph designed for citation.
• Days 31–60: Publish one original data piece with a chart and downloadable table; pitch it to two industry outlets. Add concise, quotable passages to three evergreen posts. Stand up a basic AI SOV dashboard (Citation Count, SOV, CQI).
• Days 61–90: Expand platform‑specific sections for ChatGPT and Perplexity (summary blocks, updated references). Launch a quarterly refresh cadence for your top 10 assets. Review PR/community placements (e.g., relevant Wikipedia sections, expert forums) and close gaps.

Closing thoughts

AI search is a moving target, but the fundamentals aren’t mysterious: make your brand machine‑legible, structure content for extraction, earn corroboration from trusted sources, and measure what matters. Want a practical way to see which answers already mention you—and where competitors are winning? You can try Geneo to monitor citations and benchmark SOV across AI engines while you iterate your workflow.

—

References and further reading cited in this guide:

• Google explains how AI features choose and report helpful links, and how impressions/clicks appear in Search Console: AI features and your website (Search Central, 2025)
• Market context for AI referral growth: AI referrals reached ~1.13B in June 2025 (+357% YoY), TechCrunch on Similarweb data (2025)
• Publisher experience and tracking methods for AI referrals: Plausible case study on AI referral traffic and optimization (2024)
• Practical extraction patterns and AEO structures: Amsive’s answer engine optimization guide (2025)