What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)?
When people ask Doubao, DeepSeek, Qwen, or Yuanbao directly, whether a brand gets mentioned, understood, and recommended depends on the model’s answer. This page explains what GEO is, how it differs from SEO, and how PeakGEO measures a brand’s AI visibility.
What GEO means
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the work of getting a brand accurately mentioned, understood, and recommended in AI-generated answers.
It starts from the questions real users ask AI, looks at how models describe and compare the brand, and then strengthens the content and evidence behind it. PeakGEO covers the diagnosis, action planning, and retesting parts of that work.
How GEO differs from SEO
SEO mainly concerns discovery and access in search results. GEO concerns how generative answers mention, understand, and cite brands. They address different surfaces, and GEO does not replace SEO.
| Dimension | SEO | GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Where it plays out | Discovery and access on search results pages | Mentions, understanding, and citations in generative answers |
| Typical optimization targets | Pages, links, technical indexing | Question coverage, citable evidence, consistent brand messaging |
| Where PeakGEO fits | Does not replace SEO | Analyzes AI visibility from questions and model answers |
How PeakGEO measures AI visibility
PeakGEO counts each answer from one model to one question as a unit. Organic mention rate, organic recommendation rate, and risk mention rate count only unbranded questions, and are read alongside cited sources and competitor share of voice.
- Organic mention rate
- The share of answers to unbranded questions that mention the brand.
- Organic recommendation rate
- The share of answers in the same scope that explicitly recommend the brand. “A, B, and C are available” only names brands; “Based on customer needs, consider A first” explicitly recommends one.
- Risk mention rate
- The share of answers in the same scope that mention the brand in a negative or risk context.
- Share of voice
- Your brand’s share of all mentions across your brand and tracked competitors. If your brand is mentioned in 4 of 10 answers and two competitors are mentioned 5 times in total, your mention rate is 40% and your share of voice is 4/9, about 44.4%. Share of voice is not market share.
- 95% confidence interval
- Model answers fluctuate, so every rate comes with a 95% confidence interval and a rate with fewer than 20 valid answers has a wide interval and is for reference only. Failed, timed-out, and empty answers are excluded, and a rate with no valid answers shows as “no valid answers” rather than 0%.
Why questions that name the brand don’t count toward mention rate
When a question already names the brand, the answer will mention it, which says nothing about whether users can discover the brand on their own.
Branded check questions show how AI describes and evaluates the brand, while mention and recommendation rates count only unbranded questions.
Question count and models covered
The formal question set targets 24 to 40 questions grouped by theme, with at least 10 unbranded discovery questions, at least 10 unbranded recommendation questions, and a few branded check questions. The count is a coverage target, not a quota to fill, and you can review and edit every question before the diagnosis starts.
PeakGEO focuses on Chinese AI search and covers Doubao, DeepSeek, Qwen, Yuanbao, Kimi, ERNIE, Zhipu Qingyan, iFlytek Spark, ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok. You choose which models to observe for each diagnosis and compare how your brand performs across them on the same set of questions.
GEO cannot guarantee a recommendation
Nobody controls what a model answers. PeakGEO delivers a diagnosis, evidence-based recommendations, and retests that show where you stand, what is worth adding, and how results change under comparable conditions, without promising a higher recommendation rate.
A retest compares only the same question on the same model where both rounds returned results under the same conditions. If the confidence intervals overlap, the result is reported as indistinguishable, and even a real change shows only what the retest observed, not that a specific action caused it.
PeakGEO does not publish content for you: once content passes its quality check, you publish it on your own site or channels.