Search behavior is splitting into two tracks: the classic list of blue links, and an AI-generated summary sitting above or instead of it - Google's AI Overviews, ChatGPT's browsing mode, and Perplexity's cited answers. Showing up in that second track takes some of the same work as regular SEO, plus a few things that are genuinely new.
Why search intent matters even more here
An AI summarizer is trying to directly answer a question, not just rank a page about it - so content that clearly and directly answers a specific question near the top, before the broader context, tends to get pulled into these summaries more often than content that makes the reader wait several paragraphs for the actual answer.
What seems to help with citation
Clear, well-structured content with genuine subject-matter specificity (not generic rehashed advice) is what these systems tend to pull from and cite. FAQ-formatted sections work well here too, for the same structural reason they help with Google's classic FAQ snippets - a direct question followed by a direct answer is exactly the shape these tools are looking to extract.
Is this a replacement for regular SEO?
No - the fundamentals (genuinely useful content, clean technical setup, a site that's actually indexed and crawlable) are still the foundation. GEO is better thought of as an additional layer on top of that foundation, not a separate strategy that replaces it. If your classic SEO basics aren't solid, optimizing for AI citation won't make up for it.
A couple of practical tools
Our Search Engine Spider Simulator shows you roughly what a crawler sees when it reads your page - useful for spotting content that's hidden behind JavaScript a simpler crawler (or an AI system with limited rendering) might not pick up. And if you haven't yet, consider setting up an llms.txt file, a newer, lightweight way to give AI crawlers a clean summary of your site's structure.
Getting the on-page basics right first still matters most - see our on-page SEO fundamentals guide if you haven't covered those yet.