Five signals carry most of the weight - and you can check all five in one sitting.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of getting your pages cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. The stakes are already here: 1 billion people use ChatGPT monthly (Reuters, May 2026), and 48-55% of Google searches show an AI answer before any link (BrightEdge). This guide covers the five signals we weight, the order we would fix them in, and a checklist that fits in one sitting. Nobody can guarantee you a citation — the signals we look for are public, so what to change is knowable, and the checklist shows you where you stand today.
Which five signals decide whether AI cites you?
The short answer: structured data, entity signals, content depth, citation patterns and freshness signals. Four of the five are checkable from outside today; the fifth, freshness, you check on your own page. The checklist below fits in one sitting.
- Structured data (JSON-LD): schema does not win a citation on its own — Google states that structured data is not required for its generative AI features, and that no special schema is needed. It still helps, because it tells a machine plainly what the page is and who published it. FAQPage, HowTo, Article and Organization are the types we check.
- Entity Signals (sameAs): Links to LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Crunchbase and your own profiles are how a machine can tell you are a real organisation. An answer engine skips a site it cannot attribute.
- Content depth: enough of a page to answer the question properly. Google's own guidance says there is no ideal page length, so we do not score a word count — what matters is that the page covers the question a buyer actually asks, section by section.
- Citation Patterns: In the citations we check, sites that link to authoritative sources and name their authors are cited more. Attribution is what makes a source checkable.
- Freshness Signals: dateModified and regular updates are how a machine is told your information is current. Stale content comes up less often.
Quick GEO Checklist
- Do you have JSON-LD structured data? (Test with Google's Rich Results Test)
- Do you have Organization schema with sameAs links?
- Does the page cover the question properly, with clear H2 headings? (Google: no ideal word count)
- Do your pages have FAQPage or HowTo schema where relevant?
- Are Open Graph tags (og:title, og:description) present?
- Do blog posts show author name and bio?
- Is your site using HTTPS?