Settr Search
What is generative engine optimization?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting AI chat apps like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Microsoft Copilot to mention, cite and recommend your business when people ask for one, and measuring how often they do.
From $79/month
How it works
How do AI apps choose who to name?Each one searches first.
When someone asks an AI app for a business, it usually searches the web, reads what it finds and names its sources. So GEO starts with SEO: a site their crawlers can reach, pages worth citing, and a business described the same way everywhere.
The term comes from a 2024 research paper (Aggarwal and others, KDD 2024). Where each app looks, and which crawler it sends, is in the table below.
| App | Where it looks | Its search crawler |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT | Where it looksOpenAI's own crawl plus other search sources. Studies disagree on how much overlaps with Bing or Google. | Its search crawlerOAI-SearchBot |
| Perplexity | Where it looksIts own index plus live fetches. | Its search crawlerPerplexityBot |
| Claude | Where it looksLive web search. | Its search crawlerClaude-SearchBot |
| Gemini | Where it looksGoogle Search. | Its search crawlerGooglebotThe separate Google-Extended setting covers Gemini's other uses of your pages. |
| Microsoft Copilot | Where it looksBing's index. | Its search crawlerBingbot |
Access
Can AI crawlers reach your site?We check every week.
OpenAI says sites that block OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT’s search answers. Firewalls and CDNs can block AI crawlers on their own settings, without anyone deciding to.
The Answers agent reads your robots.txt and tests how your site responds to each search crawler every week, then tells you exactly what to change. Training bots are a separate choice, and yours to make.
Beyond your site
The answer cites sources.We find out which ones.
AI apps show the sources they used. The Answers agent records which sites they cite when they answer your customers' questions.
The answers cite a directory you are missing from: Links takes it. They quote a page that answers what yours does not: Content takes it. They name businesses with more reviews: Local takes it.
Measurement
AI answers change every time.So we count, not rank.
Ask an AI app the same question twice and you can get a different list. In a SparkToro study, ChatGPT and Google’s AI returned the same list of brands less than once in a hundred runs. A screenshot of one answer means very little.
Settr Search runs your customers’ questions every week across several AI apps and reports how often you were named and cited, and who was named instead, with the number of runs beside every figure. The apps’ consumer versions can differ from what we measure through their official interfaces, and the report says so.
In the room
Twenty runs in.Every gap gets an owner.
The GEO week opens on the Answers agent’s run grid: which questions named you, in which apps. Then Answers checks whether AI crawlers can reach you and hands each gap to the agent who owns it: Technical for a crawler setting, Content for a missing answer, Links for a listing. Each one answers in the thread.
You see the same stream the agents work from. Anything public waits for your approval, and the weekly report shows AI answers as rates with the number of runs.
The honest part
No tricks.There are none.
Much of what is sold as AI optimization has no evidence behind it. Here is what we leave out, and why.
A guaranteed mention in ChatGPT.
llms.txt as a ranking factor.
Schema markup as a shortcut to citations.
Posts about you on Reddit or forums written by bots.
Questions
GEO questions
What is generative engine optimization?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the work of getting AI chat apps such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity to mention, cite and recommend your business. It builds on SEO, because these apps search the web before they answer, and adds the goal of being named in the answer itself.
Is GEO different from SEO?
GEO builds on SEO rather than replacing it. AI apps search the web first, so being crawlable, indexed and trusted still comes first. What GEO adds is the goal, which is being named and cited inside the answer, and the measurement, which is tracking how often that happens across apps.
How do you measure visibility in ChatGPT and other AI apps?
We run a fixed set of questions your customers would ask, every week, across several AI apps through their official interfaces. We record whether you are named, whether your site is cited and which competitors appear. Results are reported as rates with the number of runs, averaged over four weeks, because single answers vary. What a logged-in person sees in the app can differ, and we say so.
Can you guarantee ChatGPT will recommend my business?
No. Answers change from run to run, and every app chooses its own sources. What we can do is make sure nothing technical is blocking you, give the apps clear facts to quote, and show you the trend honestly.
Does llms.txt help?
Not as far as anyone can show. Google says it does not use it, and no major AI company has confirmed reading it. We publish one because it costs nothing, and we never count it as a result.
Which AI apps does Settr Search track?
The major AI apps your customers use, chosen and listed in your plan. Every figure in your report names the app it came from and the number of runs behind it.