GEO courseModule 1 of 10: Start HereLesson 1.1
What GEO Is: Mentions, Citations, Recommendations and Clicks
GEO (generative engine optimisation) is making your agency easy for AI search and AI assistants to find, understand, describe accurately and recommend. A generative engine is any tool that writes an answer in sentences instead of only listing links: Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity and Claude.
01What it is
Imagine asking a very well-read friend who’s best to sell your house. They don’t read out a list of shop signs. They give you a couple of names and say why. GEO is making sure that friend knows who you are, has your facts right, and has read good things about you.
I’m Morgan King, founder of Reyse. Before Reyse I worked in an estate agency, and I was promoted to branch manager of an underperforming branch with no management experience behind me. When I looked, the branch was missing from Google and from AI search results. People in our own area couldn’t find us, and when they asked AI tools who to use, we weren’t mentioned.
I taught myself SEO, then how AI search finds and describes agencies, and I fixed it one problem at a time. The branch went on to become one of the busiest agencies in the area.
That's why this course is written the way it is. I've done this from the inside, as an agent with a branch to fill, not as an outsider reading about it. Everything is explained in full, with no jargon standing in for an answer and no hype standing in for proof. Where something is uncertain, and in GEO a lot is, I'll say so.
Four outcomes, and they’re not the same thing
| Outcome | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Mention | The AI names your agency, with no link | "Agents in Hallowford include Oakfield Homes and…" |
| Citation | The AI shows your page or profile as a source | A numbered link to your fees page under the answer |
| Recommendation | The AI suggests you as a good choice, for the right reasons | "Oakfield Homes is well reviewed by landlords for…" |
| Click | The person follows a link to your website | A visit in Google Analytics from chatgpt.com |
You'll see other names for the same idea: AEO (answer engine optimisation), LLMO (large language model optimisation) and "AI SEO". Providers don't always use them the same way, so if someone pitches you AEO, ask what they actually mean. This course says GEO.
Why it matters to an agency
Sellers and landlords often decide who to invite for a valuation before they ring anyone. Ask an AI "who is the best estate agent in [town]?" and you get a short list of three or four names, not ten pages of links. In one UK snapshot (Whito, August 2026), ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode named 60 different agencies across six cities, and only 37% of them were named by more than one tool. The list is short, and the tools disagree.
The honest size of it
- Clicks from AI are small. Semrush's study of 50,000+ websites found AI sent under 0.15% of all web visits in 2025.
- Exposure is much bigger than clicks. In a YouGov poll of 2,000+ British adults, 53% said they often see AI summaries when they search.
- AI summaries take clicks. In Pew Research's US study, people clicked a result in 8% of searches that showed an AI summary, against 15% when there wasn't one.
- So GEO is mainly about being named, described correctly and chosen. It isn't yet a big traffic channel, and nothing shows AI replacing Google or the portals for most people. Keep the effort proportionate.
GEO is SEO, plus four things
Google says plainly that optimising for its AI features "is still SEO": they're built on the same ranking and quality systems. If your site can't be crawled, your Business Profile is wrong or your content is thin, no AI trick fixes it. That's why this course links to our free SEO course for the basics and only teaches what GEO adds:
| Area | Same as SEO | What GEO adds |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Pages crawled, indexed and allowed a snippet | AI crawlers, CDN defaults and Google's AI opt-out switch (module 3) |
| Identity | One clear business | One set of facts everywhere, so AI doesn't merge or confuse you (module 4) |
| Content | Helpful, local, original | Answer first, passages that stand alone, your own dated data (module 6) |
| Reputation | Links and reviews | Mentions on other sites, lists, press and forums, with or without links (module 7) |
| Measurement | Rankings and clicks | "Named in X of N runs" across many repeated prompts (module 2) |
| Risk | Avoiding penalties | AI repeating wrong facts about you, and fixing them at the source (module 8) |
How to read the percentages
Most lessons show a planning weight, such as "AI crawlers 5.5%". It's our estimate of where limited time pays off most, taken from the masterclass this course is built on. It is not a number from Google, OpenAI or Microsoft: none of them publishes a formula, and anyone who says they know the weights is guessing.
- Use them to decide what to do first when time is short.
- A small weight doesn't mean safe to ignore. One wrong setting with a small weight can switch off your whole site.
- A legal or accuracy problem, like a banned phrase on a live advert, gets fixed first whatever its weight.
- Reviews basics have their own course, and a few new technologies are left out on purpose, so the lessons add up to 98.5%, not 100%.
The evidence badge
Every lesson carries a badge saying how sure we are, because in GEO the gap between what's known and what's sold is wide.
| Badge | What it means |
|---|---|
| Official guidance | Google, Microsoft, an AI company or a regulator has said it |
| Study | Researchers saw a pattern. Usually correlation, which doesn't prove cause |
| Practitioner view | Experienced people say it works, without published proof |
| Common sense | Good practice with a clear reason, not tested for agents |
| Unproven | Nobody knows yet |
England first
Legal points are written for England. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have different rules on tenancies, home reports and some advertising duties. If you work there, treat any England-only point as a prompt to check your own nation's rule. Nothing here is legal advice: check anything legal with a qualified professional.
How every lesson works
Each lesson covers one thing. It opens with cards on why it matters, the evidence, and the one thing to do first. Then: what it is in plain English, a live demo or tool screen where one helps, why it matters to buyers, tenants, sellers and landlords, what Google, Bing and the AI assistants say, an agency example, how to test your own agency, how to fix it, and how often to check. Mark each lesson done as you finish it and your progress is saved on your device.
02Keep it up
That's lesson 1.1
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