What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

The shift happening right now

When someone searches "best dentist in Zürich" on Google, they get 10 blue links and decide for themselves. When they ask ChatGPT or Perplexity the same question, they get one answer · a short paragraph that names two or three practices and explains why.

Your business is either in that paragraph or it isn't.

This shift is what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) · also called Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) · addresses. Unlike traditional SEO, which optimises for ranking in a list, GEO optimises for *being cited* in an AI-generated answer.

Why GEO is different from SEO

Traditional SEO works because search engines crawl your site and rank pages by relevance and authority. The signals are: backlinks, on-page keywords, Core Web Vitals, structured data, and hundreds of other factors.

GEO works differently. AI engines don't rank pages · they synthesise answers. Their sources are:

• →Third-party review platforms (Google Maps, Doctorfmh, Medicosearch, Yelp)
• →Industry directories that the engine has indexed with high trust
• →Your own site · but only the parts a model can parse easily (structured data, clear QA pages)
• →News and blog citations where your business has been mentioned

McKinsey estimates that your own website accounts for only ~5–10% of what an AI engine draws on when answering a local-service query. The other 90–95% is third-party.

The four things AI engines look for

Based on Klaréo's scan data across 500+ Swiss SMEs, four factors drive whether an AI engine cites a business:

1. Structured data (schema.org)

Machines read JSON-LD, not prose. A dental practice with a complete LocalBusiness + Dentist schema gets extracted automatically; one without it relies on the model guessing from unstructured text.

2. Review presence and content

Quantity matters, but so does keyword signal. Reviews that mention specific procedures ("Bleaching", "Angstpatienten", "Notfalltermin") give AI engines something concrete to cite. Generic "sehr nett" reviews don't.

3. Multilingual coverage

In Switzerland, an AI engine responding in French won't cite a German-only website unless the business appears in French-language directories. DE/FR/IT/EN coverage is table stakes for Swiss businesses serving a mixed-language market.

4. AI-readable answer pages

A page that directly answers "what are your opening hours / do you accept new patients / what does [treatment] cost" is more likely to be cited than a homepage with no clear QA structure.

What GEO does not mean

GEO is not about:

• →Gaming prompt injection into AI models (this doesn't work and violates ToS)
• →Keyword stuffing for AI crawlers
• →Paying for placement in AI answers (no paid placement exists at the recommendation layer)

It's about making your business easy for AI systems to understand, trust, and cite · the same thing that makes it easy for humans to understand you.

The Swiss-specific dimension

Switzerland adds a layer of complexity that most GEO guides ignore: quadrilingual market, canton-level geography, and a high density of small practices competing in small geographic areas.

A dental practice in Zürich competes in German, French (expat community), and English (the 12% of Zürich residents who are English-speaking expats). Missing any one of those languages means missing roughly a third of AI-generated recommendations.

Klaréo's benchmark data shows the Swiss SME average AI-visibility score is 54/100. The top practices in each segment score 71–85. The gap is almost always structured data, multilingual coverage, and review signal quality.