AI GEO is Here-oh: What to know about the new “SEO” for AI to ensure your website is ready for today’s world of tomorrow

GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, is the process of improving your website to increase its visibility by AI-driven platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Anthropic, and Google Gemini, among others. Like search engine optimization efforts for Google and Bing, GEO-optimized websites result in better indexing and ranking in AI models and search engines.

GEO is specifically geared towards AI platforms. While most law firms were disinclined to adopt AI in 2023, 2024 has seen a sea change towards full adoption. AI-driven search is now seen by most technology experts as the future of all search, with Gartner predicting that traditional search engine volume will decline 25% by 2026. AI is currently being used by Google (Gemini), Bing (Copilot), and other search applications. 

Optimizing your site for AI today can ensure you’re not playing catchup tomorrow.

AI models “learn” by using website crawlers (or “bots”) to scan websites and absorb information to grow their neural networks (for more on Bots, see our previous Spotlight on RubyLaw: RubyShield Protection). As more and more users rely on AI search applications for answers to their queries, GEO-optimizing your site to be visible to AI bots is vital to ensuring those users see your website in their search results. 

According to Cloudflare, the top bots are Bytespider, GPTBot, and Claudebot — but others like Perplexity AI are emerging with their search volume and popularity skyrocketing. AI bots absorb your content to increase their knowledge base and improve their AI capabilities. These bots are known to increase the frequency of website scans and become more aggressive over time. AI bots target websites with high traffic and volume, particularly those with the highest rankings in search results, and have implications that can impact your site.

With so many AI bots scanning websites (and new bots being created every day), selecting which AI bots to allow on your site becomes increasingly important. Some bots even circumvent existing bot management protocols, like robots.txt, bypassing them altogether. Further, such bots have been known to appear as actual browsers, attempting to hide their activity from detection. 

A large volume of bot traffic can overwhelm your website and cause performance issues with slow load times, hampering the user experience for your human site visitors. Coupled with malicious bots and security scanners, they may overwhelm servers and systems, causing an outage that brings the site down. Bots can also exploit vulnerabilities on your website and lead to data breaches, potentially compromising sensitive information. Further, website analytics metrics you may leverage for reporting and tracking ROI may be skewed by bot traffic.

Mixed in with AI bots are other bots from services you may employ intentionally to scan your site for SEO performance, accessibility compliance, or content distribution to other platforms. It’s essential to differentiate wanted bots from unwanted bots when protecting your website/data, although it can be challenging to differentiate between friendly and malicious bots.

Having a solid SEO strategy is a good foundation for GEO, as there is a significant overlap between SEO and GEO. Conduct an SEO audit of your site to ensure it is more likely to be included in AI platform search results. Implement GEO-specific content optimization updates, like citing sources, using quotes, and including statistics (to name a few).

Allow or restrict AI (and other) bots to protect your website by performing a thorough review and audit of bots that may be crawling your website. Confirm the list of bots to ensure intentional “good” bots are being allowed and unwanted bots are disallowed. Update your robots.txt file with opt-outs as an added precautionary measure.

Some AI bots may already be disallowed on your website. As technology evolves, it’s important to continuously monitor and maintain website access lists to keep them current.

For more information on this matter, please visit the following websites:

–Declare your AIndependence: block AI bots, scrapers and crawlers with a single click
–What is generative engine optimization (GEO)?
–Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) vs Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
–Understanding the Difference
–Artificial Intelligence Optimization (AIO)
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