If people are to find you online, the robots have to find you first. That's why it's important to optimize content and websites for AI.
In this article you can read:
- What GEO is
- How to optimize web content to be found, and used, by AI
- Why your websites are likely to get fewer visits
- What key AI words and phrases mean
Almost three years after OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public, Large Language Models (LLM) are changing the way we use the web.
It affects anyone who needs to be visible online.
Soon, ranking high on Google won’t be enough. To stay visible, your content must first be found and used by AI services—and mastering that is its own discipline.
The most common name for the field is GEO , which stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It means optimizing web content for generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Google's AI summary (AIO).
How do you optimize for AI?
GEO is very similar to "classic" search engine optimization (SEO), which is primarily about being found in Google searches. The biggest difference is that the AIs read and select content in a far more sophisticated way than the traditional algorithms. This means that there are several aspects to consider if you want people to find you and your services or products through AI searches.
First, the brief summary: To be visible in AI searches, content must be found and used by AI crawlers and AI agents (see FAQ for definition). This requires good, structured and preferably original content that is technically accessible to the AIs.
Then the long summary:
14 tips to make AI like you
- Create good, original content: AI models emphasize E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness). This means they prefer content that they perceive as trustworthy, and they love experienced experts. So don't just retell things they can find elsewhere, show that you know what you're talking about, back up claims with sources and examples, showcase your experience and most importantly bring something new to the table. If you or your organization actually produce new knowledge, it's golden to showcase this on your website.
- Get the point across at the start: Do as the journalists do, not as the crime and suspense writers: Summarize the main point(s) at the start of the text, so the robots (and humans) quickly understand what the text is about. Here you can read our tips for writing so that both people and AI understand what you mean.
- Loosely typed keywords are not enough: AIs analyze semantics and context, not individual words. It doesn't help to use keywords in the title and then scatter them a few times throughout the text. You need to actually answer what the AI thinks the reader is wondering.
- Use subheadings, paragraphs and bullet points: It's important that the text is easy and quick for the robots to scan through, so use the toolbox at your disposal to break it up. This is also a very good tip when writing for humans.
- Use the correct H-hierarchy: This means that titles should be coded as titles, subtitles as subtitles. body text as body text. The information should be structured hierarchically. In other words, H1 is the highest in the hierarchy, and then it goes down in "importance". This is essential because the robots read the code on the web pages, not what they look like to us. They need to be able to quickly scan the content, understand it and find what is important for them to retrieve.
- Alt text is not an option, it's a requirement: Robots don't look at images, they read the meta information. That's why you must ALWAYS write alt text on images. This is where you describe what and who is in the image.
- Use FAQs: AI crawlers and agents love anything that allows them to get answers and an overview quickly. That's why FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) sections are worth their weight in gold.
- AI loves lists: Ranking highly on Tripadvisor, Yelp, Expedia, Lonely Planet, Trustpilot and Finn is still worth its weight in gold. AIs draw from such lists when generating answers and when evaluating an alternative.
- Get cited: If you are cited by trustworthy websites, such as reputable online newspapers and industry websites, the AIs also gain trust in you.
- Give the robots access: There are good reasons to block AI crawlers from accessing your content, but if the AI services are to elevate you, the crawlers MUST have access. Make sure that your pages are indexed and that there are no blocks in place.
• Give search engine crawlers an overview: Your website must have a sitemap.xml and a robots.txt file. These are text files that, respectively, provide crawlers with an overview of important pages on the site and tell them which pages they can and cannot crawl. You should also use what is known as structured data (schema markup). This is code that helps crawlers and agents understand what the content is about. For example, the code can indicate that an FAQ section is actually an FAQ section.
- Let the robots work fast: AIs prioritize content that loads quickly and is machine-readable.
- Don't forget SEO: Being top-ranked in Google and Bing is still valuable. More AI models are using traditional search engines to find information (and lots of people, no less).
Do your websites have fewer clicks?
In the good old days, we searched on Google and the algorithms gave us a list of websites where we could find the answer ourselves. We clicked in, and the website got traffic. That's no longer the case. LLM services answer you themselves, without you having to click through to the source pages. In many ways, ChatGPT has set the standard that "everyone" must follow. In May 2024, Google also jumped on the bandwagon with its AI summaries. Now we get answers to our questions right in the palm of our hands, without having to click into the websites where the information comes from.
Above you see an example of Google's AI summary (AIO). Illustration: Screenshot from Google.
This, of course, drastically affects web traffic.
According to HubSpot's 2025 edition of "The State of Marketing" report, around half of the marketers surveyed have experienced a drop in online traffic. The figure is roughly the same for both B2C and B2B companies.
Many media houses in particular are shaking in their boots. The industry has never quite solved the funding problem after advertising and subscription revenues collapsed when news moved from paper to online. US news media reportedly experienced a drop in traffic of as much as 40 percent after Google launched its AI summary in May 2024. According to the New York Post, Forbes lost 40 percent of its traffic in one year, while CNN lost 24 percent. It's hard to say for sure how much of the drop is due to AI features, but in all likelihood it has at least contributed.
According to Kantar's quarterly figures, the largest online newspapers and websites in Norway have also lost traffic. However, the drop is nowhere near as dramatic as it appears to be for many American media. "We can't attribute the decline with certainty to AI summaries and LLMs, but it's likely that they have at least affected how many people click on the pages.
The health portal NHI.no has noticed a decline in traffic that it directly links to Google's AI summaries. According to kode24, several websites have done the same.
Ranking high in Google simply generates less traffic than it used to, and if we are to believe the analysis company Authoritas, we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. According to The Guardian, they have found that websites that used to be at the top of the search results lose an average of 79 percent of their traffic if they fall below the AI summary.
For the record, Google believes that Authoritas is wrong.
FAQ about GEO
What is GEO?
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the most commonly used term to describe how to optimize web content so that it is found, and actually used, by generative AI solutions such as ChatGPT and Google's AI summaries. The phenomenon is also referred to by other abbreviations that in practice cover much the same thing, including AEO (Answer Engine Optimization), SOFA (Search Optimization for AI), LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization), LLM SEO (Large Language Model Search Engine Optimization) and AI SEO (Artificial Intelligence Search Engine Optimization).
What is LLM?
An LLM (Large Language Model) is a language model trained on huge amounts of text to understand, summarize and create language similar to how humans write and speak. An LLM is the engine that drives generative AI services, enabling them to understand questions and produce new content.
What is AIO?
AIO stands for AI Overview and is widely used to describe Google's AI summary in search results. In some contexts, it is also used as an abbreviation for AI Optimization.
Why is GEO important?
GEO is all about making content visible in AI-generated responses. Without working systematically with GEO, you risk your content not being used or cited by tools like ChatGPT or Google's AI summaries.
What is an AI agent?
An AI agent uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks independently, such as retrieving information or suggesting solutions. In a GEO context, this is important because agents often base their answers on AI-generated sources - and good GEO increases the chance that your content will be used and shared further.
What is an AI crawler?
An AI crawler is a program that systematically collects content from the web so that AI models can learn from it and use it in their responses. They work in much the same way as Google's search engine crawlers.
What is generative AI?
Generative AI is AI technology that creates new content, such as text, images, audio, video and code, based on patterns it has learned from training data. Generative AI, such as ChatGPT, Grok and Claude, gives you direct answers to your questions instead of just showing links. It can also customize answers, provide ratings and compare options.
We're in the midst of a revolution we've only seen the beginning of. AI is becoming increasingly important to how people find, evaluate and compare information, services and products.
If you want to be visible in the future, you need to work systematically with AI optimization.
Sources:
- New York Magazine: SEO Is Dead. Say Hello to GEO,
- Search Engine Journal: How To Win In Generative Engine Optimization (GEO),
- Aggarwal, Pranjal, et al: GEO: Generative Engine Optimization,
- HubSpot: The State of Marketing 2025,
- Manhattan Strategies: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Best Practices for Fortune 100 Marketers,
- HubSpot: Generative engine optimization: What we know so far,
- The Wall Street Journal: AI Has Upended the Search Game. Marketers Are Scrambling to Catch Up,
- New York Post: Top news sites suffer drastic drop in web traffic since Google added AI search,
- Code24: Norwegian websites are feeling the AI effect,
- The Guardian: AI summaries cause 'devastating' drop in audiences,
- Kantar: Official digital figures for Q4 2024
- And not least all the smart people at Alf Gundersen.
Disclaimer: Yes, we have used both ChatGPT 5 and Google's AI summary in the work on this article. Of course.