GEO: Getting Started

AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot are changing how people search. Instead of browsing links, users now get direct, AI-generated answers. That means your brand’s visibility depends less on traditional rankings and more on whether you’re cited or mentioned inside those answers.

What is GEO?

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of making sure your brand shows up in AI-powered responses. Instead of optimizing only for Google search results, GEO focuses on where it really matters today: being referenced and trusted by AI systems when customers ask about your industry, products, or services.

AI engines often highlight just a few brands. If you’re missing from those mentions, you risk being invisible, even if your website ranks well in traditional search.

Writesonic gives you the tools to monitor and improve your brand’s presence across AI platforms. With Writesonic, you can:

• Track when and where your brand is cited in AI-generated answers.
• Benchmark against competitors to see who’s winning visibility you’re missing.
• Spot gaps where competitors are mentioned but you’re absent.
• Take action with clear, AI-powered recommendations to improve your citations.

In short, GEO helps you stay visible, competitive, and trusted in the new era of AI-driven search.

What You’ll Learn in This Guide

This article will walk you through:

1. Setting up your first GEO project: connecting your site, choosing topics, prompts, and competitors.
2. Exploring the GEO dashboard: understanding the key metrics that reveal your AI visibility.
3. Prioritizing what matters and taking action: which numbers and insights to focus on first and how to improve your AI visibility
4. Best practices for GEO: proven ways to strengthen your visibility and stay competitive.
5. Measuring GEO success: how to check the impact of your GEO strategies

Together, these steps will give you everything you need to move from setup to strategy. You’ll start by creating your first project, then learn how to interpret your visibility metrics, and finally discover how to turn those insights into action.

When you log in to Writesonic, the first thing you’ll do is set up your project. This project is the foundation of everything GEO will track for you. Let’s walk through the process step by step.

Step 1: Create Your First GEO Project

Start by entering your website URL for which you want to monitor and improve AI visibility.

For most users, that’s your homepage, like https://www.yoursite.com. This tells GEO which brand it should be monitoring across AI search engines.

Once you’ve entered your website, set the Scope. This setting controls how much of your site GEO should analyze.

By default, it’s set to Domain, which means GEO will cover your entire site.

If you don’t need everything tracked, narrow it down to:

• Select Exact URL if you want to monitor a single page, like a campaign landing page.
• Choose Path when you want to track only a section of the site, such as /blog/ or /shop/.
• Pick Subdomain if you want to track only one subdomain, like shop.yoursite.com.

Still unsure? Stick with Domain. It’ll give you a complete view of your website, all URLs, paths, and subdomains included.

Next, choose your Primary Target Location.

This is the country or region where you want GEO to monitor AI visibility. If your business mostly serves US customers, select United States.

If you work across multiple regions, just pick the most important market to begin. You can add more regions later (for enterprise users only).

Finally, give your project a Name. Keep it simple and descriptive, like Your Brand — US or Your Brand — Europe.

Once everything is filled out, click Continue.

Choose How You Want to Get Started

You’ll be able to choose from two options based on how you’d like to use Writesonic:

• SEO and Content Optimization: If you want to use Writesonic for traditional keyword research and on-page SEO.
• Optimize for AI Search Engines: If you want to use Writesonic for GEO. It’s designed to track your brand’s visibility inside generative AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Bing Copilot.

As we are discussing how to set up your account for GEO, let’s choose the Optimize for AI Search Engines option.

Click Continue and GEO will start preparing your first AI visibility snapshot.

Once the setup is complete, it’s time to tell GEO what your business is about.

Choose Your Topics

You’ll be asked to choose 2 to 10 topics that best describe what you do or what categories you want to compete in. These topics are also later used to craft prompts that you need to track for your business.

You can choose from a list of predefined topics. These are automatically suggested by GEO based on an AI analysis of your website and brand.

Or, you can add topics yourself. Type in a topic in the entry field and click Add to include it in your list.

Select at least two topics to continue, and you can choose up to ten.

Pro Tip: When choosing topics, think about the words your customers would actually use when asking about your products or services.

For example, instead of your product name “Model X Jacket,” you might add “affordable winter jackets” or “sustainable outerwear.” In SaaS, instead of “AppPro Suite,” you might add “AI writing tools” or “SEO automation software.”

Review and Refine Your Prompts

After you’ve added your topics, GEO automatically generates a set of prompts. These prompts represent the kinds of questions people might ask in AI search engines — and they’re what GEO will monitor to see when and where your brand shows up.

GEO uses your chosen topics to build this list automatically, so you get an immediate sense of the kinds of answers where your brand could (or should) appear.

Take a few minutes to go through the list. Prompts are categorized based on the topics you chose earlier, so it’s easier to sort through.

Many of the prompts will be directly relevant, but you may also spot some that don’t fit your focus. If a prompt isn’t useful, you can simply deselect it.

You can also add your own prompts. Just click on the Add Prompt button, type in your prompt, and click on Save Prompt.

You can check the newly added prompt by scrolling to the bottom of the list.

Add Your Competitors

After you’ve selected the required prompts, the next step is adding your competitors.

This is important because GEO doesn’t just show you how you appear in AI search results — it also benchmarks you against others in your space. That way, you can see where your brand is cited, where competitors are mentioned instead, and what opportunities you may be missing.

GEO will automatically show you a list of competitors it has identified for your brand. These are suggested based on AI’s analysis of your website, industry, and market.

Review the list carefully. You can also manually add competitors by pasting their website URL into the field and clicking Add.

You don’t need to add everyone at once. Even starting with a few key competitors will give you meaningful comparisons.

Later, you can always edit the project to expand the list as your strategy grows.

Once you’re happy with the competitor list click Continue to move ahead.

GEO will then begin fetching your AI search insights. You’ll see a short loading screen while the system pulls data from AI engines.

This step is where everything comes together: your website, chosen scope, topics, prompts, and competitors. GEO now uses that foundation to map out how you and your competitors show up in generative AI answers.

Once this process is complete, you’ll land inside your dashboard where you can explore your first set of AI visibility results.

The report can take a few minutes to generate. Don’t want to wait around? Explore other tools like the AI Article Writer or SEO & Content AI Agent in the meantime. You’ll get a notification once the AI search insights report is ready.

Now that your dashboard is live, you’re ready to start exploring your AI visibility. From here, you can dive deeper into specific features to understand how they work and what they mean for your brand.

Step 2: Explore Your Writesonic Dashboard

Writesonic provides a granular view of your AI visibility. It shows you exactly which prompts you are mentioned and cited in, where your competitors are present but not you, and what you can do to get cited in those prompts as well.

But at first glance, the number of metrics and pages displayed can be confusing. If you’re new to GEO, you can focus on some key metrics and pages to begin with.

Let’s start with the core metrics.

Core Metrics

These are the numbers you see first on your dashboard. They give a quick snapshot of how your brand is performing in AI search.

• Visibility gives you the percentage of prompts that mention your brand in the directly in the generated answers. Ideally, this should be green, as it indicates a good AI presence. But if you’ve still not optimized for GEO, your visibility might be low and in red.

  Use this metric as a measure of success for any GEO strategies you implement to increase your brand mentions.

• Answers Mentioning Me corresponds to the visibility % and shows you the exact number of answers that mention your brand. This is relative to the prompts you’ve configured and there’s no ideal number of answers here.

• The Citations section shows you all the AI-answers where your brand’s website is cited as a source. You can see:

  • Total pages cited: All pages (yours and competitors’) that AI engines are pulling from.
  • My pages cited: The number of your site’s pages cited in AI answers.
  • Pages mentioning me: Third-party or competitor pages that are cited and also mention your brand in their content

• The Competitor Analysis section shows you a quick overview of how you perform against your competitors:

  • Market share: The percentage of overall AI visibility you hold compared to competitors.
  • Market position: Your ranking among competitors based on visibility.

Clicking on any of these gives you a more detailed view of that particular metric.

For example, clicking on the Total Pages Cited leads to the All Citations page:

You can also check how your brand is doing for the past week or month in the Visibility Trends Over Time section:

Other sections like the AI Visibility Leaderboard, Platform-wise Brand Visibility, Market Share, etc.. help understand the specifics.

Want more details about a specific metric? The sidebar links to several pages that go into detail about your brand’s sentiment, citations, and mentions:

Now we’ve covered exactly what data you can view through Writesonic. But what numbers to prioritize and how to actually build workflows? Let’s see in the next section.

Step 3: Prioritize and take action

Your dashboard shows a lot of data, but you don’t need to act on everything at once. The most important things to focus on are:

• Mentions: how many AI answers include your brand. Use the Visibility % as your main measure here.
• Citations: how often your site is being used as a source. Compare My Pages Cited with Total Pages Cited. The closer your number is to the total, the stronger your brand authority.

Think of mentions as awareness and citations as trust. To grow in GEO, you need both.

Simple Workflows to Take Action

Here are a few easy workflows that connect what you see in the dashboard to real actions you can take:

• Low visibility % (not enough mentions)

  Go to the Citation Opportunities page. This shows sites that are already cited in AI answers but don’t mention your brand.

  Click on the Total Opportunities number next to a domain, and you’ll see the exact pages.

  Reach out to those sites and ask to get your brand included. Since those pages are already trusted by AI, adding your brand increases your chance of being mentioned in the same answers.

• Very few of your own pages are cited

  If My Pages Cited is much lower than Total Pages Cited, it means competitors’ pages are being chosen instead.

  Review those competitor pages directly: look at how they’re structured, what kind of information they provide, and why AI might prefer them.

  Then, strengthen your own content to match or improve upon those qualities.

• Mentions are there, but not on the right topics

  Sometimes you’ll see mentions, but not in the areas that matter most for your business.

  Go back to your Topics and Prompts setup. Adjust your topics or add new prompts that match how customers actually search, so you track the areas where you want visibility.

You don’t have to figure out all the next steps on your own. The Action Center automatically analyzes your data and suggests the highest-impact things to do.

Using the Action Center

The Action Center highlights the most impactful actions you can take to boost visibility. It groups tasks by category: like getting external mentions, boosting content visibility, or fixing technical issues, and shows the effort required, impact level, and the number of action items available.

Example: Getting External Mentions

Let’s take an example from the Action Center: “Get mentioned on high-authority third-party sites.”

1. Click Address now next to this action.
2. You’ll see a list of specific pages that are already cited in AI answers but don’t mention your brand. These are golden opportunities because AI engines already trust these pages.
3. From here, you can view details like domain authority, the number of missed answers, and which platforms are pulling from those pages.
4. GEO even gives you a ready-made outreach workflow. Click on the Draft Email button, and you’ll see guidance on how to find the right contact plus a personalized email draft you can send to request inclusion of your brand.

By following this process, you’re targeting the exact sources that influence AI-generated answers without any guesswork.

Step 4: Best practices for GEO

The workflows and Action Center give you clear, immediate steps to improve your visibility. But GEO isn’t just about quick fixes — long-term success comes from following best practices that make your brand more trustworthy to AI engines.

Here are a few practices to build into your ongoing strategy:

Structure your content for clarity

AI engines look for clear, well-organized content they can trust when generating answers. Use:

• Short, descriptive headings and subheadings.
• Concise paragraphs that answer questions directly.
• Lists, tables, and bullet points where it makes sense.

This makes your content easier for AI to parse and cite, increasing the chances it will show up in answers.

Strengthen your presence on authoritative sites

AI engines lean heavily on trusted, high-authority domains. Being mentioned on these sites improves your odds of showing up in generative answers. Beyond outreach through the Action Center, look for opportunities like:

• Guest contributions to industry publications.
• Getting featured in expert roundups or comparison articles.
• Collaborating with partners who already rank well.

Don’t ignore community platforms

Communities like Reddit, Quora, and niche forums are often cited in AI answers, especially for questions where people want real experiences or peer advice. Building a presence there by contributing genuine, helpful input can get your brand into answers indirectly, even when your website isn’t cited.

Keep refreshing and expanding content

Outdated pages are less likely to be trusted by AI engines. Review your cited pages regularly, add new data or insights, and expand coverage of important topics. Think of this as maintaining your “AI-facing” authority over time.

Align with customer language

Remember: AI engines mirror how people search and ask questions. Use the same words and phrasing your customers do in their queries. This not only improves your relevance but also increases the chance that AI connects your brand to the right prompts.

Step 5: Measuring GEO Success

After you’ve implemented workflows and followed best practices, the next step is to measure whether your efforts are paying off. GEO makes this straightforward by surfacing key metrics on your dashboard that reveal both progress and impact.

Here’s what to track:

Visibility Percentage

This is your primary success metric. If your visibility score is increasing over time, it means your brand is appearing in more AI answers. Think of it as your “AI market share of mentions.” Any rise here is a clear sign your optimizations are working.

Answers Mentioning Me

This shows the raw number of AI answers that include your brand. Look for steady growth in this number across reporting periods. If it’s flat or declining, revisit your prompts or refresh content to capture more mentions.

My Pages Cited

This tells you how many of your own pages are being used as sources. Growth here means AI engines are trusting your content more often. Pay special attention to which pages are being cited — those pages are your strongest assets and worth updating regularly to keep their authority.

Market Share and Market Position

These competitor metrics reveal if you’re gaining ground relative to others in your space. If your market share is climbing or your position is improving, it means you’re not just improving visibility, you’re outpacing competitors.

Visibility Trends Over Time

Finally, look at the trend graph. This shows the trajectory of your performance: whether you’re consistently moving upward, holding steady, or losing ground. Even small improvements in the line over time show your strategy is working.