Rank in the answer, not just the results.
Rankora's GEO tools put real buyer questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, read back every answer and every source they cited, and tell you who owns that answer — and what it would take for it to be you.
An AI answer has no page two to climb.
Rank tracking answers one question: where does my URL sit in a list of ten blue links. An AI answer is not a list. It is a paragraph that names two or three sources and silently discards everything else — and a site that is ranking well can be absent from it entirely.
That absence is invisible to every tool built for the old surface. Nothing in a rank tracker, a backlink index or a crawl report tells you that ChatGPT answered your most commercial query by citing three directories and a competitor's comparison page. The only way to know is to ask the engines and read what comes back, which is exactly what these tools do.
What is GEO, and how is it different from SEO?
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of earning mentions and citations inside answers written by AI systems — ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews — rather than positions in a ranked list of links. Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the page-level half of it: structuring a page so an engine can lift a clean, correct answer straight out of it. SEO gets you into the index the engine searches; GEO decides whether it quotes you once you are there.
Quick answer
SEO competes for a position in a list. GEO competes to be the source a generated answer names. The two share an index and almost nothing else: being first on Google does not make you the citation, and being the citation does not require being first.
- AEO — answer engine optimisation
- Page-side. Can an engine find a clean, self-contained answer on this page and lift it without editing? Measured against seven checks on the page itself, so the score is a fact about your HTML rather than an opinion about your content.
- GEO — generative engine optimisation
- Market-side. Of all the sources the engines could reach for on this question, which do they actually choose, how often, and where do you sit among them? Measured by asking the engines and counting what they cite.
- Mention vs. citation
- Conflating these is the usual mistake. Being named in the prose is recognition. Being in the citation list is a link that sends traffic. A site can easily have one without the other, so Rankora reports them as two separate numbers and never averages them together.
Four answer engines, asked directly
ChatGPT
gpt-5.4-mini
The largest consumer answer surface. Asked with web search on, so the citations are live retrieval rather than training recall.
Gemini
gemini-3.6-flash
Shares retrieval behaviour with Google's AI Overviews, which makes it the closest read available on how the Google answer surface treats your topic.
Claude
claude-sonnet-5
Noticeably more selective about sources, so a Claude citation is a useful signal that a page reads as authoritative rather than merely optimised.
Perplexity
sonar-pro
Citation-first by design and the heaviest citer of the four, which makes it the best view of the long tail of sources competing on a question.
Every engine is asked the same prompt, through a model that supports web search, and the answer is read back verbatim with its annotations. Nothing here infers visibility from rankings or schema — and if an engine fails to answer, the run records the gap rather than scoring it as a zero.
How a GEO run works
- /01
Start from a keyword or a URL
A keyword is enough on its own — no site required. With a URL the run also measures where that site sits inside the answer space; without one it maps who owns the question, which stands as a result in itself.
- /02
Prompts get written
Most prompts deliberately do not name your brand. A prompt naming you only measures whether the model has heard of you; the useful question is the one a buyer types before they know you exist.
- /03
Every engine answers every prompt
Parallel across engines so they do not queue behind each other, one prompt at a time so a burst cannot trip a rate limit and fail the whole run.
- /04
Redirect wrappers get resolved
Engines often cite through a wrapper rather than the real source. Those are followed to their destination before anything is counted — judging the wrapper would report your own site as uncited.
- /05
Citations get counted and ranked
Sources rank by how many engines cite each domain first and total citations second, with the specific cited URLs kept underneath. A domain all four engines reach for beats one a single engine cited five times.
- /06
An analyst reads the evidence
The collected answers, the readiness score and the ranked sources go to a model that returns a verdict, the likely reasons you were passed over, and four to eight prioritised actions — working only from the evidence in the run.
Eight figures, every one counted
Mention rate
The share of answers naming your brand or domain anywhere in the prose. Recognition, not traffic.
Citation rate
The share of answers listing you as a source. This is the half that sends a visitor.
Share of citations
Your citations as a percentage of every citation in the run — your slice of the whole answer space, not a position in it.
Your rank among sources
Where you place in the ranked source list. The single number that says whether you are in the conversation at all.
Position in the answer
How far into the text your first mention lands. Being named in the opening sentence is worth more than a footnote, and the difference is invisible in a yes or no.
Sub-queries run
The searches each engine chose to run on its own before answering. This is the real keyword set behind the question, and it is rarely the one you targeted.
Competing domains
Every source the engines reached for, ranked, with the exact pages cited. Knowing a directory is cited is interesting; knowing which of its pages is cited is actionable.
Answer-readiness score
The seven page-level checks below, as a percentage passed. Measured from your HTML, with no weighting invented on the spot.
The seven checks run on your page
FAQ or QAPage schema
Marks question-and-answer pairs so an engine can lift them whole.
Question-shaped headings
Engines match a user's question against headings before prose.
Answer near the top
A concise summary early gives the engine something quotable.
Enough substance to quote
Thin pages are rarely chosen as a source — 600 words is the floor.
Any structured data
Tells the engine what the page is, rather than making it infer.
Clear heading structure
One H1 and real sections let an engine target a single passage.
Readable prose
Dense writing is harder to extract a clean answer from.
Each check is something an answer engine demonstrably uses when deciding what to quote, and each is either present or not. The score is the share that pass — seven binary facts about your page, not a weighted index.
What the GEO stack is made of
AEO & GEO Visibility
The core run. Four engines, your prompts or ours, every answer and citation recorded, sources ranked, and a prioritised action plan. Works from a keyword alone when you want to survey a market rather than audit a site.
Dashboard → AEO & GEO
GEO coverage against the legacy suites
| GEO capability | Rankora | Semrush | Ahrefs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity directly | Yes | Partial | No |
| Reports mentions and citations as separate figures | Yes | No | No |
| Ranks every cited source, not just your own | Yes | Partial | No |
| Resolves redirect wrappers to the real domain | Yes | No | No |
| Runs from a keyword with no site required | Yes | No | No |
| Page-level answer-readiness scoring | Yes | Partial | No |
| Shows the sub-queries each engine ran | Yes | No | No |
| Included from the $29 plan | Yes | No | No |
Competitor pricing and capability listings shown are publicly available at time of publishing and are subject to change.
Who needs GEO measurement now rather than later
SaaS and B2B marketers
Buyers research with an assistant before they ever reach a search box. If the shortlist it reads out does not include you, the deal is lost before the first visit.
Agencies reporting to clients
Rankings are no longer the whole story, and clients have noticed. A counted citation figure is a defensible line in a report where an estimate is not.
Publishers and content teams
An AI answer that uses your reporting without citing it costs you the visit. Knowing which pages get quoted and which get absorbed changes what you publish next.
Local and service businesses
Assistants answer “best X near me” by naming two or three providers. The ranked source list shows whether that is you or the directory listing that outranks you.
Where GEO work usually goes wrong
Tracking prompts that name your brand
A prompt containing your company name only measures whether the model has heard of you, and it almost always comes back positive. The fix: Track what a buyer asks before they know you exist. Rankora writes most prompts without the brand in them for exactly this reason.
Treating a mention as a citation
Being named in the prose and being in the source list are different outcomes, and only one of them sends a visitor. The fix: Read the two figures separately. A high mention rate with a low citation rate means your content is known but something else is being linked.
Assuming a Google ranking carries over
Position one and the citation are decided by different mechanisms. Plenty of top-ranking pages are never quoted, and plenty of cited pages sit on page two. The fix: Measure the answer surface on its own terms, then fix the page-side gaps the readiness checks name.
Adding schema and calling it done
Structured data is one of seven checks. A page with perfect FAQ markup and 200 words of thin copy still will not be chosen as a source. The fix: Work the failing checks in the order the run flags them, which usually puts depth and a quotable opening ahead of markup.
Blocking the crawlers that do the citing
GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot are frequently disallowed by a robots.txt written years ago, which removes you from the retrieval pool entirely. The fix: Check crawler access in the technical audit before spending anything on content. An engine cannot cite what it cannot fetch.
Running once and filing the report
Answer surfaces change week to week. A citation you held in March is not evidence of one in June. The fix: Put the same prompt set on a schedule so a lost citation shows up as a movement rather than a surprise.
Pair it with the SEO side
GEO work sits on top of the SEO stack rather than beside it: fix crawler access and structure with the Technical SEO Audit, make the page quotable with the AI Content Optimiser, then keep score with AI Visibility Tracking. All eight are listed on the SEO Tools page.
Questions, answered plainly
What are GEO tools?
GEO tools measure and improve whether AI systems mention and cite your website in the answers they generate. Rankora's GEO tools put buyer-intent prompts to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity with web search enabled, record every answer and every cited source, rank those sources, score your page against seven answer-readiness checks, and return a prioritised list of actions.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO?
SEO competes for a position in a ranked list of links. GEO — generative engine optimisation — competes to be a source that a generated AI answer names. AEO — answer engine optimisation — is the page-level half of GEO: structuring a page so an engine can lift a clean answer out of it. Rankora measures all three in one run.
Which AI engines does Rankora check?
Four: ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. Each is asked through a model that supports live web search, so the citations reflect current retrieval rather than training data. Gemini's retrieval behaviour is the closest available read on Google's AI Overviews.
Do I need a website to run a GEO check?
No. A keyword is enough. Without a site the run maps who owns that answer space — which domains the engines cite, how often, and what the cited pages have in common. Adding a URL additionally measures where your site sits inside that space.
How does Rankora know whether my brand was actually cited?
It reads the answer text and the citation annotations the engine returns, and reports mentions and citations as two separate figures. Redirect wrappers are followed to their real destination first, because a wrapped link pointing at your own site would otherwise be counted as somebody else's citation.
Are the visibility numbers estimated or measured?
Measured. Every mention rate, citation rate and share-of-citations figure is counted from answers the engines actually returned in that run. Where an engine fails to answer, the run records the gap rather than scoring it as a zero.
How long does a GEO run take?
Roughly 45 seconds for two engines and several minutes for all four. The run is detached from your browser, so closing the tab does not lose it and the result is waiting when you come back.
How much do the GEO tools cost?
They are included in every paid Rankora plan, starting at the Growth plan for $29 per month. Each engine-and-prompt pair carries a small credit cost, and the estimate is shown before a run starts.
Why is a competitor cited when I rank above them on Google?
Ranking and citation are decided by different mechanisms. Engines favour pages they can extract a clean, self-contained answer from, and often prefer independent or comparison sources over vendor pages. The readiness checks name the page-side reasons, and the ranked source list shows what the chosen sources have in common.
Can I track my own prompts?
Yes. Typed prompts take precedence over generated ones, so a prompt set you already know matters to your buyers is asked exactly as written.