A Princeton study found specific, verifiable tactics boost a business’s chances of being cited by AI search tools by up to 40%.
Search behaviour is changing. Increasingly, people don’t type a question into Google and click through a list of links, they ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google’s AI Overviews directly, and get a synthesised answer with a small number of sources cited within it. For a small business, that shift changes what it means to be found online.
The practice of optimising for this kind of AI-generated answer is known as generative engine optimisation, or GEO. It’s a newer cousin of search engine optimisation, but the goal is different. Where SEO aims to get your website ranked high enough that someone clicks through, GEO aims to get your business mentioned directly inside the AI’s answer, sometimes without the user clicking through to your site at all.
The term was coined and first studied formally in a 2024 paper titled “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, presented at the ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, one of the leading academic venues for data science research. The paper was written by researchers from Princeton University, IIT Delhi, Georgia Tech and the Allen Institute for AI.
What the research actually found
The researchers built a benchmark of around 10,000 real queries and tested nine different content strategies to see which ones improved a source’s chances of being cited by an AI system modelled closely on Bing Chat, then checked their strongest findings against Perplexity as a real-world test.
Three tactics stood out. Adding citations to credible sources, including direct quotations, and adding specific statistics each improved a source’s visibility in AI-generated answers, with the strongest methods producing gains in the order of 30 to 40%. Improving the general clarity and fluency of writing also helped substantially, even without adding any new information, suggesting that AI systems are more likely to accurately summarise and cite content that’s simply well written.
Not everything businesses might assume works, actually does. The researchers found that keyword stuffing, repeating search terms unnaturally throughout a page, performed worse than doing nothing at all, both in their benchmark test and when checked against Perplexity directly. It’s a pointed finding for anyone used to older SEO tactics, since the technique that used to help with traditional search rankings appears to actively hurt AI visibility.
Recent industry data adds some context on how quickly this shift is happening. HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing report found that over 92% of marketers now say they’re either using or planning to use optimisation strategies for AI-powered search tools, a sign that competition for AI visibility is already underway across most industries, not a future concern.
For a small business without a dedicated marketing team, the practical takeaway from the research is less about hiring specialists and more about the fundamentals of good content. Pages that clearly explain who a business is, what it does, and back up claims with specific, verifiable detail, are the ones AI systems are more likely to trust and cite. Vague, generic marketing copy is exactly what performs worst.
Where to start
Based on what the Princeton research identified as effective, a few practical steps stand out for small businesses:
Back up claims on your website with specific figures and named sources rather than general statements
Write in clear, well-structured prose rather than dense, jargon-heavy copy
Include direct answers to common customer questions in plain language, since AI systems tend to summarise and cite content that already reads like an answer
Avoid keyword repetition for its own sake, since the research suggests it actively works against visibility
GEO is still a young field, and the tools used to measure AI citation are still developing. But the underlying principle from the research is a familiar one: AI systems, like readers, respond to clear, specific, well-supported content, not to tricks.
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