What I’ve Learned About GEO While Working at TAG

Over the past few years at TAG The Agency, one thing has become clear: traditional SEO isn’t enough anymore. The way people discover information online is shifting from static search results to AI-driven responses. Users aren’t just typing a query into Google anymore; they’re asking AI assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and others, and those systems are generating answers by synthesising trusted sources. That shift has given rise to a new discipline, Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), and it’s fundamentally changing how we approach visibility online.

What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?

GEO is the practice of optimising content so that AI models confidently cite it when generating answers. It’s not just about ranking on a search engine results page (SERP). Instead, the goal is to become part of the trusted knowledge base that generative AI uses to craft responses.

Traditional SEO focuses on keywords, backlinks, and rankings. GEO focuses on:

• Clear, structured content AI can digest
• Authority signals
• Entity and context relevance
• Crawlability for AI bots

Put simply: SEO helps people find you — GEO helps AI recommend you.

Why Social Platforms Matter: Twitter/Xing = AI Discovery Fuel

One thing we’ve learned at TAG is that social platforms like Twitter (X) and Xing aren’t just social — they’re discovery engines.

Here’s why:

AI models constantly crawl and learn from public web and social signals.

Mentions, links, profiles, threads, and discussions all build entity recognition for you and your brand.

Regular posting (or an automated cadence) increases the number of trusted references an AI can find across the web.

So tweeting or posting on Xing isn’t just social engagement, it’s content supply for AI training and retrieval.

This helps your brand get recognised and included in AI responses, particularly for models that incorporate web search or citation mechanisms.

Search Console Isn’t Dead, It Just Evolved

Two truths we’ve embraced:

• Bing Search Console is critical for GEO and AI discovery. Because Bing powers web indexes used by many AI tools (including Microsoft-backed models like Grok and Gemini), having your site indexed and optimised here is foundational to being discoverable.

• Google SEO still matters. Even though AI-generated responses might bypass traditional links, most generative engines leverage Google’s index or signals indirectly through Knowledge Graphs, structured data, and AI Overviews. So ongoing SEO is still important.

The key outcome: SEO + GEO = the best coverage.

Automating Twitter and Bing, but Only “Sort Of” with Google

Automation is one of the biggest efficiency boosts we’ve implemented:

Twitter/X automation: Tools can schedule and distribute threads, curated replies, and evergreen content. Since social signals contribute to entity presence, this effectively builds AI recognition over time.

Bing automation: You can automate sitemaps, XML updates, and URL submissions via API and Search Console integrations, which helps indexing for AI models that depend on Bing’s crawl.

Google automation: More limited due to stricter API rules and throttling. You can automate some aspects, like Search Console alerts or structured data validation, but there’s no universal “submit to Google” automation that reliably pushes content into Google AI Overviews.

This means automation can help build your presence faster, but heavy automation for Google SEO isn’t as mature yet.

So, What About Ranking for Claude?

The short answer is that ranking for Claude works differently from traditional search and has its own set of best practices.

How Claude “sees” content

Claude and similar LLM-powered assistants rely on trusted, structured, clear content rather than just keyword signals.

Claude prioritises expertise, clarity, and reasoning, so content needs to answer real questions deeply and contextually.

The model now includes web search capabilities, meaning it can access recent data and sources when generating answers (especially in paid tiers).

What Claude SEO (GEO for Claude) looks like

Recent guides highlight these strategies for visibility:

• Machine-readable structure: FAQ schema, clear headings, lists
• Expert & authoritative signals: original research, citations, clear expertise
• Semantic and conversational content: content in Q&A format helps Claude map its responses to real search intents

Brand presence across sources: not just on your own site, in comparisons, listicles, and trusted third-party sites

Trust-building technical signals: crawlability, schema, and site speed contribute to how easily the model retrieves and interprets your content

Monitoring Claude's visibility

Tools like GEO rank trackers (e.g., Geoptie) can show where a brand appears in AI responses across Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.

This is important because AI search is less about page ranking and more about being cited, and citation frequency becomes the real KPI.

Wrapping Up: The New Search Stack

Here’s how all of this fits together in practice:

Layer	Goal	What You Need
Traditional SEO	Win SERP rankings	Keywords, backlinks, Google indexing
Bing / AI Crawl Optimization	Ensure machine crawlability	Bing Search Console, XML sitemaps
GEO	Get cited in AI answers	Structured, authoritative content
Social Signals	Increase entity presence	Twitter/X, Xing, regular publishing
Claude / ChatGPT / Gemini	Get cited in AI interactions	Q&A content, schema markup, trust signals

It’s no longer about just SEO. It’s about being discoverable by machines and being recognised as a trusted, authoritative source that AIs want to reference.