Generative Engine Optimization

Win the answer, not just the tenth blue link.

Buyers now ask an AI and act on its answer. Generative Engine Optimization is how you earn a place in that answer — cited, recommended, and named. cloro measures exactly where you stand across every engine, so GEO stops being a guess.

Citation share Answer share of voice Recommendation rank
Share of voice · "project management software"live
Your brand
31%
Rival A
26%
Rival B
22%
Rival C
14%
Others
7%
Sampled across 6 answer engines
ChatGPT Gemini Perplexity Copilot Grok AI Overview AI Mode Google Search
GEO

Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of shaping how AI answer engines describe, cite, and recommend your brand. Where SEO fights for a ranked link, GEO fights for a mention inside the synthesized answer a model hands to the user.

It spans the content the model can retrieve, the sources it trusts, and the way your entity is represented across the open web. And because the answer is generated fresh each time, GEO only works when it is measured continuously — not audited once.

Why it matters now

The click is being replaced by the answer

When a model answers directly, the user rarely visits ten sites to compare. They act on the two or three brands the answer names. If you're not in that shortlist, you're invisible — no matter how well you rank in classic search.

🎯

Answers compress choice

A generated answer collapses a full results page into a handful of recommendations. Being cited is the new being on page one — and there are far fewer slots.

🔁

Every answer is different

Models re-generate per query, per phrasing and per region. Your visibility is a distribution, not a fixed position, so it can only be understood by sampling repeatedly.

🧠

Sources decide the story

The engine assembles its answer from documents it retrieves. Which pages it cites — and which brands they name — quietly determines how you're described.

Same goal, new surface

How GEO differs from SEO

GEO doesn't replace search optimization — it extends it into a surface where the ranking is a sentence, not a list.

Classic SEO

Rank a link

  • Target: a position in a list of blue links
  • Unit of success: a click through to your page
  • Signal: keywords, backlinks, page authority
  • Measured: rank position, impressions, CTR
Generative Engine Optimization

Own a mention

  • Target: a citation or recommendation inside the answer
  • Unit of success: your brand named and trusted
  • Signal: retrievable content, entity clarity, cited sources
  • Measured: citation share, share of voice, recommendation rank
The GEO loop

How cloro turns AI answers into a measurable metric

cloro sends your prompt set to every answer engine, parses each response into the same schema, and reduces thousands of raw answers into three numbers you can track over time: citation share, share of voice, and recommendation rank.

Run the loop weekly and every optimization becomes a before-and-after you can actually prove.

01

Define the prompts that matter

List the buying questions your customers actually ask a model — the category, comparison and "best X for Y" prompts you want to appear in.

02

Fan out across engines

One POST /v1/geo/scan sends each prompt to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok and AI Overview, in the regions you target.

03

Parse answers into one schema

cloro extracts the answer text, its citations, the brands it names and the position each is recommended in — normalized so every engine looks the same.

04

Score, diff, and repeat

Roll the raw answers into citation share and share of voice, diff against last week, and alert when a competitor overtakes you on a prompt.

POST /v1/geo/scan
# measure brand visibility inside AI answers
curl https://api.cloro.cloud/v1/geo/scan \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLORO_KEY" \
  -d '{ "brand": "Northwind",
        "prompt": "best project management software for agencies",
        "engines": ["chatgpt","perplexity","ai_overview"],
        "location": "US" }'

# → response
{
  "prompt": "best project management software for agencies",
  "brand": "Northwind",
  "visibility": {
    "mentioned": true,
    "recommendation_rank": 2,
    "share_of_voice": 0.31,
    "cited_sources": ["northwind.com/agencies", "g2.com"]
  },
  "competitors": [
    { "name": "Rival A", "rank": 1 },
    { "name": "Rival B", "rank": 3 }
  ],
  "engines_sampled": 3
}
One call, structured out

Every answer becomes a row you can query

No screenshots, no manual prompting, no copy-pasting from a chat window. cloro returns whether you were mentioned, at what recommendation rank, which sources fed the answer, and who was named instead.

  • Typed fields for mentions, rank, share of voice and cited sources
  • Consistent shape across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overview
  • Location- and device-aware so you see each market's real answer
  • JSON for dashboards, Markdown when you need a readable log
The metrics that count

The signals GEO actually runs on

Four numbers turn a fuzzy sense of "are we in the AI answers?" into something you can chart, target and defend in a report.

SoV

Share of voice

Your slice of all brand mentions across a prompt set — your position relative to every rival, not in isolation.

Cite

Citation share

How often your own domains are the sources an engine pulls from when it builds its answer.

Rank

Recommendation rank

When you're named, are you the first pick, or an afterthought at the end of the list?

Δ

Week-over-week drift

The direction of travel — whether your last content push actually moved you up in the answer.

From measurement to lift

Turning the numbers into a higher answer position

Once you can see where you stand, GEO becomes a concrete workflow instead of a vibe. cloro shows you exactly where to push.

📄

Make yourself retrievable

Find the prompts where a competitor's page is cited and you aren't, then publish the clear, structured, up-to-date content the engine can lift an answer from.

🔗

Earn the trusted sources

See which third-party domains — reviews, comparisons, directories — the answers actually cite, and prioritize presence on the ones that move the model.

🧾

Sharpen your entity

Spot where engines describe you vaguely or wrongly, and tighten the canonical facts about your product so the model represents you accurately.

🔔

Defend your position

Schedule recurring scans and get alerted the moment a rival overtakes you on a high-intent prompt — before the shift costs you pipeline.

🌍

Go market by market

Run the same prompt set across regions to see where you're strong, where you're absent, and where a localized push would pay off.

📊

Report with evidence

Hand stakeholders a share-of-voice trend line instead of anecdotes — GEO work that's measured is GEO work that gets funded.

6AI answer engines scanned
3core GEO metrics per prompt
1schema across every engine
195+markets you can target
GEO questions

Good to know

What exactly is Generative Engine Optimization?

GEO is the practice of improving how AI answer engines cite, describe and recommend your brand. Instead of optimizing for a ranked link, you optimize for being named inside the synthesized answer a model gives a user — across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Grok and Google's AI Overview.

How is GEO different from SEO?

SEO earns a position in a list of links and is measured in rank and clicks. GEO earns a mention inside a generated answer and is measured in citation share, share of voice and recommendation rank. They share foundations — good, retrievable content — but the surface, the unit of success and the metrics are different.

How does cloro measure my AI visibility?

You send cloro a set of prompts and your brand name. cloro fans each prompt out to the answer engines, parses every response into one schema, and returns whether you were mentioned, at what recommendation rank, which sources were cited, and who was named instead. Run it on a schedule to track the trend over time.

Can I track competitors inside AI answers?

Yes. Every scan returns the other brands an engine names on the same prompt and where each sits, so you get a full share-of-voice picture rather than just a yes/no on your own presence.

Do I need proxies, accounts or my own prompting setup?

No. Fetching, rendering, rotation and parsing all happen on cloro's side. You authenticate with one API key and receive structured results — no chat windows to babysit and no infrastructure to maintain.

How is it billed?

You're charged per successful call. Failed or empty scans aren't billed, and your live usage counter reflects exactly what you've consumed.

See where you stand in the AI answer.

Spin up a key, scan your first prompt set in minutes, and turn Generative Engine Optimization from guesswork into a metric you can move.