What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making your web content discoverable by AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.
When someone asks an AI a question, it pulls from web content to generate answers and cites the sources it finds most useful. GEO helps you become one of those sources.
GeoDaddy analyzes your site and tells you exactly what to fix.
Why it matters
More and more users are finding information through AI assistants instead of traditional search. If your site isn't optimized for these systems, you're missing out on a growing source of traffic.
A page can rank well on Google but still be invisible to AI assistants if it lacks the right structural signals.
GEO vs Traditional SEO
| Traditional SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank in Google's blue links | Get cited by AI assistants |
| Optimizes for | Keywords, backlinks, SERP position | Structured content, machine readability, citation-worthiness |
| Success looks like | Page one of Google | AI references your content when answering questions |
These approaches are complementary. A fast, accessible site with strong GEO signals is the goal.
What about Lighthouse? Lighthouse measures performance, accessibility, and best practices. Important, but it doesn't measure how well AI systems can consume your content. GeoDaddy fills that gap.
Scoring categories
GeoDaddy scores your site across four categories.
Technical
Meta tags, headings, HTTPS, redirects, robots.txt, and sitemap validation. These help AI systems understand your page structure.
Content
Heading hierarchy, alt text, JSON-LD schema, and semantic HTML. This measures whether your content is structured enough for AI to extract meaningful answers.
GEO
AI-specific signals: listicle formatting, schema stacking, and AI bot access. GeoDaddy checks whether your robots.txt blocks bots like GPTBot, ClaudeBot, or PerplexityBot. If a bot can't read your page, it can't cite it.
Performance
Core Web Vitals (LCP, FCP, CLS, TTFB, TBT) measured via a real headless browser. Only runs when you pass the --vitals flag. Thresholds follow Google's Web Vitals standards.
How scoring works
Each check has a severity level that determines its point value:
- Critical = 10 points (e.g. H1 presence, HTTPS, AI bot access)
- Medium = 5 points (e.g. meta description, alt text)
- Minor = 2 points (e.g. sitemap, semantic HTML)
Checks return Pass (full points), Warn (half), or Fail (zero).
Category score = earned points / max possible points x 100. Overall score is the average of all active categories.
See the full list in the Checks Reference.
Next steps
Ready to try it? Install the CLI and run your first scan, or use the web playground for a quick check.