AEO and generative engine optimization (GEO) are two names for the same goal: making your business easy for ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other AI tools to find, trust and quote. AEO stands for answer engine optimisation. In practice both are good SEO with extra care for clear, quotable answers, and Google itself says this work is still SEO.
I’m Apar, a designer and SEO practitioner in Bharatpur, Chitwan, and more clients now ask me how to “get into ChatGPT”. This article sticks to that one question. For the wider picture of how search works here, start with my guide to SEO in Nepal for local businesses.
What do AEO and GEO actually mean for a business owner?
AEO is the practice of shaping your content so a search engine or assistant can lift it as the direct answer to a question, and GEO is the same idea aimed at AI tools that write a fresh answer from several sources. Both sit on top of ordinary SEO rather than replacing it.
I think of answer engine optimisation as the older idea, born from featured snippets and voice assistants, where one short passage is shown above everything else. The aim is to be that passage.
The term GEO comes from a research paper. “GEO: Generative Engine Optimization”, by researchers from IIT Delhi and Princeton University, was first posted on arXiv in November 2023 and presented at the KDD conference in 2024. It studied how websites become more visible inside answers an AI model writes.
| Approach | What you are trying to win | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| SEO | A high position for your page in search results | Google results, Google Maps, the local pack |
| AEO | Your passage chosen as the direct answer to a question | Featured answers, voice assistants, AI summaries |
| GEO | Your business named, quoted or linked inside an AI written answer | ChatGPT, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode |
Why do AI answers matter for businesses in Nepal in 2026?
AI answers matter because a large and growing number of people now read a summary before they click anything, and in Nepal one AI tool clearly dominates. If that summary names your competitor and not you, you lose the customer before they ever see your website.
In July 2025, Google’s chief executive said in Alphabet’s Q2 2025 earnings remarks that AI Overviews had over 2 billion monthly users across more than 200 countries and territories and 40 languages.
Nepal has its own pattern. Statcounter’s AI chatbot market share figures for Nepal for September 2026 show ChatGPT with 82.87% of chatbot referrals and Google Gemini with 13.48%. That measures visits chatbots send to websites, not users, but it shows where the clicks come from.
Picture a trekker asking ChatGPT where to buy boots in Thamel. The answer names a few businesses and links a few pages. Being one of them is the new version of ranking on page one.
How do ChatGPT and AI Overviews choose which sources to show?
AI tools mostly draw on pages a search system has already crawled and indexed, then pick the passages that answer the question most clearly. If your page is not indexed, it cannot be quoted.
For Google, the rule is spelled out on its page about AI features and your website. To appear as a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet. Google adds that there are no additional requirements and no special optimisations needed.
Both features may also run several related searches behind the scenes, so a question about “dental implants in Bharatpur, cost and recovery” can pull from a clinic page, a cost page and a recovery guide. A page that answers one part well can still earn a link.
ChatGPT runs its own search. When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT search in October 2024, it said answers come with links to sources such as news articles and blog posts, and that “Any website or publisher can choose to appear in ChatGPT search”. In my experience, a blanket rule in robots.txt or a security plugin that blocks unfamiliar crawlers is the usual way sites shut themselves out without meaning to.
If Google cannot index your pages, or a crawler is blocked, you are invisible in AI answers too. I cover how to check this in technical SEO basics for indexing, sitemaps and errors.
Google says that optimising for AI answers is still SEO.
Google’s position is direct: the same work that helps you rank also helps you appear in AI features. Its guide to optimising for generative AI features on Google Search, last updated in July 2026, says “optimizing for generative AI search is optimizing for the search experience, and thus still SEO.”
The guide is just as clear about what you do not need. In plain words, Google says:
- You do not need new machine readable files, AI text files or special markup to appear in Google Search. Files made for other services, such as llms.txt, are allowed, but Google Search ignores them.
- There is no need to break your content into tiny pieces for AI to understand it.
- You do not need to write in a special way just for generative AI search.
- Structured data is not required for AI search and there is no special schema for it, although Google suggests you keep using it as part of normal SEO.
What Google does ask for is content led by real expertise that offers something beyond common knowledge. If you want the schema side explained properly, see schema markup explained for small businesses.
My view is that this is good news for small Nepali businesses. A big international site can write a generic article about trekking boots, but it cannot tell you which trails near Pokhara turn to mud in Shrawan. That local, first hand knowledge is exactly what Google says it wants.
What did the original GEO research actually find?
The 2023 GEO study found that adding quotations, statistics and cited sources made a page more visible in AI written answers, by up to 40% in its tests, while keyword stuffing made things worse. It is useful direction, not a rulebook.
The researchers built a benchmark of 10,000 queries, edited source pages in different ways and measured how much of each source made it into the generated answer, weighted by position. Here are the overall scores from Table 1 of the GEO paper, where a higher number means more visibility:
| Change made to the page | Visibility score | Compared with no change |
|---|---|---|
| No change (baseline) | 19.3 | Starting point |
| Adding quotations | 27.2 | Clearly better |
| Adding statistics | 25.2 | Clearly better |
| Improving fluency | 24.7 | Better |
| Citing sources | 24.6 | Better |
| Keyword stuffing | 17.7 | Worse than doing nothing |
One finding stands out for smaller businesses. The paper reports that lower ranked websites benefited more, with the cite sources method giving a 115.1% increase in visibility for websites ranked fifth, while the top ranked website’s visibility fell by 30.3%. Careful, well sourced writing can help a smaller site get noticed.
Keep the limits in mind. The study tested a lab setup and partly Perplexity, not Google AI Overviews, and AI search has changed a lot since 2023. Read alongside Google’s guide, both point the same way: say something real, back it up, write clearly.
Here are the practical steps I use to make a business easier to quote.
The practical work is simple: get indexed, answer questions directly, add what only you know, support your claims, and keep your business details identical everywhere. All of it helps normal search too.
- Confirm your important pages are indexed. Search Console will show you which pages Google has stored. Fix anything blocked before writing anything new.
- Open every page and section with the answer. Two or three plain sentences that would make sense if quoted alone, then the detail.
- Add first hand detail. Opening days during Dashain, which doctor sees which condition, which boots suit monsoon treks. This is the knowledge generic sites cannot copy.
- Back claims with sources. When you use a number, say where it came from and link to it. Citing sources raised visibility in the GEO paper, and it builds trust with readers.
- Keep your business facts consistent. The same name, address, phone and hours on your website, Facebook page and Google Business Profile for your Nepali business. Mixed details confuse people and machines alike.
- Put information in text, not posters. A price list or menu uploaded as an image is hard for any system to read and quote.
From my experience: the questions customers ask on the phone are the best content plan you will ever get. When I plan content for a site, like the content strategy work for Kathmandu Model Hospital, I start from real questions and give each one a clear page or section. That serves Google, AI tools and patients at once.
How can you tell whether AI tools are mentioning your business?
You can track AI visibility in three ways: Google’s own reports for AI Overviews, referral visits in your analytics, and a simple monthly test where you ask AI tools the questions your customers ask. None is perfect, so use all three together.
For Google, the AI features page says traffic from AI Overviews and AI Mode is counted in the Search Console Performance report under the “Web” search type. Google’s AI guide also mentions a Generative AI performance report in Search Console that shows how your content performs in these features.
In your analytics tool, note referral visits from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, and watch the trend over months.
Then run a manual check once a month and write the results down, because AI answers change between people and days.
| Question you ask | Named in ChatGPT? | Named in Gemini? | Which sites were cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best physiotherapy clinic in Bharatpur | Yes or no | Yes or no | List the links shown |
| Where to buy trekking boots in Thamel | Yes or no | Yes or no | List the links shown |
| Your main service plus your city | Yes or no | Yes or no | List the links shown |
The cited sites column is the useful one. If a directory or a competitor’s guide keeps appearing, that shows what kind of page AI tools trust for your topic.
Which AI search mistakes should Nepali businesses avoid?
The biggest mistakes are paying for shortcuts and accidentally blocking the crawlers AI tools depend on. Buying an “AI SEO” package built on llms.txt or special schema spends money on things Google says its search ignores. Paying for listicles or invented reviews chases the inauthentic mentions Google says are not as helpful as they seem. And a security rule that blocks unfamiliar bots can hide you from ChatGPT without anyone noticing.
Good pages, written answer first, are the shared input for every system. My on page SEO checklist for Nepali business websites covers how to get each page right.
These are the questions business owners ask me most about AI search.
Does schema markup help me appear in AI Overviews?
Not directly. Google says structured data is not required for generative AI search and there is no special schema for it. It still recommends schema as part of normal SEO, because it helps Google understand your pages and can qualify them for rich results.
Can I stop Google from using my content in AI Overviews?
Yes, but it has a cost. Google’s AI features page lists the normal snippet controls, such as nosnippet, or noindex to remove a page entirely. Those also limit how your page appears in regular results, so most businesses should leave them alone.
Do AI answers work for searches in Nepali?
Google said in July 2025 that AI Overviews work in 40 languages, and its AI Mode reached over 180 new countries and territories in English in August 2025. I have not seen Google confirm Nepali support, so I would not assume it. My advice is to keep clear English pages for your main services and add proper Unicode Nepali pages where your customers search in Nepali, then test both.
How long does it take to appear in AI answers?
There is no fixed timeline. Your page must be crawled and indexed first, then compete with every other page on the question, just as in normal search. I explain those timings in how much SEO costs in Nepal and how long it takes.
Is GEO worth it for a small business in Nepal?
Yes, as long as you treat it as part of SEO rather than a separate service. A small clinic, café or shop that answers real questions clearly and keeps its details consistent is doing GEO already.
Here is what I would do next if I were you.
Open ChatGPT and Gemini today and ask three questions your customers ask you. Note who gets named and which pages get linked, then check Search Console to make sure your key pages are indexed. That is an honest starting point.
If you would like help turning that into a plan, my search and AI visibility service, covering SEO, AEO and GEO starts with a discovery call and a clear quote based on your scope. Or simply send me a message about your business and tell me what you found.
These are the sources I used for this article.
- Google’s guide to optimizing for generative AI features on Google Search, Google Search Central
- AI features and your website, Google Search Central
- GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, Aggarwal and others, arXiv and KDD 2024
- Introducing ChatGPT search, OpenAI
- AI chatbot market share in Nepal, Statcounter Global Stats
- Sundar Pichai’s Q2 2025 earnings remarks, Google blog