GEO and AEO in 2026: how to help AI understand, cite and recommend your brand

Showing up on Google is no longer enough. ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overviews and other AI systems are creating a new layer of digital discovery. The question is no longer simply whether your company appears in search results, but what AI understands about your brand, which sources it uses and whether it recommends you.

For more than twenty years, much of digital marketing revolved around one question: how do we show up on Google? That question still matters. It is no longer the only one.

Someone can now ask ChatGPT which Costa Rican agency can help with GEO and digital marketing, ask Gemini for the best private health insurance options in Costa Rica or use Google AI Mode to compare products, providers or destinations without manually visiting ten result pages.

Businesses must therefore ask a new question: what needs to happen for artificial intelligence to understand our brand, trust the available information and include us in its answer? That is the problem GEO and AEO try to solve.

First: appearing, being cited and being recommended are not the same

One common mistake is treating “appearing in ChatGPT” as a single metric. In reality, very different outcomes are possible.

In a generative answer, a page can serve as a source without the company's name appearing in the text. This practical difference is often described as a ghost citation: the knowledge contributes to the answer while the brand remains invisible.

A GEO strategy should therefore measure more than domain citations. It needs to understand when the brand appears, in which context, alongside which competitors and for which search intentions.

So, what are GEO and AEO?

The terminology is still evolving and no universal definition exists. At Kresca, we find this distinction useful.

In short: AEO makes sure the AI uses what you know. GEO makes sure the AI knows who you are.

GEO does not replace SEO

There is no parallel Internet exclusively for ChatGPT or Gemini. When a system needs current information, much of it still comes from the web, search indexes and retrievable sources.

Google is explicit: AI Overviews and AI Mode use its core search and quality systems. There is no additional set of technical requirements for appearing there, and established SEO practices remain fundamental.

OpenAI also uses web search for current questions and can include links and citations. It recommends allowing OAI-SearchBot if a site wants its content discovered and used in ChatGPT Search.

The difference is what happens after the content is found.

How AI decides which information to use

Generative search does not always work like traditional search. Faced with a complex question, a system may split it internally into several related questions.

Google calls part of this process query fan-out: the system runs multiple searches around different aspects of the question and uses those sources to create a more complete answer.

For “What is the best family resort in Guanacaste for traveling with a baby?”, the system might investigate location, child policies, family activities, recent reviews, all-inclusive plans, airport distance and availability.

Ranking for a broad keyword such as “Guanacaste hotel” is no longer enough. A brand needs clear, deep information that answers the questions surrounding the decision.

This makes descriptive titles and focused pages more important: every URL should make clear which specific question it answers rather than hiding several unrelated answers behind a generic label.

Clarity before “GEO tricks”

Do not write to trick an LLM. Write so it is extremely easy to understand your business.

A page called simply “Solutions” communicates relatively little. “Artificial intelligence automation for companies in Costa Rica” conveys much more before a system even reads the full page.

Introductory paragraphs should answer the primary question quickly. Depth, cases, comparisons, methodology, data and context can follow. This does not mean writing robotic content. It means removing ambiguity.

Original information becomes more valuable, not less

If every company uses AI to produce slightly different versions of the same information, generic content becomes abundant. What AI cannot invent or find repeated across a hundred sites becomes more valuable.

Google explicitly recommends unique, useful and non-generic content for its generative experiences. If every page says exactly the same thing, none adds much value as a source.

Your website does not control your brand's entire story

AI can form its perception of a company from many sources. Your website is one, but directories, media, reviews, articles, business profiles, marketplaces, specialist publications, communities and third-party sites also matter.

You may call yourself one of Costa Rica's leading artificial intelligence agencies, but that does not automatically make the claim a fact for a system comparing providers. The question becomes: what other signals support it?

That is why digital PR, reputation, backlinks, reviews, partnerships and third-party presence connect directly with GEO. This is not simply about getting links. It is about building enough distributed evidence for a machine to understand who you are and where you fit.

The myth of schema as a magic GEO button

Structured data remains important. It helps define products, companies, people, events and locations in machine-readable ways. But selling it as a hack for appearing in ChatGPT would be a mistake.

Google says there is no special schema required for AI Overviews or AI Mode. Structured data should match visible content and can help describe entities, but it cannot guarantee a citation, mention or recommendation.

What you should not measure

Asking ChatGPT once a month for the best companies in a category and recording whether you appeared is better than measuring nothing. It is not enough.

Answers can change with phrasing, context, platform, location, available sources and timing. Measurement should look more like a small, ongoing study: monitor 30 or 50 meaningful questions and compare them periodically across ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI.

Specialized platforms can help monitor mentions, citations, cited pages and share versus competitors. Search Console and Analytics remain useful for observing searches, pages and visits, but should not be interpreted alone as a complete measurement of recommendations inside AI assistants.

What should a company optimize: mentions, citations or traffic?

All three can create value, but they represent different outcomes.

Some impact happens before the click. A person can ask AI for options, receive three names and then search for one brand directly on Google. Analytics may attribute that visit to organic or direct traffic, even though AI created the influence earlier.

SEO + GEO + brand, not SEO vs. GEO

It is tempting to turn every technological shift into a battle of acronyms: SEO versus GEO, Google versus ChatGPT, human content versus AI content. Reality is less dramatic.

And this is only beginning

So far, we have discussed AI that searches, synthesizes and recommends. The next stage is already emerging: systems capable of completing tasks on people's behalf.

At that point, GEO stops being only a visibility problem and starts becoming a digital infrastructure problem.

Do you know what AI is saying about your brand?

At Kresca, we approach SEO, GEO and digital marketing as parts of the same discovery system. We do not begin by adding content for its own sake.

We begin by understanding what customers ask, how AI answers today, which competitors appear, which sources it uses and where real opportunities exist to improve.