Generative Engine Optimization

What it is

Generative engine optimization is the practice of increasing the likelihood that a source is cited in an answer generated by an AI search system. The term comes from a 2024 KDD paper by Aggarwal and colleagues, which defined a generative engine as a system that gathers and summarises sources to answer a query, then measured which content changes raised citation rates.

Why it matters

The tactics are young and unsettled, which is why this entry is flagged for review rather than treated as established practice. The underlying shift is not in dispute: visibility is increasingly a question of being cited rather than being ranked, and a citation is only worth having if the sentence being cited is accurate. Optimising to be quoted more often while your claims go unmaintained simply distributes the error faster.