How to measure GEO in 2026
How can we measure GEO when it’s still so new? What tools are available, and how accurate are they?
The organic search landscape is changing. Increasingly, answers are given by AI search systems without directing users to websites at all, and 37% of consumers now start their searches with AI, so it’s not something to be ignored. This shift is known as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
Unlike traditional SEO, measuring GEO isn’t about tracking rankings and organic traffic, it’s about understanding presence and authority inside large language models. So, how do you know how visible you are in AI search?
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)?
GEO is all about optimising website content so that generative AI systems recognise it as a credible source and references the content in their answers.
As opposed to SEO, which focuses on how pages rank in search results, GEO focuses on how knowledge is surfaced in AI responses. This includes whether a website is mentioned, what content is referenced and which topics it is associated with. But how can we measure this when it’s still so new? What tools are available, and how accurate are they?
The current challenge of measuring GEO
The main hurdle the SEO and GEO industry has right now in early 2026 regarding measuring GEO is the inconsistency of the AI tools themselves.
According to recent research by SparkToro, AI systems such as ChatGPT and Google AI produce highly inconsistent brand or product recommendation lists when the same prompt is run multiple times. There’s less than a 1% chance you’ll get the same answer if you ask for brand recommendations 100 times. This inconsistency makes relying on any tool claiming to measure AI visibility incredibly difficult.
As of early 2026, GEO involves outputs that are inherently probabilistic. AI responses are generated based on statistical patterns in training data rather than fixed indexes.
In an industry where SEO has always relied on stable metrics, how can we begin to report on GEO?
Metrics to measure GEO
The industry is becoming inundated with GEO buzzwords, including various elaborate ways of attempting to measure AI visibility.
But at true, we believe in no jargon. We don’t want to make an already complex development even more complicated for our clients.
That’s why we’re measuring GEO by three metrics: AI visibility, mentions and cited pages.
AI visibility – How often the brand appears in AI-generated answers across topics, and how consistently it shows up compared to other brands. It’s a score out of 100, based on topic coverage, mention consistency and competitor benchmarking.
· Mentions - The total number of prompts triggering AI responses that mention the brand.
· Cited pages – The total number of webpages cited in AI generated answers.
As previously mentioned, we know that reporting tools aren’t completely accurate right now. So, we’re caveating that there is likely to be fluctuations as the tools refine their methods of measurement.
What tools are available to measure AI search visibility?
There are tools which offer AI search reporting, measuring the number of times a website is cited, and for which topics. Tools include Profound, Scrunch AI and SEMrush. These tools essentially aggregate responses over hundreds of prompt runs to get an average over time, which is currently the most suitable method.
But as the SparkToro study shows, the data is wildly inconsistent, and therefore at present, the data should only be used to get an idea of how a website is currently performing rather than be taken as the complete truth as they’re still continuing to learn how to capture data as accurately as possible.
Therefore, as of now, we don’t recommend using the tools to set targets for measuring GEO performance, because it’s still so unpredictable.
How else can we measure GEO?
At true, we’re also using alternative ways to measure the impact of GEO on traditional SEO performance.
For example, if we see drops in organic traffic from specific informational search queries, but all other organic search metrics are on the uptick, it suggests that an AI feature is shown for those queries, so users are likely to be getting the answer from AI. We can manually check to see if the brand is mentioned by searching the prompt across the AI tools.
Equally, if a brand is improving in its authority and continues to have a strong digital PR performance, it tends to correlate with improved AI visibility. In summary, if all SEO metrics look positive, GEO tends to follow.
How to optimise for GEO vs SEO
Our approach to optimising for GEO very much remains in line with our SEO strategies.
If you’re creating well-written, informative content that meets the user’s needs, and most importantly, is written for the end user, not search engines, your content is more likely to win. And this is what we’re seeing with GEO.
Both SEO and GEO aren’t about creating long pieces of content, it’s about formatting content in the right way, and more frequently we’re seeing bullet points, videos and tables being pulled into AI answers.
More importantly with GEO is the emphasis on your website’s authority. This is why having relevant, external backlinks to your website is ever more valuable for organic search. At true, we’re highlighting the importance of intertwining digital PR into SEO strategies, and publishing quality content that is more likely to gain natural links.
At a wider level, the more authoritative your brand is, the more likely you’ll be cited in AI results. And this means it’s ever more important for SEO to feed into wider marketing strategies, and for a larger emphasis on brand activity.
Will GEO become a core marketing KPI?
Over the next few years, we predict that GEO will move from an experimental concept to a standard part of SEO reporting. If the reporting tools can keep learning and improving in their accuracy, we expect that we will be able to start reporting on AI search visibility alongside traditional SEO metrics.
In summary – GEO is still evolving
With the adoption of AI search ever-growing, SEO is evolving from just SEO to SEO and GEO. It’s about adapting to how information is now being consumed and continuing to create quality content that meets the needs of users, whilst placing a strong emphasis on brand authority.
Hopefully in the near future, we’ll be able to rely on a tool to consistently and honestly measure AI search visibility, but for now the SEO industry is in a learning phase.
If you'd like to find out more about how improve your brand's visibility online - drop us a line here.
