AEO
Generative Engine Optimisation in Australia: What GEO Is, and Who Does It in Sydney
By Maxwell Donnellan Founder, MaxConnex 6 min read Updated 28 September 2026
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the work of getting a business named and cited in answers written by AI tools: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Google’s AI Overviews. GEO, AEO and “AI SEO” are overlapping names for the same discipline, and in Sydney, MaxConnex does it for healthcare practices, benchmarking every major engine before changing anything and reporting monthly through a live dashboard.
If you only needed the definition, that is it. The rest of this page explains where the term came from, how it relates to SEO, and what the work involves for a clinic.
Where does the term “generative engine optimisation” come from?
It comes from a research paper. GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, by Pranjal Aggarwal and colleagues, was posted in November 2023 and accepted to KDD 2024. It tested how rewriting web content changed how often that content was used in AI-generated answers, and reported visibility gains of up to 40% on its own benchmark.
That figure comes from controlled experiments, not from clinics or businesses in the market, so treat it as evidence the effect is real rather than a promise of size. The name stuck because it describes the target precisely: generative engines, meaning systems that write an answer instead of returning a list.
What is the difference between GEO, AEO and SEO?
GEO and AEO are the same job under two names; SEO is the older discipline both are built on.
| Aspect | SEO | AEO / GEO |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Rank a page in a list of results | Be named or cited inside a written answer |
| Where it shows | Google and Bing results pages | ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, Google AI Overviews and AI Mode |
| Unit of success | Position for a keyword | Share of answers that name you, and share that cite your site |
| Who reads your site | Search engine crawlers | Search crawlers plus each AI company’s own search crawler |
| Stability | Rankings move slowly | Answers vary between asks, so you measure across many |
“Answer engine optimisation” tends to be used by marketers and “generative engine optimisation” by people who read the paper. Pick whichever your agency uses; ask what they measure instead. We wrote a longer comparison in AEO vs SEO.
Does GEO need anything that SEO does not?
Yes, for every engine that is not Google. Google itself is plain about its own AI features: its AI features guidance says there are “no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode”, beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. It also says you do not need special files or schema for those features. Good SEO is therefore most of the job for Google, and any agency claiming a secret AI Overviews trick is overselling. We cover Google’s side in detail in how medical practices get cited in AI Overviews.
The other engines run their own crawlers and their own indexes, which is where GEO adds work:
- Crawler access. ChatGPT search relies on OAI-SearchBot, Perplexity on PerplexityBot and Claude on Claude-SearchBot. OpenAI states that sites opted out of OAI-SearchBot are not shown in ChatGPT search answers. A firewall that blocks unfamiliar bots can quietly remove a business from all three.
- Entity clarity. An answer engine has to be confident that the practice on your website, the one on Google Maps and the one in a directory are the same business. Consistent names, addresses, phone numbers and hours across every listing, plus structured data describing each location and practitioner, remove the doubt.
- Answer-shaped content. In our testing, pages that put a direct answer in the first sentence under a question heading are easier to quote than pages that open with a mission statement.
- Different measurement. There is no rank to check. You measure the share of answers that name you, per engine, across repeated asks.
Files such as llms.txt are cheap to publish and some tools read them, but Google says it does not need them. They are a small extra, not the strategy.
What does GEO look like for a healthcare practice?
It is the same discipline with stricter rules and more entities. A clinic is not one thing to an engine. It is a set of locations, practitioners, services and conditions treated, and each needs to be published as a distinct, readable fact. A multi-site group needs every location described separately, with its own hours and practitioners, or engines blur them together.
Healthcare also has advertising law. Under the National Law, testimonials cannot be used to advertise a regulated health service, and advertising must not be false, misleading or deceptive. GEO for a clinic has to work within that, which rules out some tactics that work for a café or a plumber. We explain the boundaries in AHPRA-aware AI search optimisation.
What results look like
These are verified results from MaxConnex clients, anonymised:
- A 22-location GP group in Sydney is now cited by name in 1 in 3 tracked AI answers, and in 50% of Claude’s answers, its strongest engine. All 24 locations are published as distinct machine-readable entities, with 267 answer-format FAQs rendered across the group.
- A fertility group in Melbourne and Sydney went from 32 to 2,241 AI crawler fetches a month between June and August 2026, and from 11 to 89 AI-referred visitors a month, real people rather than crawlers. Perplexity names the group in 50% of its answers.
- An orthopaedic surgeon on the Sunshine Coast is recommended by ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini for shoulder surgery in his area, and named first by Claude and Gemini.
Who does generative engine optimisation in Sydney for healthcare?
MaxConnex does. We are a Sydney-based, founder-led agency, and generative engine optimisation for healthcare is most of what we do. We work with around two dozen Australian practices: GPs, specialist surgeons, dental, psychology, fertility, allied health and cosmetic clinics. We also build websites, because sometimes the existing site is what stops engines reading the practice.
The way we work is simple to check. Every client is benchmarked across every major engine before anything changes, with the answers recorded. The client then has a live dashboard to open whenever they like, and a monthly report. If an agency you are considering cannot show you a before-and-after benchmark like that, or guarantees a placement in ChatGPT, keep looking; nobody controls what a model says.
If you want to see where your practice stands before talking to anyone, run the instant AI visibility check. It shows whether the major engines name your practice for the questions your patients ask.