Which AI engines should I prioritize for GEO?

The four primary AI engines to optimize for are ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini (including Google AI Overviews). Each has meaningfully different citation behavior.

Perplexity is retrieval-first — it always searches the live web before answering. Content that is crawlable, specific, and recently updated performs well here. A focused article from a lower-authority domain can outperform a thin overview from an established player.

ChatGPT blends training data with selective web search. Brands that were well-represented in pre-training data (press coverage, Wikipedia, authoritative directories) have a baseline advantage, supplemented by web retrieval for current queries.

Google AI Overviews strongly favors content from domains with existing SEO authority and structured data. Organization schema with sameAs links significantly improves entity recognition here.

Claude relies primarily on its training corpus for most queries, without live retrieval. Strong entity definition — Wikipedia presence, consistent cross-platform brand descriptions, Wikidata entries — matters most for Claude citation.

Prioritize by where your buyers are active. For B2B, ChatGPT and Perplexity typically drive more research traffic than Claude. Measure each separately — citation share varies substantially by engine.