Off-Page GEO looks beyond a brand’s own website. When AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity describe or recommend an offering, they often draw not only on the provider’s website but also on what others write about it. Alongside GEO monitoring and On-Page GEO, the work on a brand’s own website, Off-Page GEO is one of the three areas of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). It also covers profiles and listings that a business maintains itself outside its website, for example on social networks or in industry directories.
How outside sources reach AI answers
Content from other websites can flow into an AI answer in two ways. First, language models learn from their training data, large amounts of text such as collections of web pages and Wikipedia; what others have written about a business can become part of a model’s knowledge this way. Second, many AI systems retrieve current content for an answer and cite the pages they used. Such AI citations can then point to trade articles, comparison pages, or forums that mention an offering rather than to the provider’s website. Google writes that its AI features, such as AI Overviews and AI Mode, can show what is being said about products and services across the web, including in blogs, videos, and forum discussions.
Two studies, both published as preprints that had not completed peer review, also suggest that a brand’s own website is often just one source among many for AI systems. What they show about the role of independent media, review sites, and comparison sites, and where their limits lie, is covered under earned media.
Where off-page presence comes from
The main places for Off-Page GEO differ in who writes the content:
- Independent media: trade articles, hands-on tests, comparisons, and interviews whose content an editorial team decides on. Such coverage is part of earned media.
- Reviews: experiences that customers share on review platforms and in business profiles. A business can ask real customers to describe their experiences.
- Communities: forums, question-and-answer sites, and social networks where people discuss providers and products. Anyone who takes part on behalf of a business should openly identify as its representative.
- Directories and business profiles: business listings in directories and map services, as well as profiles such as a Google Business Profile. According to Google, Business Profiles can help products and services become visible in AI answers in Google Search.
- Reference works: the online encyclopedia Wikipedia and the free knowledge base Wikidata. Wikipedia includes a company only if it is considered notable under the rules of each language edition. Wikidata is more open: a company qualifies if it can be clearly identified and described using serious, publicly available references.
Because AI systems can combine information from many of these sources, a business’s core facts should read the same everywhere; contradictory information can make it harder to identify a business clearly as an entity. How a business achieves this is covered under brand fact consistency.
Earning presence instead of faking it
Off-Page GEO rests on genuine presence: coverage, reviews, and discussions that came about the way they appear to. Google and Microsoft take a critical view of manufactured presence. Google writes that seeking out inauthentic mentions across the web is less helpful than it might seem, because its AI features rely on systems that favor high-quality content and on systems that block spam. Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster Guidelines, which also apply to Copilot, count buying links and artificial social media campaigns that simulate popularity as manipulation; according to Microsoft, sites that use such practices may be selected less often, or no longer at all, as a basis for answers.
There are legal limits, too: since May 2022, EU law has prohibited submitting fake consumer reviews, or commissioning others to submit them, in order to promote products. In Germany, the rule is part of the Act against Unfair Competition (UWG). Under the same act, concealing the commercial purpose of a statement can also be unfair, for example in a forum post written on a company’s behalf.