Is LLMO the same as GEO?

They are often used as synonyms. When people separate them, GEO is about being cited in generated search answers, while LLMO is about the model's own understanding of a brand, including what it says when it does not search the web.

Can I get my site into an LLM's training data?

You can allow it, not force it. OpenAI, for example, uses GPTBot for content that may train its models and OAI-SearchBot for search. Allowing GPTBot makes your public pages available; whether and when they influence a future model is up to the model maker.

Should I block GPTBot to protect my content?

That is a business choice. OpenAI treats the two bots independently, so you can block GPTBot (training) and still allow OAI-SearchBot (search). Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT search answers, apart from navigational links.

Why does an LLM say wrong things about my company?

Usually because the facts it learned are old, thin or inconsistent across the web, or because it filled a gap with a plausible guess. Clear, consistent facts on your own site and on trusted third-party profiles give it something better to repeat.

AI search glossary

LLM SEO (LLMO): how language models learn and describe your brand

LLM SEO, also called LLMO or large language model optimization, is the practice of influencing how large language models such as GPT, Claude and Gemini understand, describe and recommend a brand, both through what they learn in training and what they retrieve when answering.

Also called: LLMO, LLM optimization, large language model optimization

Why it matters for AI search

A language model can name a brand without searching at all, from what it learned during training, or after searching the live web. Those are two separate paths with separate crawlers and separate opt-outs. LLM SEO looks at both, so a brand is described correctly whether the model is recalling or retrieving.

Two ways a model knows about you

Large language models reach a brand by two routes:

Training (recall). During training the model reads a large snapshot of public text. Afterwards it can describe brands, products and people from memory, without a search. That memory is frozen at the model's cutoff and can be wrong or out of date.
Retrieval (search). When an assistant searches the web before answering, it reads fresh pages and grounds its answer in them. This is retrieval-augmented generation, and it is where most citations come from.

LLM SEO treats both routes. Generative engine optimization mostly concerns the second.

Crawlers decide which route you are on

OpenAI documents separate user agents. GPTBot collects content that may be used to train its foundation models. OAI-SearchBot surfaces sites in ChatGPT search, and OpenAI says sites that opt out of it will not appear in ChatGPT search answers, though they can still show as navigational links. The settings are independent, and OpenAI says changes to robots.txt take about 24 hours to reach search. Anthropic and Google publish similar splits (see ClaudeBot and Google-Extended).

What LLM SEO work looks like

Consistent entity facts. Same name, category, founding date, location and description on your site and on the profiles models read. Inconsistent facts are a common cause of hallucinated answers.
Third-party mentions. Models learn from what others write. Reviews, directories, press and community threads that describe you accurately shape both recall and retrieval.
Plain, specific pages. Who it is for, what it costs, what it does not do. Models repeat specific statements; they paraphrase vague ones into nothing.
Testing without search. Ask models about your brand with web search off and on. The gap shows whether the problem is old training data or weak live pages.

What does not work

The GEO paper found keyword stuffing gave little or no benefit in generative answers, and sometimes hurt. Hidden instructions aimed at models, fake reviews and mass-produced pages are risky and tend to be filtered. Durable LLM SEO is accurate information placed where models will read it.

For the broad marketing label see AI SEO. For the direct-answer format see answer engine optimization. For the signals models pick up from other sites, see brand mentions.

Questions

Is LLMO the same as GEO?: They are often used as synonyms. When people separate them, GEO is about being cited in generated search answers, while LLMO is about the model's own understanding of a brand, including what it says when it does not search the web.
Can I get my site into an LLM's training data?: You can allow it, not force it. OpenAI, for example, uses GPTBot for content that may train its models and OAI-SearchBot for search. Allowing GPTBot makes your public pages available; whether and when they influence a future model is up to the model maker.
Should I block GPTBot to protect my content?: That is a business choice. OpenAI treats the two bots independently, so you can block GPTBot (training) and still allow OAI-SearchBot (search). Blocking OAI-SearchBot removes you from ChatGPT search answers, apart from navigational links.
Why does an LLM say wrong things about my company?: Usually because the facts it learned are old, thin or inconsistent across the web, or because it filled a gap with a plausible guess. Clear, consistent facts on your own site and on trusted third-party profiles give it something better to repeat.