GEO Optimization in Practice: A Guide to Querying and Interpreting AI Search Visibility Reports

What Is GEO Optimization and the Visibility Report?

As AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Doubao, and Kimi gradually displace traditional search engines, a new marketing discipline is rapidly emerging: GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on ranking high in search results, GEO centers on a different question: when a user asks an AI a question, will your brand be proactively mentioned and positively recommended?

To assess a brand's real performance within the AI search ecosystem, a Visibility Report becomes an indispensable core tool. According to a content creator on Bilibili who covers GEO in their practical tutorial series (Episode 5), this type of report helps practitioners evaluate their brand's current exposure across major AI platforms and craft targeted content optimization strategies accordingly.

This article is based on that hands-on tutorial. It systematically walks through how to query and generate a visibility report, and how to interpret its key findings — helping readers understand what a practical GEO optimization path looks like.

How to Query and Generate a Visibility Report

Generating a complete GEO visibility report requires three key pieces of information.

Brand Information: Use Both Full Name and Shorthand

The first item is your brand name. It's recommended to use a combination of the full official name and common shorthand. Taking Xiaomi as an example, you might enter "小米科技、小米" — covering both the formal corporate name and the casual version users actually say. This ensures the AI can accurately identify the brand across different phrasing contexts.

Industry Keywords: Pinpoint Your Niche

The second item is industry keywords — the core terms that define the market segment your brand operates in. For Xiaomi's new energy vehicle business, relevant industry keywords might include terms like "new energy vehicles," "automobiles," and "new energy." The accuracy of these keywords directly determines the scope of competitor benchmarking in the report, and also influences how precisely subsequent keyword strategy can be targeted.

Include Optimization Recommendations or Not?

The third item is choosing your report type: a data-only report, or a full report that includes an optimization plan. The tutorial notes that the data-only version is relatively more affordable, while the version with detailed optimization recommendations costs more. Notably, the creator emphasizes that generating these reports consumes significant computing resources and doesn't come cheap — a reflection of the technical complexity behind AI search analytics, and part of why these tools haven't yet gone mainstream.

How to Interpret the Core Sections of a Visibility Report

A complete GEO visibility report covers multiple analytical dimensions and serves as an important data foundation for making optimization decisions.

Overall Rating and Optimization Score

The report begins with an overall rating (e.g., "Excellent") and a quantified composite score. This score is a numerical representation of your brand's overall performance in AI search, and can serve as a baseline for measuring progress before and after optimization efforts.

Competitive Benchmarking Data

One of the most valuable sections of the report is competitor analysis. It compares your target brand against major players across multiple dimensions — for instance, an AI-mention leaderboard within the new energy vehicle sector. This side-by-side comparison allows practitioners to clearly identify gaps relative to competitors and pinpoint where optimization focus is most needed.

Negative Content and Sentiment Analysis

The report also surfaces negative content analysis related to your brand, including adverse sentiment and user complaints. This section is particularly important for brand reputation management. In the age of AI search, once negative information is cited and surfaced by an AI in response to a user query, its reach and impact can be significantly amplified. Catching and addressing these issues early is a critical — and often overlooked — part of GEO optimization.

Keyword Mention Analysis

The report provides a detailed breakdown of the specific terms associated with your brand's mentions. These keywords are the core handles for content strategy. The tutorial recommends extracting the keywords that are already being mentioned — or should be — and building articles and content systematically around them, so that your brand's likelihood of being cited in AI search continues to improve over time.

Putting Optimization Recommendations Into Action

Users who opt for the full report will receive concrete optimization guidance across two main areas.

Content Creation: Data-Driven Topic Selection

The report provides a set of suggested article titles for high-authority content, guiding users to "write high-authority articles based on the following titles." This means the ultimate execution of GEO optimization still comes down to consistently producing high-quality content — the difference is that topic selection and keyword targeting are driven by data rather than gut instinct.

Tiered Distribution: Expanding from Core to Peripheral Channels

On the distribution side, the report recommends a tiered channel radiation strategy: prioritize establishing content presence on the highest-authority, highest-traffic platforms first, then expand outward through a first-tier, second-tier, and third-tier channel hierarchy. This approach systematically grows coverage from core platforms to peripheral ones, rapidly increasing the brand's overall mention rate across AI platforms.

A Balanced View: The Value and Limitations of Visibility Reports

The tutorial author is also clear on this point: visibility reports are for reference only and should be interpreted alongside earlier qualitative research. The report provides data support and directional guidance — but the execution details, such as how to write the articles, which distribution channels to choose, and how to continuously iterate, still require deep judgment from practitioners based on their specific industry context. Don't take the report as gospel.

Broadly speaking, GEO is a nascent field and its methodologies are still evolving rapidly. The emergence of analytical tools like visibility reports signals that AI search marketing is maturing from trial-and-error to data-driven operations. For brands looking to gain an early foothold in the AI search ecosystem, learning to read and effectively use these tools is a core capability worth developing sooner rather than later.