GEO for B2B: 11 Ways to Get Cited by AI Using Nothing but Google Search

Lee Stacey, Bourne Digital · September 2026

This is a step-by-step guide to generative engine optimisation (GEO) using only Google Search.

No expensive AI visibility trackers. No prompt-monitoring subscriptions. Just the search box you already use a hundred times a day.

We use these techniques ourselves when we start a GEO engagement for a B2B client.

So if you want your brand to show up when buyers ask AI “what's the best [your category] for enterprise?”, this guide is for you.

Here's the thing most people miss about GEO:

Generative engines don't make answers up from nowhere. Most of them search first, then write.

And a lot of that searching runs through Google's index.

Bottom line?

If you understand what Google surfaces for your buyers' questions, you understand a big chunk of what AI engines are reading before they answer.

And the rankings link is real. Ahrefs analysed 1.9 million AI Overview citations and found that 76.1% of the top visible citations ranked in Google's top 10. (Ahrefs)

(Quick caveat: when you count every citation in an AI Overview, not just the three visible ones, the overlap falls a lot. A later Ahrefs dataset put it at 37.9%. The reason matters, and I'll come back to it in Technique #3. HZ Signal has a good write-up reconciling the studies.)

One more thing before we start.

Google is very clear that there's no special markup, “AI text file” or schema needed to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode. A page just has to be indexed and eligible to show with a snippet. (Google Search Central)

So GEO isn't about secret tricks. It's about being the most citable source for the questions your buyers actually ask, both on your site and across the web.

Here's how to find out what that means for you.

Technique #1: Build Your “Money Prompt” List

Before you touch AI Mode, you need a list of the prompts that actually matter to your pipeline.

I call these money prompts.

For B2B, they almost always fall into five buckets:

BucketExample prompt
Category“best data governance platform for enterprise”
Comparison“Snowflake vs Databricks for a mid-size fintech”
Alternatives“alternatives to [competitor]”
Problem“how do we reduce churn in a B2B SaaS product”
Evaluation“what should I look for in a SOC 2 compliance tool”

Aim for 20 to 40 prompts to start.

Here's a quick way to seed the list using Google itself:

  1. Type your category into Google and stop before you hit enter. Note the autocomplete suggestions.
  2. Search your category with modifiers: best, enterprise, vs, alternatives, pricing, for [industry].
  3. Search your biggest competitor's name followed by a space. Autocomplete will show you what people ask about them.

Pro Tip: A 2026 analysis of 1,000 B2B SaaS SERPs tested each category in four variants (base, “best”, “enterprise” and “best for enterprises”) and found an AI Overview on more than 76% of solution-aware searches. (Overthink Group) That's a strong reason to make sure your list includes “best” and “enterprise” variants.

Technique #2: Run a Citation Audit in AI Mode

Now for the fun part.

Take each money prompt and run it through Google AI Mode (and note whether a regular search triggers an AI Overview too).

For every prompt, log:

A simple spreadsheet works fine:

PromptMentioned?Cited?Competitors namedCited URLs
best [category] for enterpriseNoNoA, B, Cg2.com/…, vendorA.com/…, youtube.com/…

After 20 or so prompts, patterns jump out. Usually you'll find:

That last one is gold. It tells you which content AI already sees as citable.

Pro Tip: Run the audit in a private/incognito window and note your location. AI answers vary by user, location and time, so treat this as a directional snapshot, not a precise ranking. Re-run it monthly.

Technique #3: Reverse-Engineer the Query Fan-Out

This is the technique that separates GEO from old-school keyword research.

As I mentioned above, Google says AI Mode and AI Overviews use query fan-out: they break one question into lots of related sub-searches and then pull sources from all of them. (Google Search Central)

That's why “does ranking #1 get me cited?” is the wrong question. The analysis reconciling the citation studies found that overlap with rankings for the original prompt alone was as low as 12%, and higher once fan-out queries are included. (HZ Signal)

In other words: you can get cited for a prompt you don't rank for, because you rank for one of its sub-queries.

Here's how to work out what those sub-queries are, using Google alone.

Step 1: Run a money prompt in AI Mode.

Step 2: Read the answer's structure. Every sub-heading, bullet group and “key considerations” section is a clue to a sub-query. For example, “best SIEM for enterprise” might break into:

Step 3: Note the suggested follow-up questions AI Mode offers. These are more sub-topics Google associates with the prompt.

Step 4: Search each sub-topic in regular Google. Who ranks? Who is cited? Do you have a page that answers it?

Now you have a fan-out map for each money prompt. Every sub-query you don't cover is a gap. Every sub-query where a third party ranks is an outreach opportunity (more on that in Technique #5).

Technique #4: Mine People Also Ask and Autocomplete for Conversational Questions

People type 3–4 word keywords into Google. They type full sentences into AI.

So you need to know the conversational version of your topics.

Google hands them to you in two places.

People Also Ask (PAA)

Search a money prompt and scroll to People also ask. Click a question and Google loads more. Click three or four and you'll have 15 to 20 real questions.

The Overthink Group data shows PAA growing its share of B2B SERPs in Q2 2026. (Overthink Group) It's not going anywhere.

Autocomplete “question soup”

Type your category and add a question starter. Note what Google suggests for each:

Then do the same with your brand name and your top competitor's name.

What do you do with these?

Turn them into question-led H2s and H3s on your key pages, with a direct 40–60 word answer immediately underneath. Then go deeper.

Why does this help?

Because AI engines pull passages, not whole pages. A clear question followed by a self-contained answer is the easiest possible thing for a model to lift and cite.

Technique #5: Find the Third-Party Pages AI Trusts in Your Category

Here's a hard truth for B2B marketers:

AI engines love citing people who aren't you.

In the Overthink Group study, the most cited domains in B2B AI Overviews were YouTube (7.4%), G2 (4.0%), Reddit (3.8%) and Gartner (2.6%). (Overthink Group)

So a big part of GEO is getting mentioned on the pages AI already cites.

Your citation audit (Technique #2) gave you some of these. Now use Google operators to find the rest:

intitle:"best" "[category]" 2026
intitle:"alternatives" "[competitor name]"
intitle:"vs" "[competitor A]" "[competitor B]"
"top [category] tools" -site:competitorA.com -site:competitorB.com
inurl:review "[category]"

For each result, ask three questions:

  1. Is my brand included?
  2. Is the page cited in any AI answers for my money prompts?
  3. Is it realistic to get included? (Editorial listicle? Review platform? Industry association directory?)

Then prioritise the pages that score “no, yes, yes.”

Pro Tip: Use the Tools → Any time filter (or after:2026-01-01 in the query) to focus on recently updated lists. Fresh listicles are more likely to be edited, and editors are more open to adding a vendor that sends them useful data.

Technique #6: Find Where Your Competitors Are Mentioned (and You're Not)

This is a classic link-building trick that works even better for GEO.

Why?

Because LLMs build their picture of a category from which brands get mentioned together. If your competitors are always listed side by side and you're missing, AI learns that you're not part of the set.

Here's the search:

"Competitor A" "Competitor B" -"Your Brand"

Every result is a page where two of your rivals are discussed together without you.

Then flip it to find your unlinked brand mentions:

"Your Brand" -site:yourbrand.com -site:linkedin.com

You're not just after links here. Go through the mentions and check they describe you accurately and consistently: the same category, the same core use case, the same positioning. Messy, contradictory descriptions around the web make it harder for AI to summarise you in a single clear sentence.

Technique #7: Audit What “the Web Says” About Your Brand

Search your own brand name.

What you see is a decent proxy for the “brand profile” generative engines are working from.

Check these in order:

1. The Knowledge Panel. Do you have one? Is the description, logo, founding date and HQ right?

2. “About this result.” Click the three dots next to your homepage listing. Google shows a description of your site plus what other sources say about it. If it's thin or wrong, that's a problem.

3. Brand + modifier searches. Run:

Then run the same questions in AI Mode and compare.

When the AI answer gets something wrong, like outdated pricing, a discontinued product, or a competitor's feature credited to you, look at the cited sources. Nine times out of ten the error traces back to a specific page that ranks. Fix it at the source: update your own page, or ask the third party to correct theirs.

Pro Tip: If “[brand] pricing” or “[brand] vs [competitor]” is answered by someone else's page, you're missing a page. Publish your own honest pricing and comparison pages. Otherwise AI will quote whoever did.

Technique #8: Scout the Forums AI Pulls From

Reddit is everywhere in Google right now.

An Ahrefs study of 145 million US Google results (published August 2026) found that when the “Discussions and forums” feature appears, Reddit is in 83.9% of them. (Ahrefs)

Worth knowing: for B2B queries specifically, the forum feature is much smaller. Overthink's data shows it dropping to 3.9% of B2B results in Q2 2026. (Overthink Group) But Reddit was still the third most cited domain in B2B AI Overviews in the same study.

So forums matter less for rankings in B2B and still matter for citations.

Here's how to find the threads that count:

site:reddit.com "[category]" recommend
site:reddit.com "[competitor]" alternative
site:reddit.com/r/[relevant subreddit] "[problem you solve]"

You can also use the Forums filter under the search bar (Google renamed the old “Perspectives” filter to “Forums” in March 2024). (Search Engine Land)

What do you do with these threads?

Don't spam them. Reddit communities spot vendor drive-bys instantly.

Instead:

Technique #9: Don't Ignore Video

Remember that stat from Technique #5?

YouTube was the single most cited domain in B2B AI Overviews at 7.4%, and almost half of the YouTube results in those SERPs also appeared in AI Overviews. (Overthink Group)

Most B2B brands don't have a YouTube strategy that goes beyond webinar recordings.

That's an opportunity.

Search each money prompt, then click the Videos tab. Ask:

If a prompt has no strong video answer, that's a low-competition gap. A focused 6–10 minute walkthrough with a clear title, chapters and an accurate transcript can become a citable source fairly quickly.

Technique #10: Gap-Check Your Own Site with site:

Now turn the lens on yourself.

For each sub-query on your fan-out map (Technique #3), search:

site:yourdomain.com "[sub-query topic]"

You're checking two things:

  1. Do you have a page that answers this at all?
  2. Is the page Google returns the one you'd want cited?

Very often the answer to #2 is “no.” Google returns an old blog post, a thin tag page, or a PDF, while the page you want to be cited isn't showing.

Important caveat: Google says the site: operator doesn't necessarily return every indexed URL and isn't built for site audits. (Google Search Central) Use it as a quick gap check, and confirm indexing with the URL Inspection tool in Search Console.

Technique #11: Check How Google “Snippets” Your Pages

Here's a quick test I love.

Search one of your money-prompt sub-queries and find your page in the results. Look at the snippet Google shows.

Is it:

Remember, Google's rule for AI features is that a page must be eligible to show with a snippet. (Google Search Central) The snippet is a rough preview of which passage Google thinks answers the query.

If the snippet is weak, fix the page:

Bonus: Track It in Search Console

This one's technically not “Google Search,” but it's too useful to leave out.

Google is rolling out a Search Generative AI performance report in Search Console. It shows how often your URLs appear in generative AI features in Search and Discover, broken down by page, country, device and date. It started with a subset of UK site owners and doesn't include click data yet.

If you have it, use it to check whether your fixes are working — we cover this in detail in our Search Console GEO guide.

If you don't, keep running the monthly citation audit from Technique #2. It's manual, but it's free and it works.

Putting It All Together

Here's the whole process in one list:

  1. Build 20–40 money prompts across category, comparison, alternatives, problem and evaluation.
  2. Audit who AI Mode mentions and cites for each one.
  3. Map the fan-out sub-queries behind each answer.
  4. Mine PAA and Autocomplete for the conversational phrasing.
  5. List the third-party pages AI trusts, and get on them.
  6. Find co-mentions you're missing and tidy up how the web describes you.
  7. Audit your brand SERP and fix wrong information at its source.
  8. Join the forum threads that get cited, as a real person.
  9. Fill video gaps in your category.
  10. Gap-check your own site against the fan-out map.
  11. Tighten your snippets so your best passages are easy to lift.

None of it needs a paid tool. All of it can start right now.

Final Thoughts

GEO can feel like a black box.

But for most B2B brands, the inputs are sitting in plain sight in a Google results page.

Start with the citation audit. It only takes half a day, and it will tell you more about your AI visibility than any dashboard.

If you'd like us to run the full audit for you, take a look at our AI Search Audits.

Sources

  1. AI Features and Your Website – Google Search Central
  2. Grounding with Google Search – Google AI for Developers
  3. site: search operator – Google Search Central
  4. ChatGPT's answers came from Google Search after all: Report – Search Engine Land
  5. AI Overview citations and Google rankings – Ahrefs
  6. Do AI Overview citations come from the top 10? Every study, reconciled – HZ Signal
  7. We analyzed 1,000 B2B SERPs over 2026 Q2 – Overthink Group
  8. Reddit appears in 83.9% of Google's Discussions and Forums results – Ahrefs
  9. Google to replace perspectives filter with forums filter – Search Engine Land

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