GEO for OM&HB?

Interesting, and not unexpected, move from the team at Ghost, the CMS I use to run this site. John O'Nolan:

Ghost now includes built-in GEO tools that generate the files AI systems expect and provide Markdown versions of your public content, which you can activate in your admin panel under Settings → Meta data

If you're wondering what the hell GEO is, it's “generative engine optimisation” – making your site more likely to be found and process by AIs for use in their responses. Some people know it as AEO: “answer engine optimisation”. Both are basically the same thing.

So, should I turn it on?

The Ghost team acknowledge the dilemma indirectly:

We understand that not everyone wants to engage with AI, so this feature is off by default for existing sites. If you'd like to enable it, simply toggle it on in Settings. Otherwise, there's nothing you need to do; it will remain switched off.

I'm tempted, on a experimental basis, just to see it it makes any discernible difference to the dribble of traffic I do get from LLMs already. The paid content on the site isn't exposed to the crawlers:

Only publicly available content is included. Members-only and paid posts are listed with their public title and excerpt, but their protected content is not. Private sites don’t serve these files at all.

So, I wouldn't be exposing anything that isn't already freely accessible for the AI trainers to crawl. I'd just be making it easier for them.

I suspect I will end up turning it on. I've always used this site for experiments, some successful, some much less so. But I thought I'd canvas some opinions first…