What Google and Microsoft patents teach us about GEO

Generative engine optimization (GEO) represents a shift from optimizing for keyword-based ranking systems to optimizing for how generative search engines interpret and assemble information. 

While the inner workings of generative AI are famously complex, patents and research papers filed by major tech companies such as Google and Microsoft provide concrete insight into the technical mechanisms underlying generative search. By analyzing these primary sources, we can move beyond speculation and into strategic action.

This article analyzes the most insightful patents to provide actionable lessons for three core pillars of GEO: query fan-out, large language model (LLM) readability, and brand context.

Why researching patents is so important for learning GEO

Patents and research papers are primary, evidence-based sources that reveal how AI search systems actually work. The knowledge gained from these sources can be used to draw concrete conclusions about how to optimize these systems. This is essential in the early stages of a new discipline such as GEO.

Patents and research papers reveal technical mechanisms and design intent. They often describe retrieval architectures, such as: 

• Passage retrieval and ranking.
• Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) workflows.
• Query processing, including query fan-out, grounding, and other components that determine which content passages LLM-based systems retrieve and cite. 

Knowing these mechanisms explains why LLM readability, chunk relevance, and brand and context signals matter.

Primary sources reduce reliance on hype and checklists. Secondary sources, such as blogs and lists, can be misleading. Patents and research papers let you verify claims and separate evidence-based tactics from marketing-driven advice.

Patents enable hypothesis-driven optimization. Understanding the technical details helps you form testable hypotheses, such as how content structure, chunking, or metadata might affect retrieval, ranking, and citation, and design small-scale experiments to validate them.

In short, patents and research papers provide the technical grounding needed to:

• Understand why specific GEO tactics might work.
• Test and systematize those tactics.
• Avoid wasting effort on unproven advice.

This makes them a central resource for learning and practicing generative engine optimization and SEO. 

That’s why I’ve been researching patents for more than 10 years and founded the SEO Research Suite, the first database for GEO- and SEO-related patents and research papers.

Why we need to differentiate when talking about GEO

In many discussions about generative engine optimization, too little distinction is made between the different goals that GEO can pursue.

One goal is improving the citability of LLMs so your content is cited more often as the source. I refer to this as LLM readability optimization.

Another goal is brand positioning for LLMs, so a brand is mentioned more often by name. I refer to this as brand context optimization.

Each of these goals relies on different optimization strategies. That’s why they must be considered separately.

The three foundational pillars of GEO

Understanding the following three concepts is strategically critical. 

These pillars represent fundamental shifts in how machines interpret queries, process content, and understand brands, forming the foundation for advanced GEO strategies. 

They are the new rules of digital information retrieval.

LLM readability: Crafting content for AI consumption

LLM readability is the practice of optimizing content so it can be effectively processed, deconstructed, and synthesized by LLMs. 

It goes beyond human readability and includes technical factors such as: 

• Natural language quality.
• Logical document structure.
• A clear information hierarchy.
• The relevance of individual text passages, often referred to as chunks or nuggets.

Brand context: Building a cohesive digital identity

Brand context optimization moves beyond page-level optimization to focus on how AI systems synthesize information across an entire web domain. 

The goal is to build a holistic, unified characterization of a brand. This involves ensuring your overall digital presence tells a consistent and coherent story that an AI system can easily interpret.

Query fan-out: Deconstructing user intent

Query fan-out is the process by which a generative engine deconstructs a user’s initial, often ambiguous query into multiple specific subqueries, themes, or intents. 

This allows the system to gather a more comprehensive and relevant set of information from its index before synthesizing a final generated answer.

These three pillars are not theoretical. They are actively being built into the architecture of modern search, as the following patents and research papers reveal.

Patent deep dive: How generative engines understand user queries (query fan-out)

Before a generative engine can answer a question, it must first develop a clear understanding of the user’s true intent. 

The patents below describe a multi-step process designed to deconstruct ambiguity, explore topics comprehensively, and ensure the final answer aligns with a confirmed user goal rather than the initial keywords alone.

Microsoft’s ‘Deep search using large language models’: From ambiguous query to primary intent

Microsoft’s “Deep search using large language models” patent (US20250321968A1) outlines a system that prioritizes intent by confirming a user’s true goal before delivering highly relevant results. 

Instead of treating an ambiguous query as a single event, the system transforms it into a structured investigation.

The process unfolds across several key stages:

• Initial query and grounding: The system performs a standard web search using the original query to gather context and a set of grounding results.
• Intent generation: A first LLM analyzes the query and the grounding results to generate multiple likely intents. For a query such as “how do points systems work in Japan,” the system might generate distinct intents like “immigration points system,” “loyalty points system,” or “traffic points system.”
• Primary intent selection: The system selects the most probable intent. This can happen automatically, by presenting options to the user for disambiguation, or by using personalization signals such as search history.
• Alternative query generation: Once a primary intent is confirmed, a second LLM generates more specific alternative queries to explore the topic in depth. For an academic grading intent, this might include queries like “German university grading scale explained.”
• LLM-based scoring: A final LLM scores each new search result for relevance against the primary intent rather than the original ambiguous query. This ensures only results that precisely match the confirmed goal are ranked highly.

The key insight from this patent is that search is evolving into a system that resolves ambiguity first. 

Final results are tailored to a user’s specific, confirmed goal, representing a fundamental departure from traditional keyword-based ranking.

Google’s ‘thematic search’: Auto-clustering topics from top results

Google’s “thematic search” patent (US12158907B1) provides the architectural blueprint for features such as AI Overviews. The system is designed to automatically identify and organize the most important subtopics related to a query. 

It analyzes top-ranked documents, uses an LLM to generate short summary descriptions of individual passages, and then clusters those summaries to identify common themes.

The direct implication is a shift from a simple list of links to a guided exploration of a topic’s most important facets. 

This process organizes information for users and allows the engine to identify which themes consistently appear across top-ranking documents, forming a foundational layer for establishing topical consensus.

Google’s ‘stateful chat’: Generating queries from conversation history

The concept of synthetic queries in Google’s “Search with stateful chat” patent (US20240289407A1) reveals another layer of intent understanding. 

The system generates new, relevant queries based on a user’s entire session history rather than just the most recent input. 

By maintaining a stateful memory of the conversation, the engine can predict logical next steps and suggest follow-up queries that build on previous interactions.

The key takeaway is that queries are no longer isolated events. Instead, they’re becoming part of a continuous, context-aware dialogue. 

This evolution requires content to do more than answer a single question. It must also fit logically within a broader user journey.

Patent deep dive: Crafting content for AI processing (LLM readability)

Once a generative engine has disambiguated user intent and fanned out the query, its next challenge is to find and evaluate content chunks that can precisely answer those subqueries. This is where machine readability becomes critical. 

The following patents and research papers show how engines evaluate content at a granular, passage-by-passage level, rewarding clarity, structure, and factual density.

The ‘nugget’ philosophy: Deconstructing content into atomic facts

The GINGER research paper introduces a methodology for improving the factual accuracy of AI-generated responses. Its core concept involves breaking retrieved text passages into minimal, verifiable information units, referred to as nuggets.

By deconstructing complex information into atomic facts, the system can more easily trace each statement back to its source, ensuring every component of the final answer is grounded and verifiable.

The lesson from this approach is clear: Content should be structured as a collection of self-contained, fact-dense nuggets. 

Each paragraph or statement should focus on a single, provable idea, making it easier for an AI system to extract, verify, and accurately attribute that information.

Google’s span selection: Pinpointing the exact answer

Google’s “Selecting answer spans” patent (US11481646B2) describes a system that uses a multilevel neural network to identify and score specific text spans, or chunks, within a document that best answer a given question. 

The system evaluates candidate spans, computes numeric representations based on their relationship to the query, and assigns a final score to select the single most relevant passage.

The key insight is that the relevance of individual paragraphs is evaluated with intense scrutiny. This underscores the importance of content structure, particularly placing a direct, concise answer immediately after a question-style heading. 

The patent provides the technical justification for the answer-first model, a core principle of modern GEO strategy.

The consensus engine: Validating answers with weighted terms

Google’s “Weighted answer terms” patent (US10019513B1) explains how search engines establish a consensus around what constitutes a correct answer.

This patent is closely associated with featured snippets, but the technology Google developed for featured snippets is one of the foundational methodologies behind passage-based retrieval used today by AI search systems to select passages for answers.

The system identifies common question phrases across the web, analyzes the text passages that follow them, and creates a weighted term vector based on terms that appear most frequently in high-quality responses. 

For a query such as “Why is the sky blue?” terms like “Rayleigh scattering” and “atmosphere” receive high weights.

The key lesson is that to be considered an accurate and authoritative source, content must incorporate the consensus terminology used by other expert sources on the topic. 

Deviating too far from this established vocabulary can cause content to be scored poorly for accuracy, even when it is factually correct.

Patent deep dive: Building your brand’s digital DNA (brand context)

While earlier patents focus on the micro level of queries and content chunks, this final piece operates at the macro level. The engine must understand not only what is being said but also who is saying it. 

This is the essence of brand context, representing a shift from optimizing individual pages to projecting a coherent brand identity across an entire domain. 

The following patent shows how AI systems are designed to interpret an entity by synthesizing information from across its full digital presence.

Google’s entity characterization: The website as a single prompt

The methodology described in Google’s “Data extraction using LLMs” patent (WO2025063948A1) outlines a system that treats an entire website as a single input to an LLM. The system scans and interprets content from multiple pages across a domain to generate a single, synthesized characterization of the entity. 

This is not a copy-and-paste summary but a new interpretation of the collected information that is better suited to an intended purpose, such as an ad or summary, while still passing quality checks that verbatim text might fail.

The patent also explains that this characterization is organized into a hierarchical graph structure with parent and leaf nodes, which has direct implications for site architecture:

The key implication is that every page on a website contributes to a single brand narrative.

Inconsistent messaging, conflicting terminology, or unclear value propositions can cause an AI system to generate a fragmented and weak entity characterization, reducing a brand’s authority in the system’s interpretation.

The GEO playbook: Actionable lessons derived from the patents

These technical documents aren’t merely theoretical. They provide a clear, actionable playbook for aligning content and digital strategy with the core mechanics of generative search. The principles revealed in these patents form a direct guide for implementation.

Principle 1: Optimize for disambiguated intent, not just keywords

Based on the “Deep Search” and “Thematic Search” patents, the focus must shift from targeting single keywords to comprehensively answering the specific, disambiguated intents a user may have.

Actionable advice 

• For a target query, brainstorm the different possible user intents. 
• Create distinct, highly detailed content sections or separate pages for each one, using clear, question-based headings to signal the specific intent being addressed.

Principle 2: Structure for machine readability and extraction

Synthesizing lessons from the GINGER paper, the “answer spans” patent, and LLM readability guidance, it’s clear that structure is critical for AI processing.

Actionable advice

Apply the following structural rules to your content:

• Use the answer-first model: Structure content so the direct answer appears immediately after a question-style heading. Follow with explanation, evidence, and context.
• Write in nuggets: Compose short, self-contained paragraphs, each focused on a single, verifiable idea. This makes each fact easier to extract and attribute.
• Leverage structured formats: Use lists and tables whenever possible. These formats make data points and comparisons explicit and easily parsable for an LLM.
• Employ a logical heading hierarchy: Use H1, H2, and H3 tags to create a clear topical map of the document. This hierarchy helps an AI system understand the context and scope of each section.

Principle 3: Build a unified and consistent entity narrative

Drawing directly from the “Data extraction using LLMs” patent, domainwide consistency is no longer a nice-to-have. It’s a technical requirement for building a strong brand context.

Actionable advice

• Conduct a comprehensive content audit. 
• Ensure mission statements, service descriptions, value propositions, and key terminology are used consistently across every page, from the homepage to blog posts to the site footer.

Principle 4: Speak the language of authoritative consensus

The “Weighted answer terms” patent shows that AI systems validate answers by comparing them against an established consensus vocabulary.

Actionable advice

• Before writing, analyze current featured snippets, AI Overviews, and top-ranking documents for a given query. 
• Identify recurring technical terms, specific nouns, and phrases they use. 
• Incorporate this consensus vocabulary to signal accuracy and authority.

Principle 5: Mirror the machine’s hierarchy in your architecture

The parent-leaf node structure described in the entity characterization patent provides a direct blueprint for effective site architecture.

Actionable advice

• Design site architecture and internal linking to reflect a logical hierarchy. Broad parent category pages should link to specific leaf detail pages. 
• This structure makes it easier for an LLM to map brand expertise and build an accurate hierarchical graph.

These five principles aren’t isolated tactics. 

They form a single, integrated strategy in which site architecture reinforces the brand narrative, content structure enables machine extraction, and both align to answer a user’s true, disambiguated intent.

Aligning with the future of information retrieval

Patents and research papers from the world’s leading technology companies offer a clear view of the future of search. 

Generative engine optimization is fundamentally about making information machine-interpretable at two critical levels: 

• The micro level of the individual fact, or chunk.
• The macro level of the cohesive brand entity. 

By studying these documents, you can shift from a reactive approach of chasing algorithm updates to a proactive one of building digital assets aligned with the core principles of how generative AI understands, structures, and presents information.