@inproceedings{liu-xu-2026-think,
title = "Think Before Writing: Feature-Level Multi-Objective Optimization for Generative Citation Visibility",
author = "Liu, Zikang and
Xu, Peilan",
editor = "Liakata, Maria and
Moreira, Viviane P. and
Zhang, Jiajun and
Jurgens, David",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the {A}ssociation for {C}omputational {L}inguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)",
month = jul,
year = "2026",
address = "San Diego, California, United States",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.929/",
doi = "10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.929",
pages = "20290--20303",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-390-6",
abstract = "Generative answer engines expose content through selective citation rather than ranked retrieval, fundamentally altering how visibility is determined. This shift calls for new optimization methods beyond traditional search engine optimization. Existing generative engine optimization (GEO) approaches primarily rely on token-level text rewriting, offering limited interpretability and weak control over the trade-off between citation visibility and content quality. We propose FeatGEO, a feature-level, multi-objective optimization framework that abstracts webpages into interpretable structural, content, and linguistic properties. Instead of directly editing text, FeatGEO optimizes over this feature space and uses a language model to realize feature configurations into natural language, decoupling high-level optimization from surface-level generation. Experiments on GEO-Bench across three generative engines demonstrate that FeatGEO consistently improves citation visibility while maintaining or improving content quality, substantially outperforming token-level baselines. Further analyses show that citation behavior is more strongly influenced by document-level content properties than by isolated lexical edits, and that the learned feature configurations generalize across language models of different scales."
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<abstract>Generative answer engines expose content through selective citation rather than ranked retrieval, fundamentally altering how visibility is determined. This shift calls for new optimization methods beyond traditional search engine optimization. Existing generative engine optimization (GEO) approaches primarily rely on token-level text rewriting, offering limited interpretability and weak control over the trade-off between citation visibility and content quality. We propose FeatGEO, a feature-level, multi-objective optimization framework that abstracts webpages into interpretable structural, content, and linguistic properties. Instead of directly editing text, FeatGEO optimizes over this feature space and uses a language model to realize feature configurations into natural language, decoupling high-level optimization from surface-level generation. Experiments on GEO-Bench across three generative engines demonstrate that FeatGEO consistently improves citation visibility while maintaining or improving content quality, substantially outperforming token-level baselines. Further analyses show that citation behavior is more strongly influenced by document-level content properties than by isolated lexical edits, and that the learned feature configurations generalize across language models of different scales.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Think Before Writing: Feature-Level Multi-Objective Optimization for Generative Citation Visibility
%A Liu, Zikang
%A Xu, Peilan
%Y Liakata, Maria
%Y Moreira, Viviane P.
%Y Zhang, Jiajun
%Y Jurgens, David
%S Proceedings of the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers)
%D 2026
%8 July
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C San Diego, California, United States
%@ 979-8-89176-390-6
%F liu-xu-2026-think
%X Generative answer engines expose content through selective citation rather than ranked retrieval, fundamentally altering how visibility is determined. This shift calls for new optimization methods beyond traditional search engine optimization. Existing generative engine optimization (GEO) approaches primarily rely on token-level text rewriting, offering limited interpretability and weak control over the trade-off between citation visibility and content quality. We propose FeatGEO, a feature-level, multi-objective optimization framework that abstracts webpages into interpretable structural, content, and linguistic properties. Instead of directly editing text, FeatGEO optimizes over this feature space and uses a language model to realize feature configurations into natural language, decoupling high-level optimization from surface-level generation. Experiments on GEO-Bench across three generative engines demonstrate that FeatGEO consistently improves citation visibility while maintaining or improving content quality, substantially outperforming token-level baselines. Further analyses show that citation behavior is more strongly influenced by document-level content properties than by isolated lexical edits, and that the learned feature configurations generalize across language models of different scales.
%R 10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.929
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.929/
%U https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2026.acl-long.929
%P 20290-20303
Markdown (Informal)
[Think Before Writing: Feature-Level Multi-Objective Optimization for Generative Citation Visibility](https://aclanthology.org/2026.acl-long.929/) (Liu & Xu, ACL 2026)
ACL