More Businesses Look to GEO to Increase Their Visibility Online
Generative search is changing how people search for information, services, and products online. Users no longer turn to search engines to return lists of links. Instead, whether they are typing their question into Google or into an AI assistant’s prompt, they expect to receive the answer in a quick summary. This in turn is changing how local companies manage their visibility online. Visibility is no longer primarily about search engine optimization (SEO) but is also about generative engine optimization (GEO). Yesterday, companies used SEO tools to help them compete for top spots in search engine results; today, more companies are using a GEO Tool to guide their efforts to present themselves online in ways that make it easy for AI assistants to summarize, cite, and recommend their business.
How Search is Changing
Online searchers are using AI-generated summaries to discover brands, compare options, and evaluate company credibility, which may be affecting traditional search. The Pew Research Center found that Google users who encountered an AI summary in response to their search term clicked on a link in the search results 8% of the time, compared to 15% of the time when no AI summary was offered. The users within that 7% gap had presumably found their question answered by the summary and felt no further online reading was needed to satisfy their curiosity or make a decision.
These findings aren’t entirely uncontested. Robby Stein, Google Search’s Vice President of Product, shared in December that outbound clicks from Google have not declined, in response to concern from companies that AI summaries may cause a reduction in referral traffic to their sites from Google. While more studies may be needed to verify or quantify the risk of AI summaries for your website traffic, some companies are already taking action to adapt to the opportunity presented by AI responses: getting mentioned directly to the user in the summary. Making that more likely to occur is the objective of generative engine optimization (GEO).
The Brave New World of GEO
As web searchers increasingly rely on AI systems to summarize their options, a company’s visibility may come to depend less on its pages’ search engine ranking and more on whether authoritative sources mention the company, whether its content is easy for agentic AI to scan and interpret, and whether its content is consistent across the web. GEO tools are used to understand how the company currently “looks” to AI agents and how to optimize its content so that AI assistants are more likely to recommend it.
For example, a Miami travel agency may track whether AI-generated answers to travel questions cite its content or third-party reviews of its services (or may discover that AI-generated answers are tracking its competitors primarily). A law firm might monitor how AI search describes categories of legal services in South Florida. The firm might then look at whether its own website describes those categories similarly.
A local healthcare provider might use a GEO tool to check whether AI-generated responses provide searchers with accurate and up-to-date information about its services. A retailer might check whether its competitors appear more often or more prominently when AI search responds to queries inviting it to compare products. A Miami-Dade County real estate company might review how generative results describe high-value neighborhoods, what average pricing those results have been suggesting, and what questions homebuyers are asking AI.
These are all real-world cases of how companies might monitor the way that they appear in AI-generated search summaries.
How Companies Track and Optimize for Generative Search
GEO requires tracking visibility over time rather than relying on a one-off check. A study published this month found that large language model-based chat systems can produce answers that vary significantly depending on the exact wording of the user’s prompt, and that even vary across repeated responses to the same prompt and over time. As LLMs evolve and as the content available on the Internet on any given topic can shift and change, the way AI chat summarizes and prioritizes information for its users will change, too. This means that GEO, much like SEO, should be an ongoing effort.
Because AI-generated summaries are highly contingent and may vary in what they offer the user, GEO can’t be treated as just a matter of keyword stuffing. Improving search engine visibility means considering your content structure, optimizing your pages for easy online reading and clarity, and ensuring your most important content is referenced in your headers and metadata.
Similarly, improving AI visibility means publishing pages that clearly and directly summarize answers to visitors’ pressing questions. It means offering original research on your site, so that both AI agents and the users who prompt them will recognize your company as a credible authority in its area. It means providing expert commentary, maintaining up-to-date, accurate FAQs, and receiving consistent mentions online from third parties. After all, if an LLM-powered bot can recognize your company as credible, authoritative, and recognized by others, it is more likely to bring up your content and your brand in response to a prompt.
GEO may not replace SEO any more than SEO replaced PR, but it does mean an extension of a company’s digital marketing strategy. In any case, AI search is clearly here to stay, and as it becomes a more integral part of how consumers research brands, products, and destinations, companies are finding tools to adapt and optimize their sites for this evolving “new normal.”
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