AI Marketing

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Read what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is!

What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is how brands secure visibility in AI-powered search results. Instead of competing for rankings in traditional search, GEO ensures your company is included when AI Search platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google Gemini, recommend products, services, or expertise. If SEO is about ranking in Google, GEO is about being cited as a trusted source in AI-generated answers. With millions of daily queries shifting to AI platforms, GEO is becoming critical for any business that wants to stay discoverable and competitive. ChatGPT alone processes 1+ billion queries daily, averaging 190.6 million daily users, which is 2,206 visits every second. If AI systems don’t mention your brand, you are already losing market share to your competitors.

In this article (updated August 2025), we break down what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) means for businesses, why AI Search is becoming unavoidable, and how to measure and improve your brand’s visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google Gemini.

Why is it vital to optimize for both SEO and GEO?

SEO and GEO share the same goal, brand visibility, but they optimize for different systems. SEO focuses on ranking higher in search engines, while GEO focuses on being mentioned and recommended by AI models that generate answers.

  • SEO: Optimize for search engines to drive rankings, clicks, and impressions.
  • GEO: Optimize for AI assistants so your brand is cited and included in generated answers.

The two approaches complement each other, but traditional SEO metrics don’t reveal how visible your brand is inside AI platforms. GEO success is measured through brand mentions in AI responses, citations, and competitive share of voice. This shift has major implications for how companies optimize going forward. Let’s break it down:

How is traditional search different from AI answers?

Classic search engines list out 10 blue links for users to choose from. AI search, on the other hand, generates a single answer or summary that pulls information from multiple sources. In SEO you fight to be the result; in GEO you aim to be part of the result. If your brand isn’t among the cited sources, you’re invisible.

Do keywords still matter in GEO?

SEO has long been about keywords. Generative AI, however, interprets context and natural language. GEO is about structuring your content so AI can understand and reuse it. Clear, factual, well-structured content beats keyword stuffing every time. Your content should directly answer questions and provide clear, factual information (so that an AI can easily pull it in response to a user query). The focus shifts from keyword density to semantic relevance in plain English, content that actually addresses what the user is asking, in a way an AI can digest.

Why isn’t one page enough for GEO?

With traditional Google search, you might optimize a single page to rank #1 for “best 4K TVs” and call it a day. But an AI like ChatGPT will generate an answer about the best 4K TVs by synthesizing info from numerous pages and databases at once. No single website “wins” that query outright. So, your GEO strategy can’t rely on just one piece of content. You need to ensure your brand and facts are present across the web, in product reviews, in Q&A forums, on Wikipedia, in news articles, etc. (Wherever the AI might look for information.). In short, your website alone isn’t enough. AI models pull from a web of sources, so you need a web-wide presence.

How does authority work in AI search?

In SEO, authority comes from backlinks and domain reputation. In GEO, authority is contextual and distributed.

  • Smaller, well-structured sources are often cited as much, or more, than big-name outlets.
  • Being present across diverse, trustworthy ecosystems increases your chances of citation.
  • Mentions in Wikipedia, industry reports, or academic sources still help, but they’re not the sole drivers of visibility.

In other words, GEO authority isn’t just about being big, it’s about being everywhere AI assistants might look.


What’s the difference between trained and real-time AI visibility?

A key distinction is how visibility is measured:

  • Offline visibility: Content that was part of an AI model’s training data. For instance, if your site ranks well on Google, it likely made it into the LLM’s “memory.” Think of it as being in the textbook the AI studied.
  • Online visibility: Content that shows up in real-time answers, when AI platforms fetch fresh data. Think of it as being in the conversation when users actually ask questions. These days, almost all LLMs conduct real-time web searches, so a brand’s overall share of voice is the most important metric to track.

Strong historical SEO may have given you some visibility. GEO ensures that you expand your overall visibility in AI search, securing the citations and mentions that influence buying decisions in the moment.

How do AI assistants decide what sources to cite?


In August 2025, Superlines team analyzed 1.5M citation links across ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity. The results:

  • 85–97% of citations came from smaller sources such as company sites, niche blogs, communities, and product documentation—not just big media like Wikipedia or Reddit.
  • Each AI platform has unique preferences in what sources it cites.
  • Even smaller media coverage or niche content can meaningfully boost visibility in AI search.

As Kimmo Ihanus, CTO, Co-Founder of Superlines, puts it:

"Knowing where AI pulls its answers from lets you influence visibility at the exact moment buying decisions begin."

Bottom line: SEO isn’t dead, it’s still important, but GEO is the new layer on top. Think of it this way: SEO gets you on page one of Google; GEO gets you into the brain of AI assistants. For businesses, that difference matters because more and more people are searching via AI chat interfaces. Optimizing for one without the other leaves a dangerous visibility gap. If you’re a business leader deciding where to focus your marketing, we recommend going all in on GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), as Google and other search engines shift to AI first.

"Think AI Search as the perfect salesperson who you just need to equip with the right sales material." – Superlines' CEO and co-founder Jere Meriluoto.

Why must businesses adopt GEO now?

Digital habits are changing fast, and businesses that don’t keep up risk losing their edge. Here’s why GEO deserves your immediate attention:

Why are audiences shifting to AI search?

As shown in the statistics at the start of this article, AI search has already gone mainstream. ChatGPT is growing like a rocket, and Perplexity’s growth is explosive. And these are just two platforms, not even counting the many other major AI players. What makes this traffic different is its quality: studies show that visitors coming from AI search convert 4.4x better than traditional search traffic. Every day, millions of users turn to AI assistants for recommendations and answers. If your brand isn’t included, you lose awareness, traffic, and customers to competitors who are.

Is organic traffic really declining because of AI?

Early data shows that when AI-generated answers appear, fewer people click on traditional search results. In 2025, the Superlines team interviewed over 200 companies across industries and found that most had experienced a 20–35% decline in traditional site traffic. On the flip side, these same companies reported starting to gain traffic from AI search platforms, but almost none of them knew how visible their brand actually was there. That’s exactly where Superlines comes in: we help companies understand their visibility in AI search and actively improve it across all major platforms.

Why is GEO a “winner takes all” game?

In a traditional search, maybe the #1 result gets ~30% of clicks, #2 gets 15%, and so on. In an AI answer, there might be only a single composed response. You’re either in it, or you’re not, there’s no page two. This high stakes scenario means the gap between the brands who are optimized for AI and those who aren’t will widen. Businesses that invest in GEO early can capture the lion’s share of AI-driven impressions, while late adopters might find it’s an uphill battle to get noticed once incumbents are entrenched as the go-to sources in AI models.

How are customer expectations changing with AI?

Today’s consumers (and B2B buyers) expect instant, conversational answers. Patience for digging through pages of results is wearing thin. A recent study noted that customer satisfaction had hit a 20-year low, partly because people want brands to anticipate their needs and give direct insights. Generative AI search plays right into that: it delivers quick, tailored answers. If your brand can consistently show up in those answers with helpful info, you’re meeting customers where their expectations are. That builds trust and can influence decisions. On the flip side, if competitors are consistently showing up and you’re not, guess who’s positioning themselves as the helpful expert in the customer’s mind? (Hint: not you.)

How does GEO future-proof my brand visibility?

We’re in the early days of AI-driven search. It’s evolving fast, new models, new search integrations (like voice assistants, chatbots on websites, etc.) are coming all the time. Adopting GEO practices now is like buying an insurance policy for your digital marketing. You’re making sure that as search evolves (I know, such an AI word), you’re ready to ride the wave rather than scramble to catch up. It’s much easier to maintain visibility than to recover it after you’ve fallen off the radar. Brands that start optimizing for generative search now will accumulate a sort of “AI awareness” over time, as the models continue training on more recent data. That’s a long-term competitive advantage.

In short, GEO isn’t just a trendy acronym, it’s a response to a profound shift in consumer behavior and technology. Ignoring it won’t make it go away; it will just make your brand increasingly invisible online. On the upside, getting into GEO early can pay dividends in sustained brand visibility and new customer acquisition as AI-driven search becomes the norm. As one expert put it, the rise of AI in search is a “tectonic change” that will impact every industry. Businesses need to adapt if they want to be part of the landscape ahead.

AI-powered search is changing how people find information. Instead of scrolling through results, users now receive instant answers. GEO makes sure your brand is included in those answers and turns AI search into one of your fastest-growing marketing channels and growth engines for your company.


You can pretty much show this section to your CFO if they are asking why you need to start investing into this 💰

Gif of Vince McMahon smelling the money
This is the part you can literally show your CFO: GEO means revenue growth, not just visibility.

 

How to Implement GEO for Your Business (Actionable Steps for you to follow)

Alright, so GEO matters – but how do you actually do it? The concept might sound abstract, but implementing Generative Engine Optimization can be approached step-by-step. Here are some actionable steps to get you started on boosting your AI search visibility:

1. How do I audit my AI search presence?

You can’t optimize what you don’t measure. So first, find out how (and if) you currently appear in AI-generated results. This “audit” is a bit different from a traditional SEO audit:

Ask AI Assistants About You:

  • Go to tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, or Claude and ask questions related to your business or industry. For example: “Who are the leading providers of [your product/service]?” or “[Your Company] vs [Competitor]: which is better?” See if, and how, the AI mentions you. (Pro tip: Use multiple phrasings a real user might try, not just your official name. You may discover the AI doesn’t know you, or worse, that it’s pulling outdated or incorrect info.)
  • Quick Visibility Audit: You can also run a free AI Search Visibility Audit here with Superlines to instantly see how visible your brand is across leading AI platforms.

Check Where Competitors Show Up: You might find that AI does mention some brands (maybe your competitors) and not you. Note where the AI is getting its info. Is it citing Wikipedia? News articles? Some industry blog? This gives clues about what sources you need to be in. If your rival is consistently referenced from, say, a popular “Top 10 X” article or a niche wiki, you should aim to get listed or mentioned there as well.

The audit step might feel a bit like detective work, but it will highlight the gaps. You may discover, for instance, that you’re missing from all AI answers related to your product category, or perhaps you only show up in very narrow branded queries. Either way, you have a baseline to improve from.

2. How do I optimize content for AI readability?

We’re not talking about human readability (hopefully you’ve done that already); this is about making content that’s easy for AI to parse, understand, and use in a response. Some tips:

Use Clear Structure and Headings: AI models often look for concise answers to direct questions. Organize your content with H2/H3 headings that are phrased as questions or clearly state the topic. For example, an FAQ page format is gold for GEO – if you pose a question “How do I choose the right CRM for my small business?” and then answer it clearly, an AI can grab that and adapt it for a user’s similar question. Structured headings (and even things like bullet lists) help AI pinpoint relevant text.

Write with Conversational Queries in Mind: Generative AIs are trained on tons of Q&A style content (think forums, Stack Exchange, Quora, etc.). Try to include the kind of phrasing your audience might use when speaking to an AI. Instead of just a blog titled “Cloud Storage Solutions 2025”, have sections that directly address likely queries like “What’s the most secure cloud storage for freelancers?” and then answer in a straightforward way. Essentially, anticipate the questions and make your content the answer.

Provide Direct, Factual Answers: When appropriate, give a concise answer in the first sentence, then elaborate. For example, start a paragraph with “Yes, you can do X…” or “The top benefits of Y are…” followed by details. AIs often quote or summarize the first bit of an answer. By front-loading the key information, you increase the chance the AI grabs your wording when answering a user. (This is similar to how you’d optimize for featured snippets on Google, but now for a different kind of snippet – an AI-generated one.)

Mind Your Tone and Clarity: AI models don’t have actual opinions; they rely on the content tone from sources. If your content is full of marketing fluff or ambiguous language, it’s harder for the AI to discern facts. Favor clear, neutral statements of fact where possible. It’s fine to have a brand voice in your writing (that can even help the AI identify your unique POV), just make sure the factual takeaways are unambiguous. For example, an AI will prefer “AcmeCRM integrates with 50+ apps including Slack and Gmail” over “AcmeCRM has the most amazing integrations to supercharge your workflow” – the latter is hype without specifics.

In short, think like an AI when editing your content: if you were tasked with extracting a quick answer or recommendation from it, would it be easy or hard? The easier you make it, the more likely the AI will use your content when constructing answers.

3. Does schema markup improve AI visibility?

Modern LLMs, including GPT-5, primarily read natural language, but AI search surfaces across engines still use structured signals to identify entities, facts, and page purpose. Adding high-quality schema and metadata will not replace good content, but it makes your brand easier to understand, disambiguate, and cite. Adding proper schema markup to your site can make a big difference in GEO:

Use Schema.org and JSON-LD:

  • notate your HTML with machine-readable info. Examples:
  • FAQPage for Q&A content
  • HowTo for step-by-step instructions
  • Product for e-commerce items (attributes like price, reviews, availability)
  • Organization and Person for your brand and team

By implementing schema, you’re basically speaking in the AI’s native language.

Superlines auto-generates schemas for every article, making this process simple.

Optimize Metadata (Titles, Descriptions): Clear titles and meta descriptions influence how your pages are indexed and how they may be cited. For example, Bing’s AI assistant often cites the page title directly. “Ultimate Guide to VPN Security | MySecurityBlog” is far more citation-friendly than “Article #5.”

Leverage Open Graph/Twitter Card tags: These provide concise page summaries beyond social media. Some AI agents use them as signals for context or preview snippets. Ensure your OG titles and descriptions are accurate and succinct.

Feed the Knowledge Graph: This goes a bit beyond schema on your site, but it’s related. Make sure your business info is well-defined in knowledge bases. For example, create or update your Wikidata entry (which is linked to Wikipedia). These databases are often used to ground AI answers with factual info (like company founder, headquarters, etc.). If you have an opportunity to integrate with Google’s Knowledge Graph (through things like claiming your Google business profile or providing data to Google’s data partners), do it. The more the AI can connect the dots about your brand through structured data, the better.

This step is a bit technical, but the payoff is that you’re making your content algorithmically friendly. You’re helping the AI understand exactly who you are, what you offer, and why you’re relevant to certain queries, without having to decipher it solely from plain text.

4. What types of content formats work best for GEO?

Not all content is equal in the eyes of AI. Some formats are particularly useful for generative engines and are more likely to be referenced. As you plan your content strategy, consider investing in:

Long-Form Guides and Research: Comprehensive guides, whitepapers, or research reports in your field can serve as reference material for AI. For example, if you publish a study with unique data, AI models might cite that data when relevant questions come up. A well-known example: if someone asks an AI “How effective is remote work?”, the AI might recall or cite data from a 2021 Remote Work Productivity Study. If your company was the one that published it, that’s a huge win. High-quality, data-rich content gets picked up by bloggers, Wikipedia editors, news outlets and all those references increase the chance an AI knows about it too.

FAQs and Q&A Content: We touched on this in step 2, but it’s worth emphasizing. An FAQ page or Knowledge Base that addresses common questions in your industry is like a cheat sheet for AI. Many chatbots, including those on company websites, are actually fed with such Q&A content. Even large language models have been known to regurgitate well-structured FAQ answers when asked a similar question. So, identify the top 20-50 questions your customers or audience have, and answer them clearly on your site (and update regularly). This not only helps your human visitors but also seeds the AI with the exact phrasing you want.

Wikipedia and Wiki-style Content: A lot of AI knowledge comes from Wikipedia (it’s often the top source in training data for general world knowledge). While you can’t just create a Wikipedia page about your company unless it meets their notability criteria, you can work on being included in relevant Wikipedia articles (for instance, a page about your industry might list major companies, is yours there?). Also, consider contributing to wiki-style knowledge sites in your niche if they exist. The goal is to have accurate, neutrally-presented information about your brand in these highly trusted repositories. If a Wikipedia page for your company does exist, make sure it’s updated and well-sourced. That page might be the first thing an AI recalls about your brand.

Get Listed in Directories and Databases: Many AI answers for “best X” type questions pull from curated lists or databases. For instance, an AI answering “what are some project management tools?” might be influenced by content from Capterra or G2 (business software directories), or a “top 10” article from a reputable site. Ensure your business is listed in key directories, review sites, or any aggregations relevant to you. If there’s a high-authority blog that often publishes “Best [your industry] tools” and they haven’t heard of you, reach out, give them a reason to include you. This isn’t just PR; it increases the odds that an AI sees your name pop up in those lists. And AIs tend to reinforce consensus, if everywhere it looks it sees “Superlines is a top provider for Generative Engine Optimization,” it will confidently tell users “Superlines is a top provider of Generative Engine Optimization.”

In summary, diversify where and how your content appears. Imagine all the different places an AI might “learn” about your industry. You want to plant seeds in all those places. It’s a bit like being omnipresent: blogs, forums (yes, even the old-school forums can end up in training data), video transcripts (consider posting informative YouTube videos; their transcripts do get read by AI models), podcasts (provide transcripts online). The more corners of the internet you cover with quality content, the more an AI will have to work with when assembling answers that mention you.

5. How do I reinforce my brand inside AI conversations?

This step is about going beyond just content and actively encouraging engagement through AI and conversational platforms:

Encourage Users to Mention You in AI Queries: This one’s outside-the-box and I wouldn't put too much emphasis on this step, but consider prompting your community or customers to share their experiences with your brand in public forums or even to ask AI assistants about your brand. If a bunch of people start asking ChatGPT about “XYZ product vs [Your Product]”, that’s a signal (albeit a small one) that could eventually seep into the model’s training data or at least prompt its system to fetch info about you. Some businesses are even creating ChatGPT plugins or integrations for their services. If that’s feasible, it’s worth exploring, because it puts you directly in the AI’s ecosystem.

Participate in Q&A Platforms: Community forums like Reddit, Quora, Stack Exchange, or industry-specific Q&A sites are often used to train or fine-tune AI models (or at least the content is ingested at training time). If you or your team experts answer questions on these platforms (in a non-spammy, genuinely helpful way), you not only reach those audiences, but your answers might inform how an AI responds to similar questions. For example, if you consistently give great answers about a topic on Reddit, an AI might pick up some of that language or at least the facts you shared, attributing it to “an expert” (even if not naming you directly). Over time, this builds your credibility footprint in the AI’s “mind”.

Leverage Social Listening to Find Opportunities: Superlines flags conversations where you can step in and boost AI visibility. By engaging in the right discussions, you increase your odds of being cited as a trusted source.

Leverage Social Proof in AI-Friendly Terms: AI models have read a lot of reviews and customer opinions (think Amazon reviews, tweets, etc.). While you can’t control these, you can encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on popular platforms. If an AI is asked “What do people think about [Your Company]?”, it will draw on whatever comments are out there. Lots of positive, detailed reviews = a likely positive summary from the AI. Also, pay attention to how people describe your product, if they frequently mention a key benefit, that’s likely to become associated with your brand in generative answers. (E.g., “Users often praise Superlines for its excellent customer support” might be exactly how the AI frames it, if that’s a common refrain in reviews and testimonials.)

Stay Active Where AI Gets Its Data: This includes places like LinkedIn (for B2B especially, LinkedIn articles and posts might be used by Grok or others), industry blogs (guest post or be interviewed), and news outlets. AIs are increasingly being updated with current data through web crawls or plugins. If there’s a high-profile discussion or article and your perspective is absent, you’re missing a chance to be part of the narrative that an AI might convey. One pro tip: press releases and newswire articles, these often feed into databases that AIs consult. If you have news (new product, milestone, study results), putting out a press release can not only get human coverage but also plant a factual record that AI might later retrieve.

Think of this step as brand PR for the AI age. It’s not just about selling, but about making sure your brand is woven into the fabric of online knowledge that AIs draw from. You want your company to be unavoidable when an AI combs through information on your domain.

By following these steps, you’ll start covering both the technical and the content angles of GEO. It’s a multifaceted effort, part SEO, part content marketing, part PR, and part data structuring. The good news is you don’t have to do it all at once. Pick a couple of high-impact actions (say, auditing and updating key content with better structure and schema) and iterate from there. GEO is an ongoing process, much like SEO.

GEO in Action: A Mini Case Study


What does GEO success look like in practice?

To truly understand the impact of GEO, let’s walk through a hypothetical (but realistic) example:

Imagine two competing companies, AlphaCo and BetaInc, which both sell a project management software for small businesses. Both have decent SEO, if you Google them, they show up in results. However, their fortunes diverge when it comes to generative AI:

•When a user goes on an AI assistant and asks “What are the best project management tools for small teams?”, the AI produces an answer listing a few options with brief descriptions. AlphaCo is mentioned as a top pick (“…for instance, AlphaCo is often recommended for its intuitive interface…” says the AI), along with a couple of industry giants. BetaInc is nowhere to be found in that answer. Why? Because the AI hasn’t “seen” BetaInc in the authoritative sources it learned from – but it has seen AlphaCo mentioned in numerous places.

•How did AlphaCo achieve this? Turns out, AlphaCo invested in GEO early:

•Their team made sure the AlphaCo product is featured on Wikipedia’s page for project management software (with reliable citations).

•They published a comprehensive “Small Business Project Management Guide” that got referenced by a popular business blog and even cited in a YouTube video description about productivity tools.

•AlphaCo’s CEO is active on LinkedIn and participates in Reddit AMA discussions about workflow management, often mentioning insights that link back to their company blog.

•They also used structured data on their own site, so when Google’s SGE tested project-management queries, AlphaCo’s site was frequently pulled in as a cited source for certain features comparisons.

•BetaInc, on the other hand, treated GEO as an afterthought. They focused on traditional SEO and paid ads. While their Google ads might show up, the AI that’s answering the user’s question has no “knowledge” of BetaInc being noteworthy, because BetaInc’s content wasn’t present in the sources the AI trusted.

The result: AlphaCo starts seeing a surge of traffic from referrals they didn’t expect. New customers say, “I asked ChatGPT for the best project tracker and it mentioned AlphaCo, so I figured I’d check you out.” BetaInc’s team, meanwhile, is scratching their heads wondering why web traffic and inbound leads are plateauing despite good Google rankings. In essence, BetaInc became invisible in the growing AI-driven discovery channel, and AlphaCo swooped up that visibility.

This example might be fictional, but scenarios like this are unfolding every day. Businesses that embrace GEO are quietly building an edge. Think of all the times you’ve asked Siri, Alexa, or ChatGPT for a recommendation, if one brand keeps popping up, you naturally gravitate towards it. That’s exactly why GEO matters. It’s not just nice-to-have; it can directly translate into business wins or losses.

Superlines: Your GEO Co-Pilot (Making GEO Easier)

How can Superlines help with GEO?

At this point, you might be thinking, “This is a lot to tackle!” and you’re not wrong. GEO spans technical SEO, content strategy, PR outreach, and analytics. The good news is that you don’t have to do it all manually. Just as SEO has its toolkits (Google Analytics, SEMrush, Moz, etc.), GEO now has specialized support as well. Superlines is one such platform, in fact, it’s the first purpose-built platform designed specifically to help brands with AI search optimization.

Superlines is the first European purpose-built platform dedicated to Generative Engine Optimization. We combine data, analytics, and AI to:

  • Track your brand’s visibility across all majorAI platforms (ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok, DeepSeek, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Google AI Overviews, Mistral and Anthropic Claude).
  • Compare competitor visibility and identify new opportunities.
  • Recommend clear, ROI-driven actions to increase your presence in AI search.
  • Continuously measure improvements and feed results back into your marketing strategy.

With Superlines, GEO becomes a continuous growth loop: discovery → action → measurable improvement → competitive advantage.


In essence, Superlines acts as a co-pilot for your GEO journey, highlighting where you can improve and giving you the tools to do so efficiently. Our goal with Superlines is to make sure that if AI is the new frontier, you’re not wandering it alone; you have a map and compass. (Disclosure: We built Superlines to scratch our own itch in this emerging space, and it’s evolving every day as AI marketing and AI search does.)

Side note: Whether you use a platform like Superlines or not, the key is to adopt a mindset of continuous optimization for AI. This market will keep growing, new AI models will come, search algorithms will shift. So having a way to continually track and adapt is crucial. Today it might be ChatGPT and Perplexity, tomorrow it could be some AI voice assistant in every car. GEO is not a one-and-done project, it’s an ongoing discipline. Tools just make that easier to manage at scale.

Picture ofPicture Superlines being represented in ChatGPT conversation
Picture of Superlines being represented in ChatGPT conversation

This sentence sums up this article nicely: The AI Era is here and its creating new possibilities 🚀

The world of search is no longer just Google versus Bing, or battle of the backlinks. We’re entering a world where AI-driven engines and traditional search will coexist and together shape how people find information. For businesses, this is both a challenge and an opportunity. It’s a challenge because it adds a new layer of complexity, another algorithm (actually, many algorithms) to consider. But it’s an opportunity because the field is still relatively new, those who move now can become the go-to voices that these AI engines trust and recommend.

A few years ago, no one had “AI search optimization” on their marketing roadmap. Now, not having it means you are falling behind. The good news is you don’t have to start from scratch. Much of your SEO expertise is transferable, and with a bit of rethinking and retooling, you can expand it to GEO. Think of GEO as an evolution, not a replacement, of SEO. Traditional SEO best practices (quality content, fast websites, mobile optimization, etc.) still matter; GEO just adds new best practices on top of them (structured data, multi-platform presence, conversational content style, etc.).

What should businesses do next with GEO?

As you implement GEO strategies, keep these takeaways in mind:

Meet Your Customers Where They Ask Questions: Whether it’s on Google, ChatGPT, Alexa, or some future AI, aim to have your answer ready. In practice, that means investing in content and formats that AI platforms draw from.

Build Trust and Authority Everywhere: Every article, mention, or citation your brand earns online is not just influencing human perceptions, but AI perceptions too. It’s like planting flags across the digital universe saying “we know our stuff.” The more flags (in reputable places), the more likely the AI will salute your brand in response.

Don’t Wait. First Movers Advantage is Real: We’re in the early innings of generative search. Getting a head start means less competition for those AI citations and more time for the models to “learn” about your brand. Businesses that "embraced" SEO early reaped huge rewards; the same will be true for GEO.

Billions of queries today are answered by generative models. This train has left the station, and it’s picking up speed. The question is, will your brand be on board as it gains momentum, or watching it pass by? Now is the time to optimize for both traditional and AI-powered search. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take it step by step and consider taking advantage of tools (like Superlines) or experts who specialize in this area. The companies that master Generative Engine Optimization will be the ones that thrive in an AI-centric search world. Those that don’t… well, they might find themselves asking later, “Hey, why did we disappear from the conversation?”.

Next Steps: Ready to get started with GEO? A good first move is to assess your AI visibility with Superlines! Here is the link again to get started! From there, map out a few content tweaks or additions you can make in the next month. Little by little, you can turn your company into an AI-recognized authority. The sooner you start, the sooner you’ll see your brand popping up in those cutting-edge AI search results.

Don’t just optimize for Google, start optimizing for the AI engines that are shaping the future of search. Your future customers (and their AI assistants) will thank you 🚀.

Want to improve your AI Search visibility?

Get in touch! We help teams like yours understand where you stand in AI Search and how to improve your visibility with the leading GEO solution in Europe.

Start by getting a free AI Search visibility report in just 5 minutes from Superlines.

P.S. If you just want to exchange thoughts on this topic, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Always happy to chat!

-Jere Meriluoto CEO, Co-Founder of Superlines