From SEO to GEO: How Businesses Can Stay Visible in AI Searches

As artificial intelligence (AI) transforms the way people search online, businesses face a new challenge: How to stay visible when fewer users click through to websites while AI chatbots and Google’s AI Overviews provide answers directly on the page.

Search engine optimization, or SEO, has long been the process of improving how websites rank on Google and Bing through tactics such as keywords, backlinks, metadata and site architecture.

Now, generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the emerging discipline of ensuring a brand is visible in AI-driven search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. GEO emphasizes structured, authoritative and conversational content that large language models (LLMs) can easily process and cite.

Businesses now face a two-front battle: keep their place in traditional search while ensuring AI systems recognize and cite them as authoritative answers. Whether one calls it SEO, GEO, or simply good content, the playbook for staying visible is changing fast, and the cost of sitting out is invisibility.

As businesses see their click-through rates drop, they have no choice but to pivot to an era where AI serves up complete answers to user queries.

“AI search isn’t coming, it’s already reshaping the web,” said Rich Pleeth, former Google marketing executive who is now co-founder and CEO of Finmile. “Traditional SEO was about keywords and backlinks. But with AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini, discoverability is now about authority, clarity and context. It’s not just about ranking, it’s about being the answer.”

That means online businesses need to “rethink their entire content strategy: Speak like a human, show domain expertise, and design for machine readability,” Pleeth added.

Pleeth said his company is moving from keyword-driven tactics to AI-optimized strategies. “That means structured, conversational content that answers real user intent,” he told PYMNTs.

“Think rich FAQs, clean schema, and value-dense whitepapers. If your content isn’t LLM-friendly, you’re invisible in the next wave of search.”

Read more: Google’s AI Search Switch Leaves Indie Websites Unmoored

What’s Old Is New Again

Several business executives told PYMNTS the same thing: Focus on high-quality, authoritative and clear content that helps the reader, shopper or website visitor rather than use gimmicks to raise click-through rates.

“Unlike traditional SEO, which relied heavily on owned content and backlinks to validate authority, GEO casts a wider net,” David Clare, head of digital at Fire on the Hill, told PYMNTS. “It favors owned content that directly answers real questions, consistent trade and media coverage that reinforces expertise, and authoritative profiles on platforms like Wikipedia and Crunchbase.”

“Importantly, where SEO required links, brand mentions alone will suffice for GEO — lowering one barrier, even as the overall landscape becomes more complex,” Clare believes. “Communities such as Reddit and Quora also shape which voices AI chooses to amplify.”

Claude Zdanow, CEO of ONAR, added, “Traditional SEO tactics like keywords, backlinks, and algorithm manipulation, won’t be enough. To stay visible, companies should focus on conversational relevance and structured, rich content.”

For eCommerce companies, this means “preparing product feeds with clear, detailed titles and descriptions, tagging products with buyer personas and use-case context, and surfacing dynamic offers that respond to real-time intent,” Zdanow added.

“The goal is to make content or product information readable and actionable for AI systems, so it can be served directly in chat-based or AI-native discovery.”

Others emphasized multichannel approaches. Katy Dwyer, founder of KDD Marketing, recommends being active on multiple social platforms, developing a video strategy, and keeping Google Business Profiles up to date with hours, website link, contact information, photos and more.

But not all experts are convinced that GEO is a revolution. Jeff Ferguson, CEO of Amplitude Digital, dismissed the idea: “Let me be blunt: There is no such thing as ‘GEO.’ This is just the same SEO tactics being repackaged under a new label,” he told PYMNTS. “The fundamentals haven’t changed: relevant content, clean site architecture, and authoritative signals from trusted sources.”

John Fairley, senior vice president of marketing operations at Walker Sands, concurs up to a point. “GEO doesn’t replace SEO — rather, it builds on it. Search rankings will still be important, but they now have two functions: They affect both human users and the AI systems that provide real-time answers.”

The bottom line is that businesses must act.

“This is more than a minor adjustment to search strategy,” Clare said. “It is a fundamental shift in how brands establish trust and visibility. Companies that adapt will shape the way AI tells their story. Those that do not will risk being left out entirely.”

Read more:

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OpenAI Fires Shot at Google With AI-Powered ‘SearchGPT’

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