Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Is It the New SEO? – Built In
Generative engine optimization is the process of building content that influences generative AI search results for users. Our expert explains how brands can optimize for AI-generated results.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the process of optimizing digital content to increase visibility and citations within AI-generated search results and answers from generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, Google’s AI overviews and other large language models (LLMs).
Generative AI search is reshaping how people find information, make decisions and interact with brands. Tools like Perplexity and Google’s AI overviews can now provide users with a tailored, contextually rich response for many of their queries in an attempt to offer a more seamless and personalized experience. This shift in search is redefining how consumers engage with search engines and the digital world. In fact, Google expected its AI overviews to reach over 1 billion searchers before the end of 2024.
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is the process of building content and digital assets that influence generative AI search outputs. The most common ways to improve brand performance in AI overviews is through using customer inputs to produce high quality content, owning asset development to maintain asset control and continuing to optimize for search.
This also means generative AI systems are changing the ways that consumers learn about products and brands.
As generative search continues to develop as a pivotal touchpoint in the buyer’s journey, it will inevitably impact consumer decision-making and brand understanding. But how much control can brands really have over these AI-generated narratives?
Generative engine optimization (GEO) is a process focused on enhancing content visibility and relevance within generative AI systems — such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude and more — rather than traditional search engines like Google alone. Unlike search engine optimization (SEO), which targets keyword rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs), GEO aims to influence how generative models retrieve, summarize and present information when responding to user queries.
Often part of a digital marketing strategy, GEO involves formatting content in a way that makes it more likely to be selected, referenced or summarized accurately by AI-driven systems. This process includes optimizing content structure, language clarity, factual accuracy and context relevance to align with how these models process and prioritize data. GEO also considers aspects like source authority and semantic richness that large language models rely on when generating answers.
As users increasingly rely on AI tools to gather information and make decisions, the importance of GEO is growing rapidly. Organizations are starting to view GEO as a strategic element of content marketing that ensures their brand or product remains findable and influential online in the age of generative AI.
While traditional SEO remains a cornerstone of digital strategies, GEO introduces a forward-thinking approach to ensuring brand visibility and influence in generative AI-driven searches.
However, strong marketers shouldn’t see this as an either-or conversation: traditional SEO and GEO efforts must coexist. Brand assets can build topic authority that supports both, since organic and generative search alike aim to serve the right content to the right users at the right time. Success in each plays a significant role in increasing brand controllability.
Keep in mind that the measurement of impact will be different between the two methods. Since SEO has had more time to grow, it is easier to measure metrics that actually matter to businesses, like leads, revenue, traffic and SERP controllability. As GEO evolves, we will be looking to measure the same metrics, but it will take a while for the platforms and tools to get to the same level of granularity that we have today with SEO.
As with any technological advancement, there is no need to overreact. Proceed with caution and rely on the predictability that the digital landscape is unpredictable. In the meantime, make sure your brand management strategy is diverse. Don’t abandon SEO. Instead, optimize it for the new way your customers are searching.
GEO is focused on building content and digital assets that influence generative AI outputs for users. Compared to SEO, which is focused on influencing the ranking of a page within organic search, GEO allows brands to be cited within composed responses — in Google, but also in other generative search platforms like ChatGPT.
Ultimately, this additional visibility positions brands as helpful and authoritative guides, understanding and supporting user needs with relevant information quickly. It also injects more control for brands in a space where more and more consumers are asking questions. Compared to traditional organic search results, these strengthened touch points offer more personalized, immediate responses for consumers: positive experiences that have never been more important for brands.
A 2025 American Customer Satisfaction Index study found that just in 2022, customer satisfaction in the United States was at its lowest point in 20 years. I believe one major reason is that consumers today expect brands to anticipate their needs and deliver authentic and relevant insights in real-time, and they reward those that do with their business and long-term trust.
Generative search, when approached strategically, can help brands restore and strengthen this critical element of the customer relationship.
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GEO is an opportunity to bridge the trust gap by becoming visible as an authoritative resource and injecting control into a brand’s online narrative.
Generative search results are typically generated in two ways. First, large language models are trained on a wide, sedentary repository of information. Second, generative models use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) models to pull information from organic search results and ranking pages. These two approaches are what influence generative compositions. Therefore, content that ranks well in organic search, answers specific consumer queries, and adds to a vast web of authoritative brand content, is more likely to be pulled into those AI overviews.
Brands can strategically shape generative AI search results by:
Since generative AI systems operate in ever-evolving (and sometimes unclear) ways, optimizing for them requires navigating challenges that differ from traditional SEO.
One of the biggest obstacles in GEO is the “black box” nature of generative AI models. Unlike traditional search engines that offer transparent search engine ranking signals (like backlinks, metadata and keyword density), AI systems don’t always disclose exactly how or why certain sources are chosen or summarized for given answers. This makes it difficult to reverse-engineer or strategically tailor content with full certainty that it will appear in generative systems.
Generative AI tools can combine information from multiple sources without citing or linking directly to them — or create entirely new links that don’t actually exist. This limits visibility for brands and original content sources, even when their work is being directly used to form AI-generated responses. Without clear attribution, it’s challenging to measure the return on investment from GEO efforts, or to ensure proper credit and traffic are directed to original content.
The behavior of generative AI systems can change frequently due to updates in model training data, model tuning and algorithmic improvements. This means that what works today in terms of optimization may not work in the future. The constant evolution of AI systems makes it difficult to develop long-term strategies and requires ongoing monitoring and adaptation, which not all organizations have the resources to manage.
Information is being increasingly summarized and adapted by AI systems, causing a risk of misrepresentation, loss of nuance and factual distortion of original content. For organizations that rely on precise messaging (like in healthcare, law or finance), GEO introduces the challenge of maintaining message integrity across systems that may alter or oversimplify their content, which could in turn damage their branding.
As more users turn to AI tools for answers instead of traditional search engines, GEO allows brands to maintain digital visibility where audiences are now spending their time. GEO-optimized content can make it more likely to be included or referenced in AI-generated summaries and responses, keeping a brand top-of-mind even when direct links aren’t always provided.
Content that consistently appears in generative AI outputs can shape public perception of a brand and reinforce its expertise in a field. GEO can help position an organization as a go-to source of credible, well-structured and relevant information, which can in turn boost long-term authority and trust.
Early adopters of GEO may gain a head start in a rapidly evolving information ecosystem. While many organizations are still focused on traditional SEO strategies, those who invest in GEO strategies as well can position themselves ahead of competitors by ensuring their content is AI-friendly and aligned with the way AI systems prioritize and present information.
Generative AI is reshaping how people access and interact with information, and is likely here to stay for the foreseeable future. GEO enables organizations to future-proof their digital presence by adapting content strategies to meeting the changing expectations of AI-powered platforms. By focusing on content clarity, semantic depth and relevance, GEO-ready content is more adaptable to shifts in how AI systems retrieve and share information.
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Integrating GEO into your digital strategy isn’t just about keeping pace with technological advancements; it’s about maintaining control over your brand narrative and building connections with consumers in an era of diminishing trust. By creating high-quality, data-driven content, exercising control over owned assets and strategically optimizing for search visibility, brands can enhance their relevance and authority in this new search ecosystem.
Embrace this revolution, and your brand can build trust, strengthen consumer relationships and stay ahead in an increasingly AI-centric world. The future of search is here — it’s time to learn, experiment and optimize for it.
No, GEO isn’t replacing SEO, but instead can be thought of as expanding upon or supplementing it. Traditional SEO still matters for ranking in search engines, but GEO adds a new layer of search ranking focused on visibility within AI-generated answers and language model outputs.
SEO (search engine optimization) optimizes content to rank in search engine results pages (SERPs), while GEO (generative engine optimization) focuses on getting content cited, summarized or referenced by AI tools like ChatGPT or Google’s AI overviews — often without a traditional link or ranking.
To optimize content for generative AI systems, focus on clear structure, authoritative tone, embedded data and quotes, schema markup and ensure your content is accessible, trustworthy and frequently mentioned across credible sources.
No, AI isn’t making SEO completely obsolete, but it is changing the search landscape. While classic SEO practices still matter, brands must now also consider how their content performs in AI-driven experiences that summarize or replace traditional search.
Google’s AI mode is a search mode that uses generative AI to provide synthesized answers directly to user questions, pulling information from multiple sources to respond to complex queries without needing users to click through external pages. It expands upon what Google’s AI overviews can do by providing more advanced reasoning, thinking and multimodal capabilities for questions.
