In the age of AI, how people find and consume information is evolving fast. Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) helped businesses climb to the top of Google search results, but generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's SGE (Search Generative Experience) are changing that dynamic.
Today, users aren’t just searching. They’re prompting.
And that’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.
Generative AI platforms are rapidly becoming go-to sources for information. In fact:
80% of search users rely on AI summaries at least 40% of the time (Bain)
Publishers estimate that they will lose between 20% and 40% of their Google-generated organic traffic as AI search iterations of the search engine continue to roll out. (WSJ)
The shift is clear, but not everyone’s fully onboard yet. According to recent data, 28% of U.S. adults say they don’t trust AI-generated results. And they’re right to be cautious. Generative engines are only as good as the content they can find, understand, and cite.
That’s where businesses have a choice: compete for blue links, or optimize for natural-language answers.
To make that decision, you need to understand what sets GEO apart. Here's a quick breakdown:
| SEO | GEO | |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Enhance visibility & ranking in search engines | Optimize content for inclusion in AI responses |
| Target Platforms | Google, Bing | ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews |
| Ranking Method | 200+ search signals | AI synthesis & citation ability |
| Optimization Focus | Keywords, backlinks, tech SEO | Structure, authority, clarity |
| User Behavior | Click-through to your site | Info consumed in AI results |
In short, SEO drives people to your site; GEO makes sure your brand is in the answer.
Curious how your content stacks up? Explore our SEO & GEO services to future-proof your strategy.
Just like traditional SEO, GEO includes both technical and content-focused layers. At New Breed our framework breaks it down to three core pillars:
Make your content AI-readable:
Read more about Technical Optimization.
Focus on:
Read more about On-Page Content Optimization.
Boost your entity prominence:
Read more about Off-Site Optimization.
GEO is about visibility and providing helpful resources to the online user without the click. Here's how we help businesses to adapt and be visible on AI platforms. :
Ditch PDFs and gated content, generative engines can’t see past paywalls. Structure your content with schema and semantic markup. Use long-tail, high-intent terms naturally in your content.
Video, visual, and interactive content is increasingly surfaced by AI tools. Mix up your formats and aim for comprehensive topical authority.
Stop measuring only CTR and conversions. Track AI impressions and citations. Is your brand being included in the answer, not just the search result?
Generative engines answer questions. So your content needs to answer clearly, directly, and credibly. Reformat your existing content to be more skimmable, question-driven, and citation-worthy.
You don’t need to panic, but you do need to reframe. SEO isn’t dead. It’s evolving into something broader, more nuanced, and, if done right, more powerful.
With GEO, you're not just playing the algorithm. You're preparing your brand to be the expert source behind tomorrow’s AI-generated answers.
Ready to show up in AI-generated answers? See how New Breed can help with content, strategy, and technical GEO support.
When we say technical errors can hurt GEO placement, we’re referring to any issues that prevent AI models and bots from properly crawling, indexing, and understanding site content. This does include some of what you’d find in GSC, but for GEO, we also need to consider:
If a generative engine can’t parse your content cleanly or understand its structure, it likely won’t cite it.
SEO and GEO both aim to build authority and trust, but they do so through different mechanisms. GEO builds on SEO trust by focusing on content easily understandable, scannable, and citable by AI models. Authority in GEO is earned through natural-language clarity, semantic structure, topical depth, and off-site online presence. It’s important to think of it as SEO + GEO not SEO vs GEO; together, they create a comprehensive visibility strategy, one for search engines, the other for language models.
While both SEO and GEO use schema markup to structure content, their purposes differ significantly. In SEO, schema is primarily used to enhance how content appears in search engine results, such as generating rich snippets or FAQ dropdowns, to increase visibility and drive click-through rates. The focus is on influencing how search engines display your content to users. GEO uses schema to help AI models better understand and accurately cite content within natural-language responses. Schema improves machine readability and semantic clarity, boosting the likelihood of content being referenced/cited.
Certain third-party sites and communities are becoming increasingly influential in GEO due to how AI models prioritize trustworthy, structured, and experience-driven content. Platforms like Wikipedia, Wikidata, Reddit, Quora, and high-authority publications such as Forbes or Harvard Business Review are frequently cited by AI Platforms. From what I have been reading these sources are favored because they offer clear, semantically rich content, demonstrate topical authority, and often present human-centered insights.
To determine where to experiment first, consider where your buyers already go to learn and validate information, and focus on contributing helpful, non-promotional content in those spaces. Unlike SEO, GEO is less concerned with backlinks and more focused on establishing your brand as a reliable source of knowledge within the ecosystems that generative AI models pull from.
SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz, etc remain a valuable part of a GEO strategy, particularly for identifying high-intent keywords, analyzing competitors, and informing content priorities. However, unlike traditional SEO where keyword volume and difficulty dominate, GEO requires an added layer of insight into how users phrase prompts in AI platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity. With these legacy tools we get insight into “people also ask” questions which provides insight into natural language questions to better align content buyers use when asking questions in AI platforms. To continue to evolve this, you will want to explore tools that offer visibility into real user prompts and AI citation patterns, helping us adapt your strategy to how content is surfaced and trusted in generative responses.
Evaluating the success of a GEO strategy requires tracking beyond traditional SEO metrics. Continue to monitor site traffic, on-page conversions, leads, and revenue as GEO success is measured by how often your content is surfaced, cited, or paraphrased in AI-generated responses. Since AI platforms don’t yet offer public-facing analytics like page rank or impressions. New platforms like ScrunchAI are helping close the gap by providing prompt-level insights and AI visibility tracking.