When was the last time you looked for your company on ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude or whatever LLM you use? Search for the thing your company does best. Ask it the exact question your ideal customer would ask.
Chances are, you're not showing up. If so, you're not alone. This new territory is challenging everybody.
Welcome to Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO. It's SEO's new partner. Different game, different rules, and most companies have no idea what they're missing.
Face it. Nothing much changed for the longest time. Google was on top of the heap. And because it had such a massive monopoly on search, we all played by its rules.
Then people started getting answers without visiting websites. It began with things like Alexa and Google Home giving quick answers. Now it's everywhere.
The gap where people are finding answers without visiting your site is getting bigger and bigger each day.
GEO is mostly about citation-worthiness. How can an LLM find your content, grab the answer it needs, and look smart citing you? It's a mix of old SEO factors and completely new ones. But the weights have changed dramatically.
Here's a few main factors:
This works for both GEO and SEO, but it's roughly 3X more important for GEO. Both use E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), but here's the twist: backlinks and domain authority have been reduced greatly in GEO.
Deep authority comes from institutional trust. Government entities, universities, established organizations with documented expertise. An .edu or .gov domain carries weight. So does being cited by other authoritative sources.
If you're a B2B company, this means surfacing your expertise and credentials matter more than your domain or backlink profile.
This is new.
Can the AI extract a clean answer and properly attribute it? Content with direct answers, quotable statistics, and clear sourcing gets cited. Vague corporate speak gets ignored.
This changes how you write. Put your facts and figures at the top of paragraphs. Use questions as headers. Add quick-form Q&As. Make it stupid-easy for AI to grab what it needs and cite you properly.
Structure matters in both worlds, but AI is pickier. Think of it like a very sophisticated but extremely impatient researcher. Clear headings, topic sentences that front-load the point, low passive voice. If your answer isn't obvious fast, you're out.
This mattered somewhat for SEO. For GEO, it matters more. Content that's regularly updated gets noticed. Blogs, news releases, events, regular site updates, they all signal that your information is current.
Still have the same 10 pages on your site from 2019? Chances are, you’re invisible to AI search.
Here's how to figure out if GEO matters for you right now:
If you found problems in 3+ of those areas, you've got a GEO issue. Your content might rank fine in Google, but it's not optimized for AI citation.
The next step is to use professional tools.
Some existing SEO tools are bolting on AI visibility: Semrush and Similarweb both have it. New players like Otterly.ai and Profound that are only centering around GEO are cropping up too.
If you're just starting out, look for something cost-effective, all of them will give you a decent sense of what needs fixing and what conversations you're missing.
At some point you'll end up with a laundry list of issues with your site. Some critical, some not so critical. It can be overwhelming.
Here's where it's good to ask yourself: is the juice worth the squeeze?
For instance, is it worth changing hundreds of missing alt tags to increase your score by a few percent? Or is it better spent fixing three broken links that not only hurt your ranking but seriously detract from user experience?
You can create a lot of busy work chasing your tail trying to increase your score by 2%. When there are usually bigger fish to fry. Make sure you're spending your time in the most cost-effective way possible.
Conversations are happening everywhere, in real time. A lot of them aren't getting to websites anymore. They're being answered directly in the platform, whether that's Google's AI Overview, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, whatever.
If you're not in the conversations your competitors are in, you're missing an entire world of new business. Most organizations don’t know where they stand. They don’t know whether AI recognizes their expertise, why competitors appear instead, or why content that ranks well in Google never shows up in AI responses.
That’s where our Emerging Tech team comes in.
At ZGM, we run GEO audits to show how visible your brand is across AI platforms and where the gaps are. We follow that with practical GEO training so teams know how to structure and write content in a way AI can actually use and cite. We also help teams prioritize fixes so effort goes into changes that matter.
You don’t need to overhaul everything. You do need to know whether AI sees you as credible.
If you want a clear read on where you stand, we’re happy to take a look and talk it through.
Peter Bishop is Partner and Chief Innovation Officer at ZGM Modern Marketing Partners, where he leads the agency's GEO practice and helps organizations adapt to AI-driven search and discovery. He's spent 20+ years watching marketing paradigms shift—mobile, social, programmatic, now AI—and helping companies adapt before the shift becomes a crisis. He's probably more excited about GEO than is strictly professional.
Want to talk through your specific situation? Grab a coffee with me. I'm happy to look at your content, run a quick diagnostic, and tell you where the opportunities are. No pitch, no pressure. Just a conversation about whether this matters for you right now.
Schedule time: peter.bishop@zgm.ca