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For 20 years, ranking on Google meant one thing: get to page one, preferably the top three spots, and the traffic follows. While that formula still works, and works incredibly well, it is no longer the entire game. A growing share of searches now conclude with an AI answer, a Google AI Overview, or a ChatGPT response before a user ever clicks a link. That shift is a challenge for brands that have relied on traditional rankings as the foundation of their visibility and website traffic strategy.
Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is the name for optimizing content so that artificial intelligence systems can find it, trust it and cite it. It is often framed as the successor to SEO, but that name undersells what is really happening. GEO is not replacing SEO; it is running alongside it, drawing on the same foundation of authority, structure and clarity that good SEO has always required. The brands moving ahead are not the ones abandoning search engine optimization for something newer. They are the ones learning how to do both at the same time.
AI models do not just produce answers out of nowhere. Depending on the platform, AI-generated answers can draw on trained knowledge, live search results, retrieved web content and other trusted data sources. Pages that rank well organically tend to be well structured, answer real questions directly and demonstrate enough authority to be trusted. That is also the kind of content more likely to be surfaced in an AI-generated response. In that sense, strong SEO is still the way in.
But it is not enough on its own. Artificial intelligence systems often favor content that provides a clear answer to a question in the first few sentences, without forcing a reader to scroll through three introductory paragraphs to find it. They tend to favor pages that sound like a knowledgeable person explaining something clearly, not pages loaded with keywords written for an algorithm from 2015. Brands that have been writing for search engines first and humans second are finding that this practice is now a liability.
This is the piece that many companies have not grasped yet. GEO is not a separate set of skills added to SEO; it is a sharper application of the same discipline to a search experience that talks back rather than simply linking out.
Brendan Egan, founder and CEO of Simple SEO Group, a Chicago-based digital marketing agency that has served over 500 brands during the past two decades, has helped lead this combined approach for the agency’s clients over the past several years. Egan was interviewed by USA Today about how his team was integrating AI into SEO strategy as AI began reshaping search. The results he described went beyond incremental ranking gains: clients were also appearing inside AI-generated answers, alongside their traditional search visibility.
The approach Simple SEO takes is based on a straightforward principle: create content that answers real questions clearly enough that both search engines and AI systems can pull a direct answer from it, while continuing to build quality backlinks and third-party citations that support visibility across both environments. This means structuring pages around the questions customers are actually asking, backing up claims with specific numbers rather than vague assurances, and making sure a brand’s expertise is documented clearly enough for an AI system to have a reason to name it.
It also means thinking about where a brand appears outside its own website: reviews, third-party mentions and industry coverage. AI search systems often benefit from corroborating references across credible sources. A brand that makes claims only on its own site gives an AI system less reason to trust those claims than a brand with a consistent paper trail across multiple credible sources. Simple SEO also uses its 40+ person team to build quality citations and links, a practice the agency has adapted for the AI era based on decades of SEO experience.
Not every company needs to completely revamp its strategy overnight. The riskiest companies, however, are those that think of GEO as a future problem, something to deal with once it “matures.” That window is closing faster than most marketing teams realize. Egan says Simple SEO’s early GEO work shows why the agencies and brands moving first are not waiting for a settled playbook. They are helping build one.
Waiting carries risk. Brands that establish strong topical authority and third-party corroboration early may be better positioned to appear repeatedly across AI-generated results. If ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews cite a brand consistently today, that brand may have a meaningful head start over a competitor that begins building the same presence a year from now. AI-driven search still represents a smaller share of overall search activity today, but its role is expected to grow substantially over the coming years.
Search is not splitting into two separate channels, traditional and AI-driven, that brands have to manage independently. It is coming together as one discipline with two names. The brands that treat SEO and GEO as an integrated strategy will be positioned to show up no matter how a customer chooses to search, whether that is typing a query into Google or asking an AI assistant a direct question.
“Ignoring AI’s role in search is no longer just missing a trend; it is giving competitors an opportunity to establish authority before you do,” Egan says. “The winners will not necessarily be the brands with the largest budgets or the flashiest campaigns. They will be the brands that understand how traditional search and AI-generated answers influence each other and build one integrated strategy around both.”
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