Ten years ago, “getting found” meant ranking your keywords in Google's top ten blue links. Today, large chunks of search traffic never reach those links — ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews compress the entire web into a two-sentence recommendation. Shoppers stop comparing ten tabs. They ask the AI which one to buy and trust the answer.
GEO is not SEO with a new name
SEO optimizes for ranking — what position you hold on a SERP. GEO optimizes for mention and recommendation — when a user asks “what's the best ___?”, does the AI mention you, in what tone, and which third-party page did it cite to back the claim? Those three answers decide whether you get recommended.
The four-stage loop
- Detect — run your core prompt set across ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. Log brand mentions, ranking, sentiment, and citation sources.
- Generate — turn detected gaps into ready-to-publish Reddit threads, blog posts, and social copy in your brand voice.
- Distribute — push content to the channels AI engines actually cite. “Drop it on our blog and hope” doesn't count.
- Measure — track visibility week over week against competitors and against real site traffic from analytics.
Next post we'll dissect ChatGPT's citation mechanics — which page types it trusts first and why.