The way people search for information online is changing.
Traditional Google Search remains hugely important, but it is no longer the only way people discover businesses, charities and organisations.
Google AI Overviews and AI Mode are changing the search results themselves, while platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity allow people to ask increasingly detailed questions and receive direct answers without following a traditional search journey.
This has led to growing interest in terms such as Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO), Answer Engine Optimisation (AEO) and AI SEO.
Whatever terminology you use, the objective is broadly the same.
How can you make your organisation more visible when people use AI-powered search?
The answer is not to abandon everything you know about SEO.
In fact, Google’s own guidance makes clear that many of the fundamentals of good SEO remain fundamental to visibility within generative AI search.
What is changing is how organisations need to think about their content, expertise and overall digital presence.
What is Generative Engine Optimisation?
Generative Engine Optimisation, commonly shortened to GEO, describes the process of improving your website and wider digital presence to increase the likelihood of your organisation or content appearing within AI-generated search experiences.
Instead of focusing exclusively on ranking a webpage within a traditional list of search results, GEO considers how information may be discovered, understood and referenced by generative AI systems.
That could include appearing within:
- Google AI Overviews.
- Google AI Mode.
- ChatGPT search results.
- Gemini responses.
- Perplexity answers.
- Other AI-powered search and discovery platforms.
The terminology is still developing, and different organisations use terms such as GEO, AEO and AI SEO to describe slightly different approaches.
But there is an important point businesses should understand.
GEO does not mean SEO is dead.
Far from it.
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No.
Google’s own guidance on optimising websites for generative AI search is particularly clear about this.
Google says its generative AI features are built on its existing Search ranking and quality systems.
AI experiences such as AI Overviews and AI Mode use techniques including retrieval-augmented generation, often referred to as RAG, to retrieve relevant and up-to-date webpages from Google’s existing Search index.
Google also uses what it calls query fan-out.
Instead of processing only the exact question someone entered, Google’s AI can generate multiple related searches to gather the information required to produce a more comprehensive response.
For example, someone searching:
“How can our charity recruit more volunteers?”
could potentially trigger related searches around volunteer advertising, recruitment strategies, social media, local volunteering opportunities and volunteer retention.
That creates opportunities for websites containing genuinely useful information around the wider subject.
Google’s position is therefore straightforward: optimising for generative AI experiences is still part of optimising for Search.
Rather than replacing SEO with GEO, organisations should think about how their existing SEO strategy needs to evolve as search itself changes.
Start with the fundamentals of SEO
There is understandably a lot of excitement around AI search.
Unfortunately, that has also created a growing number of supposed shortcuts.
Special AI files.
New forms of markup.
AI-specific content structures.
Hundreds of pages targeting individual questions.
Google’s guidance suggests organisations should be careful before investing heavily in these tactics.
The foundations remain remarkably familiar.
Your website needs to be crawlable.
Your important pages need to be indexed.
Your technical structure needs to be clear.
Your website needs to provide a good experience across devices.
Your content needs to answer genuine user needs.
And search engines need to be able to understand what your organisation does.
If Google cannot properly crawl, understand or index your website, attempting to optimise it for Google’s AI experiences isn’t going to solve the underlying problem.
Strong technical SEO remains the foundation.
Create content that adds something new
This is perhaps one of the most important developments for organisations thinking about AI search.
Google specifically encourages websites to produce what it describes as non-commodity content.
In simple terms, don’t simply publish another version of information that already exists everywhere else.
The internet does not need another generic article containing seven obvious marketing tips generated from information available across hundreds of other websites.
AI systems themselves are already extremely good at summarising that kind of information.
Your opportunity is to contribute something they cannot easily manufacture.
That could include:
Real experience.
Original research.
Client results.
First-hand observations.
Industry expertise.
Original data.
Case studies.
Practical examples.
A genuine point of view.
If your organisation has spent years working within a particular sector, your content should demonstrate that expertise.
A charity should be able to talk about the realities of delivering its services.
A solicitor should demonstrate expertise around the legal issues clients actually encounter.
A school can provide genuinely useful information based on the questions prospective parents regularly ask.
A specialist business should be able to explain problems in considerably greater depth than a generic AI-generated summary.
That distinction is becoming increasingly valuable.
Answer the questions your audience is actually asking
Traditional keyword research is still useful.
But AI search means organisations should increasingly think beyond individual keywords.
People are becoming comfortable asking much more detailed questions.
Instead of searching:
“charity marketing”
someone might ask:
“How should a small UK charity spend a £2,000 monthly marketing budget?”
Instead of:
“WordPress support”
they might ask:
“Does a charity need an ongoing WordPress support plan after its website has launched?”
These are much richer searches.
They reveal intent, context and the actual problem someone is trying to solve.
Your content strategy should reflect that.
Speak to your sales team.
Review enquiries.
Look at customer support tickets.
Analyse Search Console.
Review questions from discovery calls.
Look at what clients repeatedly ask you.
Those questions are often far more valuable than simply producing another list of keywords.
Don’t create hundreds of pages for every possible question
There is an important balance here.
If AI systems use related searches and query fan-out, it might seem logical to create individual pages targeting every possible question someone could ask.
Google specifically warns against this approach.
Creating large numbers of pages primarily to capture every possible search variation can stray into scaled content abuse and doesn’t necessarily make your website more useful.
Google’s systems are increasingly capable of understanding meaning, context and synonyms without requiring an exact-match page for every phrase.
A comprehensive, authoritative resource covering a subject properly can therefore be considerably more valuable than twenty thin articles targeting slight variations of the same query.
Content quality still matters more than content quantity.
Make your expertise obvious
If AI systems are deciding which sources to use when constructing answers, they need to understand why your organisation is a credible source.
That makes demonstrating genuine expertise increasingly important.
Your website should clearly communicate:
Who you are.
What you specialise in.
Who creates your content.
What experience your organisation has.
Where claims and statistics come from.
What evidence supports your recommendations.
Where appropriate, this might include author information, case studies, testimonials, accreditations, professional memberships, original research and links to authoritative external sources.
This isn’t about artificially adding “trust signals” for an algorithm.
It is about giving both people and search systems enough context to understand why your organisation should be trusted.
Structure your content clearly
You do not need to completely rewrite your website for AI.
Google specifically says websites do not need to break every page into tiny pieces simply so AI systems can understand them.
But clear content structure still matters.
Use descriptive headings.
Keep related information together.
Explain concepts properly.
Use straightforward language.
Answer important questions clearly.
Make longer pages easy to navigate.
Good structure helps human visitors understand your content and makes information easier for search systems to process.
The objective isn’t to write for machines.
It’s to make information genuinely easier to understand.
Structured data still has a role
Structured data remains useful, but organisations should be wary of claims that adding special schema will suddenly make a website appear within AI-generated results.
Google says there is no special structured data required for generative AI search.
That doesn’t make structured data irrelevant.
Appropriate schema can still help Google understand information about your organisation and can support eligibility for certain enhanced search features.
For businesses, that could include organisation, local business, product, article or other relevant structured data depending on the website.
The important distinction is that structured data supports your wider SEO strategy.
It isn’t a shortcut into AI-generated answers.
You don’t need an llms.txt file for Google
One of the more interesting parts of Google’s latest guidance relates to llms.txt.
You may have seen recommendations suggesting websites should create an llms.txt file to help AI systems understand their content.
For Google Search specifically, Google says this isn’t necessary.
Google does not use llms.txt as a special signal for visibility within its generative AI Search features.
Creating one won’t improve or damage your Google rankings.
Other AI systems may take different approaches, so organisations can still choose to implement one where there is a legitimate reason.
But it shouldn’t be sold as an essential Google AI optimisation technique.
This is a useful reminder that organisations should be cautious around supposed GEO hacks, particularly when the platforms themselves have not confirmed that those techniques provide any benefit.
Technical performance still matters
AI optimisation isn’t purely about content.
Your website still needs to work properly.
Google’s generative AI systems rely on publicly accessible, crawlable content from its Search index.
That means the same technical issues that damage traditional SEO can also limit your opportunities within AI-powered search.
Pages blocked from crawling.
Poor internal linking.
Duplicate content.
JavaScript rendering problems.
Poor mobile experiences.
Incorrect canonicalisation.
Weak site architecture.
These problems don’t disappear because AI is involved.
Technical SEO becomes part of your AI visibility strategy because AI systems still need reliable access to the underlying information.
Images and video can increase your opportunities
AI-powered search isn’t purely text based.
Google’s generative search experiences can surface relevant images and video alongside written information.
That gives organisations another opportunity.
Original photography.
Useful diagrams.
Explainer videos.
Product demonstrations.
Event footage.
Educational graphics.
Case study videos.
These assets can strengthen the usefulness of a page while giving search engines additional formats through which your organisation can appear.
Google’s advice is straightforward here too. Existing image and video SEO best practices continue to apply to generative AI search.
Again, AI optimisation builds on SEO rather than replacing it.
Think beyond your own website
Website optimisation remains fundamental, but organisations should also consider their wider digital footprint.
AI systems can encounter information about organisations across many different sources.
Industry websites.
News coverage.
Professional directories.
Reviews.
Social platforms.
Forums.
Partner websites.
Regulatory bodies.
Authoritative third-party publications.
That makes genuine reputation and authority increasingly valuable.
However, this isn’t an invitation to manufacture hundreds of artificial mentions.
Google specifically warns against pursuing inauthentic mentions simply to influence AI search.
The objective should be genuine authority.
Earn coverage because you have something useful to contribute.
Build partnerships.
Publish original research.
Share expertise.
Develop useful resources people genuinely want to reference.
The same activities that build a strong brand can also strengthen digital visibility.
Measure AI search visibility
One of the challenges with AI search has historically been measurement.
That is beginning to improve.
Google has introduced generative AI performance reporting within Search Console, providing website owners with greater visibility into how their content appears within Google’s generative AI search experiences.
This gives organisations another source of data when assessing how search behaviour is evolving.
You can also monitor referral traffic from platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Copilot through analytics platforms such as Google Analytics 4.
We’ve previously explained how to track AI traffic in Google Analytics 4, which can help organisations understand whether AI platforms are already sending visitors to their website.
But traffic should not be the only measure.
Look at what those visitors actually do.
Do they enquire?
Donate?
Register?
Subscribe?
Purchase?
AI visibility only becomes commercially valuable when it contributes towards meaningful organisational outcomes.
What should businesses and charities actually do?
The rise of GEO can make AI optimisation sound considerably more complicated than it needs to be.
For most organisations, the priorities are relatively straightforward.
Get the technical foundations right.
Understand what your audiences are actually searching for.
Produce genuinely useful content.
Demonstrate real expertise.
Answer important questions properly.
Use structured data where appropriate.
Create useful visual content.
Build genuine authority beyond your website.
Measure how people discover and interact with your organisation.
And keep adapting as search behaviour changes.
What organisations should not do is chase every new GEO trick simply because someone claims it will make their website appear in ChatGPT or Google AI Overviews.
There is currently no magic switch for AI visibility.
SEO and GEO should work together
The growth of generative AI search is significant.
It changes how people ask questions, how information is presented and potentially how organisations are discovered.
But that doesn’t mean everything we know about search optimisation has suddenly become irrelevant.
Google’s latest guidance reinforces almost the opposite.
Strong technical foundations still matter.
Useful content still matters.
Original expertise matters even more.
Website experience matters.
Authority matters.
The terminology may be changing, but many of the fundamentals remain remarkably consistent.
At Blake Mark Productions, we help businesses, charities, schools and growing organisations improve their visibility through SEO, content strategy and website optimisation, while adapting those strategies as AI-powered search continues to develop.
If you’re reviewing how visible your organisation is across traditional and AI-powered search, you can book a discovery call with our team below.