GEO: marketing gimmick or real change?

The marketing industry loves new acronyms.

Every now and then, a term appears that gets repeated everywhere for a few months. It is supposed to look like a revolution. Ideally, one you need to adapt to immediately. Otherwise, your competitors will get ahead, the algorithm will take offense, and the customer will never find your website again.

GEO is one of those acronyms.

But unlike many passing trends, there is a real change behind it. It is not about a magic technique that suddenly replaces SEO. It is about a change in the way people search for information and make decisions.

For years, we got used to a simple model.

A user enters a query. Google shows a list of results. The user clicks a few links, compares the information, and puts the answer together themselves.

That model still works. But increasingly, something else is being added to it.

The user no longer wants just a list of pages. They want a summary. A comparison. A recommendation tailored to their situation.

So they no longer ask only: “performance marketing agency Warsaw” More and more often, they ask something like: “what should I pay attention to when choosing a performance agency for e-commerce?” or: “how do I compare offers from agencies that promise sales growth from campaigns?”

In this world, a search engine or chatbot stops being a directory of websites. It becomes an intermediary in the decision-making process. It tries to understand the question, collect information, organize it, and provide a ready-made answer.

And this is where GEO comes in.

GEO stands for generative engine optimization, meaning optimization for generative search engines. In practice, it refers to actions that increase the chances that information about your company, products and expert perspective will be correctly understood and used by systems that generate answers.

It sounds intimidating. Fortunately, it only sounds that way.

When an answer is generated by AI, your brand may be cited as a source. Listed as one of the options. Shown in a comparison. Or not appear at all, even though your offer genuinely matches the question.

GEO is therefore an attempt to answer a simple question: what can we do so that AI-supported search systems better understand what our company does, who it helps and when it is worth showing it to the user?

That is the theory. The problem begins when someone tries to turn a reasonable definition into a set of magic tricks.

Let’s start with the most important point: GEO is not a replacement for SEO.

In its official guide, Google states directly that from the perspective of Google Search, optimization for generative search is still part of SEO. There are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode.

A small asterisk here. Google is describing its own territory and has an obvious interest in everyone continuing to play by the rules of its search engine. It is worth reading this guide with that in mind. But when it comes to tricks, the data so far supports Google’s position.

Take llms.txt - a file that was supposed to be a shortcut to visibility in AI. Available analyses and server log tests suggest that the main AI crawlers do not currently fetch llms.txt at a scale that would allow this file to be treated as a condition for visibility. On the other hand, it costs very little, and agentic tools are already using it - and that may be where its future lies. For us, it gets the status of a low-cost bet on tomorrow. Not the foundation of a strategy.

The same applies to cutting content into pieces because “AI likes short fragments.” Mechanical slicing does nothing. A thoughtful structure, however, does. AI systems divide your content into fragments anyway when building an answer. The only question is whether those fragments can stand on their own when taken out of context. Clear headings, one idea per paragraph, a concrete point at the beginning of a section - this helps both people and systems.

What is definitely not worth doing? Separate pages for every phrase variant - systems understand synonyms and context. Or artificial brand mentions. Real expert presence is one thing - reviews, case studies, publications, interviews. Generating mentions just to feed the algorithm is something else. The latter smells like spam. And spam usually works well mainly in sales presentations.

So if someone tells you that classic SEO is dead and everything needs to be rebuilt from scratch for GEO, be cautious. It is an attractive sales narrative. But not necessarily a good description of reality.

Because part of the decision-making journey is changing.

The classic scenario - query, click, website, conversion - still exists. Especially for searches with high purchase intent.

But an increasing part of the process starts earlier. The user asks comparative questions. Looks for explanations. Asks about risks. Wants to know what will be better for them before they start talking to specific companies.

If AI generates an answer at this stage and your company does not provide clear, credible and well-structured information, you may dropped from the customer's consideration set.

Not because your offer is weak. Sometimes simply because there are not enough good signals online to help the system understand what you are truly strong at.

The risk is not that all clicks from Google will disappear tomorrow. It is rather that some customers will make their initial decisions earlier. In an environment where your website is only one of many sources processed by the system.

And this brings us to something Google’s guide conveniently stays silent about.

Google describes the rules of its own search engine. But users also ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Gemini. Each of these platforms has its own bots, its own sources and its own way of choosing who to show in an answer. There is no single guide that explains all of this.

What we do have are studies of brands that regularly appear in AI answers. And they show a recurring pattern. The companies that win are: accessible to bots, useful in their content, recognizable as brands, consistent in how they are described across different platforms, validated by independent sources, distinctive compared with competitors and up to date.

Sounds like a to-do list? Because it is a to-do list.

And that is GEO in practice. Not one trick, but work on several fronts at once: technology, content, company data and presence beyond your own website. Most of these things are good SEO and good marketing. Some of them - like checking what individual AI systems say about your brand and where they get that information from - are already a new kind of work.

What is the hardest thing on that list to fake? Content.

But “good content” has not meant keyword stuffing for a long time. It means useful, credible and understandable texts. For people first. And only then for systems.

Google calls this non-commodity content - content that cannot be swapped for just anything else. In other words, content that comes from experience. From working with clients. From data. From things you see because you actually run projects, not because you only summarize the internet.

This is not about another article titled “7 ways to do effective marketing” that could be written by any company and without any real knowledge.

A service company can talk about the mistakes it most often sees among clients. About when a given service makes sense, and when it does not yet. An e-commerce business can describe products and real use cases better. An expert brand can show conclusions from projects, reports and its own way of thinking.

This is not quick. But it is hard to copy. And in an internet full of one-size-fits-all generated content, that is starting to matter more and more.

AI does not relieve you of the obligation to write for people. Quite the opposite.

If a person visits a website and does not understand what the company does and when it is worth contacting it, it is hard to expect search systems to draw precise conclusions from it.

And this is not a rare problem at all. In many industries, company websites are full of sentences about a comprehensive approach, individual customization and a team of experts. Sounds familiar? Exactly. This kind of language is safe. But because of that, it often says nothing.

If a brand wants to be well understood, it has to say something specific. Not “we deliver comprehensive solutions”, but: what we do. For whom. In what situation. With what result. And what we do not promise, because sometimes that is also worth saying directly.

This is not a copywriting detail. It is part of visibility.

There is no great revolution here. For content to appear in an answer generated by AI, someone must be able to retrieve and understand it.

Sounds obvious. And yet this is often where the problems begin.

A website may look good in a browser, but be difficult for systems to read. Sometimes robots.txt is the issue. Sometimes it is the CDN or firewall. Sometimes the content is loaded with JavaScript in a way that makes tools see less than a human does. Sometimes anti-bot mechanisms also block the very bots we would actually like to let in.

For its AI features, Google relies on the classic rules of search: the website must be accessible, work properly and contain content that can be indexed. But there are also other tools. ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity use their own bots. If you block them -intentionally or accidentally - your content may simply not make it into the answer. Not because AI took offense. It simply never entered the room.

That is why the fundamentals still matter. Indexing. Speed. Mobile optimization. Clean HTML. Structured data where it makes sense. Information architecture where a human does not wander around like in a public office in the 1990s.

Without that, you can of course talk about GEO and the future of search. But it will be a bit like discussing a smart home with a leaking roof.

In AI-supported search, blog articles are not the only thing that matters.

What also matters is whether information about the company, its services and location is consistent, up to date and easy to process. And not only on your website. AI systems build a picture of a brand from many sources at once: the website, profiles, directories, reviews and media mentions. If you describe yourself in the same way everywhere, and independent sources confirm it, it is easier for systems to trust you.

For e-commerce, this means well-prepared product data. For local businesses - a well-maintained Google Business Profile. For service brands - clear descriptions of services and case studies that show real competence, not just ambition.

Again, this does not sound like a magic trick. It sounds more like order in data. But this very order often determines whether systems have anything to work with.

The worst thing you can do with GEO is treat it like another checklist. Add a few texts, change the headings, put a trendy term into your offer, tick the box.

But this is not about cosmetics. It is about how your company is understood online. Whether the offer is clear. Whether the content answers real customer questions. Whether it shows experience. Whether the website shows the difference between you and a company that says almost the same thing, just in different words.

Very often, the best content topics are not found in SEO tools. They are found in emails from clients. In briefs. In sales conversations. In the questions that come up in every meeting.

How long will it take? How much does it cost? Why did the previous activities not work? What could go wrong?

These are the questions customers are really looking to answer. And these are exactly the kinds of answers that build visibility, trust and advantage. Not only in Google. Also in places where the first contact with a brand is handled by AI systems.

Not every company should drop everything today and order a “GEO strategy”.

Sometimes the problem is much closer to the ground. The website does not have basic SEO. The offer is unclear. The content is generic and outdated. Case studies say nothing beyond the fact that “the cooperation was comprehensive”. Or the most important content is blocked or hidden so deep that even a very ambitious bot would need a map, a thermos and a free afternoon.

In that situation, GEO will not be a separate, magical project. It will be a name for work that was worth doing anyway: organizing the website, content, data and the way the company talks about itself.

And that is perfectly fine. The problem is not that someone calls it GEO. The problem begins when, under a new name, they sell old tricks, automated texts and the promise of quick visibility in AI answers.

First, a small test you can do yourself before you talk to anyone.

Ask ChatGPT or Perplexity which companies it would recommend in your category. Then ask what it knows about your brand. If the answer is misleading, outdated or your company does not appear there at all — that is exactly the moment when it is worth starting a conversation about GEO.

We do not start by creating strange files for language models.

We start with a diagnosis. We check how the company is currently visible and understood — in Google and in AI systems. How it describes its services. Whether bots can reach the content, or whether something is blocking them. Whether information about the company is consistent on the website, in profiles and in external sources. Whether the content shows real competence, or just ambition.

Only then does an action plan make sense. Sometimes the most important thing will be rebuilding service pages. Sometimes better case studies. Sometimes a series of expert articles or order in product data. Sometimes technical SEO that no one will show on a conference stage, but that will do more than another trendy slide about the future of AI.

The worst-case scenario is doing everything chaotically at once because someone said that “AI changes everything”. AI changes a lot. But it still does not relieve us of the need to think.

GEO is a real response to a real change.

Users are increasingly using tools that do not only show links, but organize information and help them make decisions. Companies that want to be visible in this environment should think about how they are understood by systems that generate answers.

But GEO is not a revolution that wipes out everything we know about SEO, content and technology. Rather, it more clearly exposes problems that many companies already had before: an unclear offer, generic content, no distinct perspective, technical errors and a lack of regular work on visibility.

So if you ask whether GEO is a marketing gimmick or a real change - the answer is: both. It is an acronym the market will overuse for a while. But behind it is a real change in the way people search for information.

So it is worth taking the topic seriously. Just without panic. And without believing in magic tricks.

If you want to know how your company performs in AI-supported search - and what specifically should be improved first - let’s run that diagnosis together. We will not promise that in a month your brand will be the answer to every user question. But we will show you what is already working, what is missing and where it is worth starting. With specifics, not magic. Because in digital, the winner is rarely the one who is first to believe in a new acronym. More often, the winner is the one who understands faster what is really behind it.