GEO is the new SEO: How brands can pivot to win the AI search revolution

New Delhi: Search is one of the core principles the internet was built on. Navigating through the vast sea of information could have been a strenuous task, but search engines mitigated the complexity. 

Marketing on the internet requires cracking the code of these search engines, which, in contemporary times, has evolved drastically. 

Marketers in India have long held to the tenets of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But with the rise of AI-driven search engines, the terrain of digital visibility has been altered significantly. Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) has ushered in a new era and has challenged the long-held conventions around SEO. 

Visibility is no longer about climbing Google’s traditional SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings; it is about being selected by AI to form part of an instant answer. 

Ground beneath the search is moving

The shockwaves of Google's AI Overviews, launched on August 15, 2024, were immediate. Vivek Kumar Anand, Chief Strategy Officer at DViO Digital, observed that organic search results were pushed down by at least two positions to accommodate AI-generated summaries, causing overall traffic to nosedive by 50%. 

In addition, informational queries – especially top-of-funnel ones – started getting resolved right on the Google results page, requiring zero clicks. This led to clicks plummeting by 80%. 

Even pages that clung to the top rankings saw click-through rates shrink from around 3% to a meagre 0.6%. “This wasn’t just a UI update—it was a behavioural rerouting of the search journey,” said Anand. 

Generational shifts are also contributing to the pressure. According to Prashant Saini, Group Head – SEO, Hashtag Orange, 40% of Gen Z users now start their search journeys on ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Instagram rather than Google. 

“This has disrupted the conventional SEO approach, forcing us to completely rethink digital visibility. The goal is no longer to appear on page one of Google search but to be the answer on AI platforms and to be discovered in spaces where users spend time naturally,” Saini said. 

Saurabh Parmar, Fractional CMO & Trainer, Alt Strategy, echoed the insights, highlighting the “undeniable impact” of AI-driven search. Chegg, an EdTech company, lost more than 85% of its traffic due to AI search, Parmar noted. “Platforms like Kayak or TripAdvisor also incurred losses in overall traffic. News websites have suffered the most,” Parmar stated. 

Parallel to this, Rubeena Singh, MD, NP Digital, said, “Being discovered on the web now relies on you being a trusted expert rather than holding the top position on search engines.” 

Two paths, one destination?

Saini from Hashtag Orange drew the line of difference between SEO and GEO, highlighting that the SEO keyword principle functioned by identifying and using very specific search terms to rank content on SERPs. 

On the other hand, AI platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and even Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE) do not rely on such rigid keyword matching. Instead, they use large language models (LLMs) to interpret content’s semantics, context, intent, and tone to interpret how well it answers the users’ questions. 

Chiming in, Anand from DViO said, “LLMs operate on a fundamentally different logic. They do not crawl and index like traditional search engines. Instead, they consume, understand, and generate content based on massive training data.” 

Explaining with an example, Singh from NP Digital said, “GEO rewards content that fully covers a topic, answers hidden questions, and uses up-to-date facts. For example, instead of stuffing 'blockchain' 10 times in an article, focus on explaining blockchain in simple terms.”

According to Anand, in a GEO-dominated world, success is no longer measured by blue links and SERP ranking. “The view is not just outdated – it is dangerously narrow,” he commented. 

Parmar offered a different perspective on this query. According to Parmar, SEO and GEO are fundamentally the same. “I believe the concept of introducing a separate nomenclature like 'GEO' is quite misleading. Ironically, many platforms are using the term simply to rank higher in searches related to it. 

Fundamentally, both SEO and GEO involve searching the web — the difference lies in the output: SEO presents a set of links, while GEO provides a single, direct answer. But at the core, search remains the common function,” he said. 

Parmar argued that AI-driven searches are headed in the same direction as conventional search. “It is simply an accelerated version of the direction search was already heading,” he advocated. 

Zooming in on the insight, Parmar explained that traditional search had already moved beyond keyword stuffing, density formulas, and backlink quantity. 

“It has become about authority, content quality, and brand trust. AI search takes this shift even more seriously: it prioritises content that is authoritative, informative, and highly relevant to user queries. It values credibility above all. It is much more conversational,” Parmar elaborated. 

Tweak or reset? 

With AI search being conversational, the content must be recalibrated for depth and detail. 

Laying out the recipe, Anand from DViO suggested shifting from “ranking to reasoning”. Pointing out the areas of focus, Anand mentioned changes such as structuring content to be semantically rich, creating topic clusters with contextual depth, making data machine-readable (think schema, entities, relationships), and writing for comprehension and not just keywords.

Anand further stated, “The way people discover brands has fundamentally changed, and SEO needs to evolve with it.” 

Hashtag Orange’s Saini shared ways in which a piece of content can achieve high AI visibility. According to him, prioritising maximum clarity and structure, incorporating relevant and authorised data, maintaining a conversational tone, and avoiding over-optimisation and keyword stuffing is key to boosting content visibility in AI-driven search. 

Another key measure that Saini abides by is regularly updating the content. “We regularly update content with the latest information and trends and mark it as 'updated' to remain AI-favoured,” Saini told BestMediaInfo.com. 

Parmar ran parallel and suggested restructuring of content as one of the key areas of focus. In addition to this, he mentioned, “You have to be among the top 3-5 in a niche so it's brand and credibility vs being just listed. If you can’t be in the top few, find a use case where you can.” 

Singh from NP Digital suggested making AI optimisation an accessibility layer, rather than considering it a substitute. “We start all processes with human-first storytelling, which has a clear structure, a compelling story and data that gets straight to the point. Once we have our draft nailed and sounding like what we want to say, we sprinkle in AI-friendly signals: schema markup, headers, pointing with headings and layers, links on entities, and more,” Singh said. 

Another crucial aspect of this is developing content that does not lose its readability in the pursuit of being discovered by AI-driven search. DViO tackles this by administering a “two-layer content model.” 

“The first layer is for people – it’s crisp, clear, emotionally intelligent content that answers real questions in a natural tone, built to convert. The second layer is for machines – it’s structured, semantically rich, and built with schema, entity mapping, and topic depth that LLMs can parse and reason with,” Anand explained. 

The aforementioned changes churned out substantial results for those who incorporated them. 

Similarly, Hashtag Orange bumped one of their clients in real estate to get bumped in AI searches. Walking us through the process, Saini said, “Instead of just optimising existing content, we decided to build an AI-powered content generation engine focused on Generative Engine Optimisation. 

We mapped thousands of long-tail, information-intent micro-queries using AI tools like Semrush, AnswerThePublic, Ahrefs, and ChatGPT. We trained a custom GPT model on the client's existing blog content and, for newly published blogs, generated a lot of query-specific topics and FAQs.” 

He added, “Every post was optimised with semantic SEO structures aimed at FAQs and featured snippet targeting, schema markup for better Google parsing, internal links generated automatically by AI, AI-driven A/B tested meta titles and descriptions, and a strong E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust) SEO approach. 

As a result, we found tremendous outcomes — we started achieving zero position for most queries, saw our content referenced in ChatGPT results, and appeared prominently in the AI Overview results for the majority of targeted keywords.” 

NP Digital recalibrated for Adobe Acrobat India's website. Singh elaborated, saying, “Previously, Adobe was outranked by smaller players for high-intent queries. After optimising for AI Overview, Adobe started dominating visibility for these critical action-driven terms. The results were so impressive that it redefined our approach, proving that winning in the AI layer is now essential for digital success.”

Metrics of the GEO era

With GEO gradually taking over SEO, it is essential to etch new metrics to audit visibility and engagement. 

According to Saini, this metric is AI Answer Inclusion Rate. Adding reason to the choice, Saini said, “It directly measures how often AI platforms choose our content to answer user queries. If our content is being included consistently, then it means that AI deems it highly relevant, authoritative, and valuable, which is extremely crucial for digital visibility in today’s AI-preferred world.  

DViO’s Anand has three metrics that nobody cared about in the old SEO playbook but are now gaining traction – Glance Views, AI Inclusion Rate, and AI Traffic. Glance views measure how often the content is seen without a click. This metric is especially relevant in AI overviews, voice responses, or product tiles. “It stands for visibility before engagement.” 

AI inclusion rate is basically gauging if the content is part of the AI-generated answer. AI traffic is tracked via attribution. According to Anand, it is low in volume but high in quality. 

Are Indian marketers playing catch-up? 

Despite the global urgency to adapt to AI-driven search, Indian marketers appear to be slightly behind the curve. Highlighting the gap, Saurabh Parmar pointed out, “Most businesses haven't cracked it yet—unfortunately, I also see a difference in India and the West in the emphasis we are giving on solving the problem.” 

While some early adopters have begun experimenting with AI search optimisation, the majority are still relying on traditional SEO tactics that are quickly becoming outdated.

Adding to this, Anand emphasised that the evolving nature of AI search demands not just tactical tweaks but a complete reset of skills and thinking. As AI platforms increasingly reward credibility, authority, and semantic depth, brands that fail to evolve risk losing visibility altogether. 

As Parmar summed up aptly, “AI search is a pot of gold right now. Whichever businesses crack it first are going to reap the most results.”