For a long time, being discoverable online meant one thing; showing up on the first page of Google when somebody searched for you. Someone had a problem, they typed a few words into Google, they briefly scanned the results and then they clicked.
That journey hasn’t disappeared, but it has evolved and continues to change. Search engines are increasingly integrating generative AI into the way they surface answers to questions, while tools like ChatGPT or Claude can search the web and pull up relevant sources directly within a conversation.
This means that your next potential customer might not search something like: “B2B branding agency near me”; they might instead ask something like, “Which branding agencies work with B2B brands that need repositioning?”, and this creates a new challenge for brands to figure out.
It isn’t only whether people find you. It’s now whether search engines and AI systems understand your value proposition, and when to surface you as the relevant answer?
If you’ve poked your head out from under the SEO rock, you’ll have seen the term GEO (generative engine optimisation) appearing in marketing conversations. At its simplest, GEO is being used to describe the new practice of improving a brand’s visibility within AI-generated search experiences and answers. But there’s an important caveat.
Guidance from Google says that we shouldn’t be abandoning SEO in favour of following GEO “hacks”. Generative search experiences still draw on its existing search index and ranking systems, meaning that the fundamentals of SEO remain important.
For those who’ve made their careers out of SEO, this isn’t a story about the death of SEO. It’s a story about brand discovery becoming broader; and that makes something else increasingly important – how clearly the internet understands your business.
Put yourselves in the shoes of an experienced engineering business. You’ve been successfully operating for 25 years, you’ve got a brilliant team, retained client relationships and expertise that would be very difficult for competitors to match.
But your website says, “We deliver innovative solutions through a customer-centric approach.” And so does your competitors. So, what are you actually known for?
These have always been important branding questions; and in the new AI-led discovery environment, they become even more relevant. Being mentioned isn’t the goal - being understood is.
Most people shy away from GEO as it can quickly descend into a very technical conversation… structured data, crawling, indexing, citations and content architecture. Those still matter, but before you get lost in the tactics, businesses should answer the fundamental question – is there a clear and consistent idea you want the market to associate with your business?
If your website says one thing, your case studies focus on something else entirely and your sales team describes the proposition differently again, you’re making it much harder for customers to build a clear picture of you. And potentially harder for the AI engines to do it too.
That’s why this isn’t simply a search problem. It’s a positioning problem.
Google’s current guidance for generative search specifically encourages businesses to create original, valuable and non-commodity content rather than churning out content simply to manipulate visibility. Which brings us back to brand.
There’s also another hidden danger with the growing discussions around GEO. Businesses become too focused on appearing in AI answers, in exactly the same way they were once obsessed with ranking first for a specific keyword. Visibility matters, but that alone has never been enough.
Imagine that an AI assistant surfaces five potential suppliers. You’re in the list – but the final choice still lies with the customer; who’ll visit your website, review your work, maybe read a case study, do some research about the people behind the business, compare your offer with the rest of the market; and more importantly, they’ll ask themselves whether you're likely to understand their problem.
They’ll decide whether they trust you to deliver – this is where your brand continues to do the heavy lifting. AI might help put you in the conversation, but your value proposition, proof, reputation and experience will still be needed to help you win.
Don’t panic and tear up your marketing strategy and start again just because there’s a new three-letter acronym in front of you.
Start with the fundamentals; and get clear on what you want to be known for. This doesn’t mean every single service you offer; this is the meaningful value you create and the client problems you are well placed to solve.
Make your expertise visible to potential clients; if the best thinking within your business only exists inside the heads of your team, it’s almost impossible for customers (or search systems) to discover it. Instead, turn that rich expertise into useful content that can be found.
Substantiate your claims, anyone can say they’re innovative, experienced or customer focused. Using specific examples, results and genuine expertise make those claims believable.
Focus on creating content worth finding. AI has made the production of average content very easy. That makes original content a much more valuable commodity – sharing your distinctive viewpoints and unique experience in your own tone of voice will be more appealing than ever.
Build consistency through your brand ecosystem; your website, social media, sales materials and even your people should all collectively reinforce what you want the business to be known for. This doesn’t mean identical repeated copy everywhere, but the content should build the same association.
It’s clear that search is evolving. Google is already pivoting to provide dedicated guidance and reporting for visibility within its generative AI experiences, while AI assistants such as Copilot and Perplexity are increasingly capable of searching the internet and helping people to discover businesses, products and new information.
Yes, businesses do need to plan for how they’re going to show up in the new age of GEO – but the answer isn’t to simply optimise for yet another channel. It’s to build a brand that is clear enough to understand, distinctive enough to remember and credible enough to recommend.
It doesn’t matter if your next customer discovers your business through LinkedIn, Google, Claude or something else entirely. The fundamental question remains the same: Why should they choose you?
The businesses that can answer that most clearly will have a distinct advantage wherever discovery happens.
If your business is brilliant at what it does but the market still struggles to understand why it should choose you, we can help make that value clearer.
Created on
August 24, 2026
Last updated on
August 24, 2026
