For twenty years, being found online meant one thing: ranking on Google's results page. That's changing. More people now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's own AI Overviews for answers — and those tools reply with a synthesised paragraph, not a list of links.
Which raises the question every business should be asking: when an AI answers a question in your category, does it mention you?
From ten blue links to one answer
Traditional SEO optimises to appear among results. GEO — Generative Engine Optimization — optimises to be quoted in the answer itself. It's a different game, because AI engines don't just match keywords; they weigh clarity, structure, authority, and how easily your content can be extracted and trusted.
So what does GEO actually involve?
In practice, it's a mix of good fundamentals and a few new habits:
- Clear, plain-language answers to the real questions customers ask
- Structured data (schema) that tells engines exactly what you do
- Well-organised headings and FAQ blocks that are easy to quote
- Consistent, credible information about your brand across the web
Why it matters now
The brands that show up in AI answers today are setting the defaults customers will trust tomorrow. Most agencies are still selling "SEO" as if nothing has changed. Getting ahead on GEO is one of the cheapest advantages a business can take right now.
GEO isn't a replacement for SEO — it's the next layer on top of it.
At Akanara we build both into every project: the technical SEO that gets you ranked, and the structure and clarity that gets you cited. If you want to see where your brand stands in AI search, get in touch.