Key Takeaways
- GEO (generative engine optimization) is the practice of optimizing your brand’s visibility in AI-generated responses from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews.
- Flywheel considers GEO a subset of SEO, not a replacement. SEO is the umbrella for showing up wherever people search.
- LLM citations are driven by broad web presence, not just your domain’s backlink profile. Social media, YouTube, Reddit, and third-party mentions all contribute.
- Every brand, including small ones, should be thinking about GEO. Very niche, specific content is what wins for smaller businesses.
The Naming Debate: What Do We Actually Call This?
There’s an open debate in the marketing world about what to call the practice of optimizing your brand to show up in AI chat responses. The leading candidates are GEO (generative engine optimization), AEO (AI engine optimization), and LLMO (large language model optimization).
At Flywheel Digital, we follow a simple rule: whatever term becomes commonly accepted is the right term. Language belongs to whoever uses it most. Right now, that’s GEO, though AEO is close behind.
LLMO seems to be fading out of common usage.
I use “GEO” with my clients because that’s the term most people recognize. But our position is that GEO is a subset of SEO, not a separate discipline.
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and I define “search” broadly: anywhere people search for things, we want to optimize a business to show up. People search on Google, but they also search on ChatGPT, YouTube, Reddit, TikTok, and increasingly through voice interfaces. The job of SEO has always been about showing up where your audience is looking for answers.
The surfaces have expanded, but the core job hasn’t changed.
GEO is one pillar of that broader mandate. An important one, increasingly the most urgent one, but still one pillar underneath the SEO umbrella.
What GEO Actually Involves
To understand what generative engine optimization requires, it helps to understand how LLMs decide which brands to mention when answering a question.
In traditional SEO, the starting point was your domain. Google would evaluate your website’s authority through backlinks and domain rating, its relevance to the query through content and keywords, and its technical health through speed and structure. Then it would stack-rank domains and pages to determine the results.
LLM citations work differently. Instead of starting with your domain and its backlink profile, AI tools start by scanning a much wider set of sources: Google’s search results themselves, YouTube videos, Reddit discussions, LinkedIn posts, industry publications, news sites, and more. They’re pulling from the entire web to determine which brands and resources are relevant to a given query.
This represents a fundamental shift. In traditional SEO, the game was largely about your website and what links pointed to it. In GEO, the game is about your total online presence, every surface where your brand is mentioned, discussed, or referenced.
Social media visibility matters more for GEO than it ever did for traditional SEO. How you show up on YouTube, LinkedIn, and Reddit makes a measurable difference in whether LLMs mention you. A brand with a weak website but a strong YouTube channel and active LinkedIn presence might get cited more often than a brand with a perfect domain rating but no social footprint.
Using AI for Content Production vs. Brand Visibility
A useful way to think about AI’s role in your growth strategy is through what I call the push and pull framework.
AI Push is how you use AI to augment your content production. Using AI tools to research, draft, edit, and scale content creation across channels. This is the operational side: AI making your team faster and more productive.
AI Pull is how you ensure your brand gets pulled into AI-generated responses. When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a question about your industry, are they pulling in content that mentions your brand? That’s the visibility side.
Both matter. Push without pull means you’re producing content efficiently but it’s not showing up where people are searching. Pull without push means you’re visible but can’t keep up with the content demands of maintaining that visibility.
The critical insight is that GEO, the “pull” side, requires a fundamentally different approach than traditional content marketing. You’re not just optimizing your website for Google’s crawlers. You’re optimizing your entire digital footprint so that AI systems recognize your brand as authoritative and relevant across multiple sources.
What Actually Drives LLM Citations
From working with clients across consumer brands, education, and digital products, here’s what I’ve observed about the signals that correlate most strongly with LLM citations.
Broad Web Presence Beats Domain-Only Optimization
Brands that show up in multiple places online, their own website, YouTube, LinkedIn, industry publications, Reddit, review sites, get cited more frequently than brands that have optimized their own domain aggressively but have a thin presence elsewhere.
This doesn’t mean you should spam every platform. It means that a coherent brand presence across the web carries more weight in LLM evaluations than a perfect website with no external footprint. The key shift is thinking about your brand mentions everywhere, not just your own domain.
Social Media Is a GEO Signal
This is new. Social media presence never meaningfully influenced traditional Google rankings. But for GEO, how you show up on YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, and even TikTok does make a real difference.
YouTube is particularly important. It’s the number-one citation source for Google’s AI Overviews and the fourth-largest search engine in its own right. Yet most brands treat YouTube and SEO as completely separate functions managed by different teams with independent content strategies.
The fix is straightforward: have a single point of content leadership that oversees both your written content strategy and your video/social strategy. When these operate in silos, both suffer. When they’re unified under one content strategy, your GEO and SEO performance strengthen together.
Content That’s Specific and Differentiated Wins
Vague, generic content doesn’t get cited by AI tools. LLMs are looking for specific, authoritative answers. A blog post titled “10 Ways to Improve Your Marketing” is invisible.
A detailed analysis of how conversion rates differ between organic search and LLM-referred traffic, with specific data, gets cited.
The same principle that made great SEO content, specificity, depth, original insights, drives GEO performance. The bar is just higher because AI systems are better at distinguishing genuine expertise from generic content than Google’s algorithm ever was.
The Measurement Challenge: How to Track GEO Performance
One of the biggest practical challenges with GEO is measurement. Unlike SEO, where Ahrefs and SEMrush have been established leaders for years, the GEO measurement landscape is still being fought over.
At Flywheel, we’ve tested several tools and currently use Mentions as our primary GEO tracking platform. What we like about Mentions is its data framework: it continuously pings different AI tools with relevant prompts, which gives us much more reliable data than tools that take a passive approach to tracking.
I’ve also experimented with GEO features from established SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush. Our experience has been that the data from those incumbents isn’t yet reliable enough for us to confidently base client strategies on it. The upstarts, tools like Mentions that were built specifically for LLM tracking, are currently doing a better job.
But the whole category is young. API access is limited, advanced analysis features are still being built, and the tools lack the maturity of platforms that have been around for a decade.
If you’re starting to track GEO performance, our recommendation is to pick one tool, commit to it, and focus on trend data rather than absolute numbers. The specific citation counts matter less than whether your brand visibility is increasing or decreasing over time.
Does GEO Matter for Small Businesses?
This is a question we get often, and our answer surprises people: yes, it matters for virtually every brand, including very small ones.
We’re seeing brand-new businesses, ones that have only been around for a few months, showing up in ChatGPT responses. The barrier to entry is lower than most people assume.
The key for smaller businesses is to think about GEO through an ultra-niche lens. You’re not going to compete for broad category terms against established players. But if you’re the most authoritative source on a very specific topic within your niche, LLMs will find you.
Think about it like the early days of SEO, when small businesses could rank for long-tail keywords that big brands ignored. The same dynamic exists in GEO, except the “keywords” are the specific questions people ask AI tools. If you’re a specialty skincare brand for eczema, you won’t win “best skincare brand” in ChatGPT.
But you might win “best products for eczema on hands during winter,” especially if your content is specific, expert-driven, and present across multiple web surfaces.
If you start thinking about GEO from day one, you’re building a foundation that compounds over time. Just like SEO.
What’s Coming Next: The Rise of AI Advertising
One prediction that we feel strongly about at Flywheel: the era of “hacking” your way into LLM mentions is already fading.
Twelve months ago, one of the most effective GEO tactics was getting included in roundup posts, articles like “The 12 Best SaaS Products for Construction Businesses.” These posts were heavily cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity. That particular lever has already diminished significantly.
Expect more of these tactical shortcuts to close. What’s going to replace them is paid placement.
ChatGPT already has advertising. Perplexity is moving in the same direction. Google’s AI Mode is piloting Direct Offers, which is essentially the ad equivalent for AI-generated responses.
These programs are in early stages, but the trajectory is clear: AI tools are going to monetize through advertising, just like every other search and content platform before them.
For marketers, this means two things. First, build your organic GEO foundation now, before the advertising options mature and the landscape becomes pay-to-play. Second, start budgeting for AI advertising as a new line item in your 2026-2027 media plans.
The targeting will be simple initially (OpenAI will throttle personalization for regulatory and consumer sentiment reasons), but it’s going to get sophisticated fast.
The brands that combine a strong organic GEO presence with early investment in AI advertising will have a significant compounding advantage over the next two to three years.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is GEO replacing SEO?
No. GEO is a subset of SEO. SEO encompasses any effort to increase your brand’s visibility where people search, including Google, AI tools, YouTube, and social platforms.
GEO specifically focuses on AI-generated responses. Both are necessary. A strong SEO strategy in 2026 includes GEO as one of its core pillars.
How do I check if my brand shows up in ChatGPT?
The simplest method is to ask ChatGPT questions your target customers would ask, particularly comparison and recommendation queries in your niche. For more systematic tracking, tools like Mentions.so provide ongoing monitoring of your brand’s AI visibility across multiple LLM platforms.
What content formats work best for GEO?
Specific, data-backed, expert-driven content performs best. LLMs prioritize specificity and authority. Generic listicles and thin content are largely invisible.
Focus on creating content that demonstrates genuine expertise, includes original data or insights, and addresses specific user questions with clear, direct answers.
How much should I budget for GEO?
GEO isn’t typically a separate budget line item. It’s an extension of your SEO and content strategy. The additional investment is in ensuring your brand presence is consistent across multiple web surfaces, creating content optimized for citation, and investing in tracking tools.
For most mid-market brands, integrating GEO into an existing SEO program adds roughly 10-20% to the total effort.
