The way people search is changing. Instead of typing a few words into Google and clicking through a list of blue links, more and more people are simply asking an AI – ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or Google’s AI Overviews – and getting a direct answer back.
That shift has a name: Generative Engine Optimisation or GEO. If you’ve spent years investing in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), the good news is that you haven’t wasted your time. GEO isn’t a replacement for SEO – it’s the next layer of it. Here’s what it means for your business, and what you can start doing about it.
What is GEO?
GEO is the practice of optimising your website and online presence so that AI-based search platforms, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, understand your content, trust it, and surface your brand when people ask them questions.
Where traditional SEO is about ranking in a list of results, GEO is about being cited and recommended inside the answer itself. When someone asks an AI “Who’s the best agency in Durban?” or “What’s the best AI for coding?”, GEO is what determines whether your brand makes it into that response.
Is SEO still effective in driving traffic to websites?
Yes – SEO is far from dead. It just had a rebrand.
Here’s the thing people forget: although SEO sometimes got a reputation for “hacks,” its real purpose was always to deliver the most relevant, trustworthy result for a person’s search. It’s how you build your website’s credibility, safety and reliability in the eyes of a search engine. That exact same goal applies to AI search platforms. The destination hasn’t changed, just some of the practices for getting there have.
It’s also worth knowing why this matters now. AI-driven search is growing fast: by 2025, AI Overviews were appearing in roughly a quarter of Google searches, and referral traffic from AI tools had climbed sharply year on year. Ignoring it means slowly becoming invisible in the places more of your customers are starting their search.
How do you optimise for AI search?
There are a handful of new things you can start doing to improve your visibility in AI search platforms.
1. Answer the questions people are actually asking
Search behaviour has changed shape. People used to search in short, keyword-style phrases like “quality men’s shoes.” Now, talking to an AI, they ask full questions like “Where can I find the best quality leather shoes for men in South Africa?” In fact, the average AI prompt is around 23 words long, compared with just 3 to 4 words for a typical Google search.
So instead of old-school keyword research, we now do AI prompt research – finding the actual questions and prompts your customers are putting to AI tools.
A few ways to do this:
- Tools like AnswerThePublic, Ubersuggest and Semrush’s AI Visibility Toolkit surface the real questions and prompts people use.
- Community platforms like Reddit and Quora show you, in people’s own words, what they’re genuinely asking.
- Pay attention to what your customers actually ask you, then turn those questions into content.
Simply publishing a helpful blog or adding a clear FAQ section, answering the questions you find, helps AI connect your site directly to the questions people ask.
And you don’t have to answer questions only on your own website. You can create a business presence on platforms like Reddit and Quora and genuinely help people there too. The key is not to sell hard – it’s to be genuinely useful. Google has a licensing deal to train its AI, including Gemini, on Reddit content. Helpful, authentic answers in those communities can feed directly into what AI tools “know.”
2. Write the way people actually talk
Closely related to the above: write your content in natural, conversational language rather than stiff, keyword-stuffed copy. If your customers ask AI questions in plain English, your content should answer in plain English.
Lead with a direct answer to the question, then expand. Define your terms. Use the phrasing your audience actually uses. This makes it far easier for an AI to lift a clear passage from your page and use it in its answer.
3. Back up your claims with data, statistics and citations
This is one of the most powerful and most overlooked GEO tactics, and it’s backed by hard evidence. The Princeton-led research found that:
- Adding relevant statistics to your content improved its visibility in AI answers by around 41%.
- Adding quotations improved visibility by around 28%.
- Citing credible external sources improved visibility by up to 115% for lower-ranked content.
In other words, AI engines favour content that demonstrates it is well-researched and trustworthy. Vague, unsupported claims get skipped. Specific, sourced, fact-rich content gets cited.
4. Earn real customer reviews and third-party trust signals
When someone asks an AI “Who’s the best at XYZ?”, your own website saying “We’re the best at XYZ” isn’t an objective source. What is trustworthy is real reviews from real customers – ideally on third-party platforms like Google Business Profile or Trustpilot.
Actively encouraging happy customers to leave reviews does more than make your business look good. It signals to AI search platforms that real people trust you and that cross-platform consistency (your site, reviews, social, industry mentions all telling the same story) is exactly what AI uses to decide whether to recommend you.
What hasn’t changed? The SEO fundamentals that still matter
GEO adds new tactics, but it doesn’t throw out the basics. These remain essential.
1. Build genuine website authority
Authority is still built the same way: high-quality, expert content; earning mentions and links from credible websites; and demonstrating real experience and expertise in your field. AI engines assess authority holistically, so the more consistently your brand shows up as a credible voice across the web, the more likely you are to be cited.
2. Get the technical structure right
AI engines and search engines both need to be able to crawl, read and understand your site. The technical fundamentals still apply:
- Schema markup (structured data). This is machine-readable code that helps engines understand what your content is; an article, an organisation, an FAQ, a product. Microsoft confirmed in 2025 that its AI uses structured data to interpret content, and a large share of AI-cited pages include it. A quick reality check, though: schema isn’t a magic switch. Studies are mixed on whether it directly drives citations, and it won’t rescue weak content – think of it as removing friction, not as a shortcut. If you use Yoast or RankMath, much of this is generated for you automatically.
- A clear heading structure (H1, H2, H3). Logical headings help AI parse your page passage by passage and pull out the right answer, which is exactly how generative engines work.
- The usual suspects: fast load times, mobile-friendliness, clean site structure, internal linking and a crawlable, indexable site.
The quick GEO checklist
- Research the questions and prompts your customers ask AI – not just keywords.
- Lead with direct, conversational answers, then expand.
- Support claims with statistics, quotes and credible citations.
- Build genuine reviews on third-party platforms.
- Keep building real website authority and expertise.
- Get the technical basics right: schema, clear headings, speed, crawlability.
The bottom line
GEO isn’t about scrapping everything you know about SEO. It’s about evolving it for a world where your customers are increasingly asking AI instead of scrolling through search results. Answer real questions, write like a human, back up your claims, earn genuine trust, keep your technical house in order and you’ll stay visible no matter where your customers choose to search.
Not sure where your brand stands in AI search? At Brand Candy, we help South African businesses stay visible across both traditional and AI-driven search. Get in touch and let’s talk about your GEO strategy.
