By Rishabh Shekhar
For nearly two decades, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has defined digital visibility through rankings, keywords and clicks. But as artificial intelligence reshapes how people access information, a new approach is emerging: Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO).
Conversational answers
Unlike traditional search engines that list links, generative engines deliver direct, conversational answers. Users are no longer just searching—they are asking, comparing and seeking recommendations. As a result, influence is no longer about page rank alone, but about whether a brand’s voice is referenced or reflected in AI-generated responses.That is where GEO differs from SEO. While SEO optimises content for search algorithms, GEO focuses on credibility, context and clarity—ensuring brands are recognised by AI systems as trusted sources.
Ask any Indian CMO what success in SEO looks like and the answers are familiar: higher rankings, more traffic, more backlinks.In an AI search world, that list is no longer enough.
Single recommendation
When a user asks ChatGPT “which health insurance is best for a 35-year-old in Mumbai with two kids” or “suggest a three day Goa trip under `40,000,” the model is not returning ten blue links. It is synthesising billions of data points and giving a single recommendation. Your website might power that answer, but you may never see a click.
The same shift is happening in B2B. Queries have evolved from “best tools to map productivity” to “best tool under $100 for productivity that integrates with X and Y.” These are decision-first queries. More of them are being routed to LLMs and AI assistants.
So, what should leaders track instead? In GEO, the unit of influence shifts from clicks to citations. New-age dashboards focus on:
- How often LLMs cite your brand and domain.
- What share of total AI answers do you appear in for key prompts.
- Whether your content is structured in small, machine-friendly chunks that are easy to retrieve.
- How fresh your content is compared to competitors.
- How strongly you show up in reviews, lists, case studies and forums like Reddit, Quora and LinkedIn
Under the hood, LLMs care less about clever keyword placement and much more about authority signals, structured information and cross-source agreement. If multiple trusted sources mention you, if your content is recent, well-structured and easy to parse, you rise in AI answers even if you are not number one on Google. For CMOs, this is not about abandoning SEO. It is about thinking SEO plus GEO as a unified “search everywhere” strategy.
The brands that will win this decade are the ones that stop obsessing only over traffic and start measuring influence without the click. Not just how many people arrive on your website, but how often your brand quietly shapes the answers that AI gives.
The author is co-founder & COO, Pepper