Generative Engine Optimisation: How Brands Can Win Visibility in AI Search.

AI platforms are reshaping product discovery. Learn how GEO helps brands appear in LLM responses through citations and structured content.

A New Discovery Layer Demands New Tactics

Consumers no longer rely exclusively on Google's blue links to research purchases. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity now field millions of product queries daily, synthesizing answers from across the web rather than presenting ranked results. When someone asks an AI assistant for the best running shoes for flat feet or which project management software suits small teams, the response includes specific brand recommendations drawn from authoritative sources. Brands that appear in these synthesized answers gain visibility at a critical decision point. Brands absent from the training data or poorly cited across the web get skipped entirely.

This shift has produced a new discipline: Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO. The acronym mirrors SEO intentionally, but the tactics differ substantially. Traditional search optimization focused on keyword density, backlinks, and technical site structure to climb algorithmic rankings. GEO requires brands to think about how large language models select, weight, and surface information when constructing responses to natural language queries.

LLMs Favor Third-Party Authority Over Brand-Owned Content

Shane O'Leary, marketing director at Zoetis, outlined a framework for GEO at WARC in 2025 that clarifies why brands must rethink their paid, owned, and earned media strategies. Large language models prefer citing authoritative third-party sources over brand websites when formulating recommendations. A company's own product page carries less weight than an expert review on a trusted publication, a detailed Reddit thread with genuine user experiences, or a TripAdvisor ranking validated by thousands of ratings.

This preference creates a resurgence of interest in PR and earned media among performance-focused marketers who had deprioritized these channels. LLMs favor structured data and user-generated content from platforms where authenticity signals are strong. Positive sentiment, verified reviews, and frequent citations across independent sources all increase the likelihood that a brand gets mentioned when a consumer asks an AI assistant for recommendations.

O'Leary summarized the competitive dynamic directly: companies with strong brands, high recognizability, substantial citation volume, and frequent discussion across the web hold structural advantages in AI-mediated discovery. Challenger brands with limited media presence face a harder path to visibility regardless of product quality.

Category Entry Points Provide a Strategic Framework

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute's Category Entry Points framework offers a useful lens for GEO strategy. CEPs represent the mental cues that connect consumer needs to purchase occasions. KitKat owns the break occasion. Guinness owns the post-work pub moment. These associations exist in consumer memory and influence brand consideration when relevant situations arise.

AI platforms operationalize a similar logic when responding to queries. When someone asks for a chocolate bar recommendation for an afternoon pick-me-up, models draw on content that connects specific brands to that need state. Brands that have invested in building content around their relevant CEPs, structured clearly and distributed across authoritative sources, position themselves for citation.

The practical implication is that marketers must audit which category entry points matter most for their business and then build content ecosystems around each. A hotel brand might create structured content addressing "romantic weekend getaway," "business travel with reliable wifi," and "family vacation with kids' activities" as distinct CEPs, ensuring each is covered across owned channels, earned media, and user review platforms where LLMs source information.

AI Commerce Integration Accelerates the Stakes

GEO matters today for consideration and research. It will matter even more as AI platforms integrate commerce functionality directly into their interfaces. Google is embedding Gemini into Shopping experiences, allowing conversational product discovery to flow directly into purchase. OpenAI launched Instant Checkout for ChatGPT in 2025, enabling users to buy from merchants including Etsy and Shopify without leaving the conversation.

The next phase involves agentic commerce: AI assistants that book travel, order groceries, and make purchases on behalf of consumers with minimal human intervention. These agents will rely on brand signals embedded in their training data and real-time web access to make decisions. A brand invisible to these systems loses access to an emerging transaction channel entirely.

Marketers have a narrow window to build the citation infrastructure and content architecture that will determine AI visibility for years to come. Models trained on 2024 and 2025 web content will shape recommendations into the late 2020s. The brands investing in GEO now are laying groundwork for sustained competitive advantage.

Recommendations

• "Audit your brand's presence on platforms LLMs prioritize for sourcing: Reddit, TripAdvisor, industry publications, and verified review sites where user-generated content carries authority signals."

• "Map your category entry points and build dedicated, structured content around each one, distributed across owned and earned channels to increase citation probability."

• "Shift PR measurement from impressions and reach to citation tracking: monitor whether earned media placements appear in AI-generated responses to relevant queries."

• "Test your brand's visibility by querying ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity with purchase-intent questions in your category, then reverse-engineer why competitors appear and you do not."

Bottom Line: Brands Visible to AI Win the Next Discovery Battle.

The consumer path to purchase now runs through conversational AI interfaces that synthesize recommendations from authoritative sources. Brands waiting for GEO best practices to mature will find competitors already occupying the citation real estate that determines visibility.

The strategic priority is clear: build the third-party authority, structured content, and positive sentiment signals that LLMs weight when constructing answers.

Traditional SEO got brands onto the first page of results. GEO gets brands into the answer itself.