AI seo
6 Reasons Why You Need a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agency
Published: October 22, 2025
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The reason you need a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency is simple: search has evolved, but most strategies haven’t. Today’s customers don’t just browse results—they ask AI systems like Google’s AI Mode, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for answers. Those answers are built from brands whose knowledge is captured, structured, and cited inside these models. Traditional SEO helps you get found; GEO ensures your expertise is understood and reused by the systems now shaping how people research, compare, and buy. A true Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency doesn’t just optimize pages, it engineers your knowledge for retrieval, builds entity-level credibility, and measures visibility where it now matters most: inside generative engines.
Key Takeaways
- GEO isn’t a new SEO trend, it’s an evolution: While SEO builds discoverability, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) builds understanding by ensuring your brand’s knowledge is captured, grounded, and cited by LLMs like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
- You can’t “just do” GEO with SEO, you have to re-engineer for it: Success in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) requires technology, data integration, fact-dense content, and entity-level strategy. The old playbook of “update a few pages” doesn’t make your brand visible in AI systems — it just burns budget.
- SEO still matters, but GEO determines who gets cited: Profound’s research shows ChatGPT and Google now overlap in one-third of results, yet distribute citations evenly across the top-10 (“citation flattening”). To stay visible, you need both: solid SEO foundations and GEO systems that monitor and optimize your AI visibility, citations, and conversions.
6 Reasons Why You Need a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agency
If you’re a CMO reading this, here is what you should know and why you should be shifting strategy or agencies:
| # | Core Insight | What SEO Agencies Typically Do | What GEO Agencies Actually Do | Why It Matters to CMOs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Knowledge Capture | Optimize for visibility instead of understanding | Focus on rankings, keywords, and meta tags (an important function, but not GEO) | Engineer content to be retrievable and reusable by LLMs through entity mapping, schema, and fact density | GEO ensures your brand’s knowledge is captured by AI systems that now influence buying decisions. |
| 2. Misaligned Methodology | Treat GEO as SEO 2.0 | Apply the same page updates, keyword tactics, and crawl fixes (suggesting it’s GEO) | Optimize for retrieval relevance and answer inclusion in AI-generated results | Prevents wasted spend on outdated tactics that don’t drive visibility in generative search. |
| 3. Operational Depth | “Add on” GEO to existing retainers | Offer token “AI optimization” without new data, tools, or research | Build proprietary tech, integrate BI + 1st/3rd-party data, and design fact-dense, original content | True GEO requires investment in technology, data integration, and knowledge-layer engineering. |
| 4. Proof of Impact | Talk about AI without evidence | Claim “AI readiness” without measurable results | Deliver AI visibility metrics, citation frequency, and AI-driven conversions | GEO agencies can prove performance inside generative engines — not just on SERPs. |
| 5. Omnichannel Integration | Work in silos (SEO-only teams) | Ignore external authority and reputation signals | Integrate Digital PR, Copywriting, and ORM to reinforce grounding confidence | Ensures your expertise is validated across the web, increasing LLM trust and inclusion. |
| 6. Strategic Continuity | Claim “SEO is dead” | Drop traditional search optimization entirely | Use SEO as the foundation and GEO as the growth layer, guided by Profound’s “citation flattening” data | Maintains full-funnel visibility — from organic search to AI-driven recommendations. |
1. Most SEO Agencies Don’t Understand Knowledge Capture
Traditional SEO agencies still optimize for visibility (which is important).
But Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) optimizes for understanding.
At the heart of GEO is knowledge capture: ensuring your brand’s expertise, data, and language are understood by Large Language Models (LLMs), not just indexed by search engines. Most SEO agencies stop at keyword mapping and content freshness. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agencies go further by engineering your content to be retrievable and factually reusable within generative systems like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity.
Why Knowledge Capture Matters
When a user asks an AI, “What are the best B2B ecommerce platforms?” or “How should I compare renewable energy plans in Texas?”, the AI doesn’t just “search” — it recalls knowledge. That recall comes from:
- Implicit knowledge (what the model learned during training), and
- Explicit knowledge (what it can retrieve from connected sources in real time).
A Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency knows how to make your content discoverable at both levels, encoding it semantically so it aligns with the model’s embedding space, and structuring it technically (through markup, schema, and relational signals) to make it retrievable by Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems.
Why SEO Agencies Miss This
Most agencies don’t speak the language of machine learning. They know crawl budgets, not context vectors.
They optimize meta descriptions, not retrieval relevance.
They think of “ranking higher,” not “being cited or included in an answer.”
Without understanding knowledge capture, an agency can’t make your brand eligible for inclusion in AI-generated responses — meaning you’re invisible in the environments where purchase decisions increasingly begin and end.
Why Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agencies Excel
A true Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency (like Go Fish Digital) builds your knowledge layer:
- Maps your entity relationships (products, brands, data points) into formats readable by LLMs
- Uses fact-density analysis to increase the likelihood your content is retrieved and cited
- Optimizes for answer inclusion, not just result-page clicks
- Monitors generative visibility (AIGVR, citation rate, passage-level presence) alongside traffic metrics
In short: SEO agencies make you findable. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agencies make you knowable.
2. SEO Agencies Are Treating GEO Like SEO and That’s the Problem
At first glance, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) looks a lot like SEO.
Both involve changing pages, creating content, improving site structure, and managing crawlability. But the purpose of those actions has changed, and most agencies haven’t.
Traditional SEO optimizes for ranking positions in blue-link results. GEO optimizes for knowledge capture and reuse inside AI ecosystems. It’s not just about being visible; it’s about being understood, retrieved, and cited by the LLMs that now power AI search..
Where They Look the Same (But Aren’t)
- Both change and create pages, but SEO targets SERP positions; GEO engineers content so it’s machine-interpretable and retrievable within RAG pipelines.
- Both care about crawlability, but SEO worries about Googlebot; GEO ensures GPTBot, ClaudeBot, and PerplexityBot can extract meaning, not just text.
- Both value structure, but SEO uses schema for snippets; GEO uses schema to map your entities into knowledge graphs that LLMs reference when generating answers.
In short: SEO manages visibility (which is still important). But GEO manages comprehension.
Why the Difference Matters
When users engage AI search, they don’t see ten links — they get one synthesized answer. That answer is built from captured passages, entities, and structured data sourced from the open web.
If your brand’s knowledge isn’t formatted for LLM ingestion, it’s excluded from that synthesis: even if you rank #1 on Google.
That’s why a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency optimizes differently:
- They treat fact density and contextual precision as visibility levers.
- They measure success through answer inclusion, citation frequency, and retrieval rate, not traffic alone.
- They ensure your site is AI-readable end-to-end (from render to schema to external feeds) so LLMs can capture and reuse your expertise in their generative outputs.
Why SEO Agencies Struggle Here
Most SEO agencies are still anchored in the paradigm of “rankings drive results.” They see AI Overviews and ChatGPT citations as a visibility threat, not an optimization surface. They know how to chase keywords, not how to engineer retrievable knowledge.
A GEO agency flips that script: Where SEO builds discoverability, GEO builds credibility inside the model itself.
3. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Isn’t an Add-On: It’s an Entirely Different Operating Model
Many SEO agencies are now “including” Generative Engine Optimization as if it’s a checkbox, a new deliverable on the same SEO retainer (and not revising the service line). They’ll say things like “We optimize for AI Overviews too.” Or “Our SEO package includes GEO best practices.” But that positioning misunderstands what GEO actually is, and why it requires a completely different infrastructure to do correctly. And without the tools to properly assess how to optimize for AI Overviews if they’re doing so.
GEO Requires Systems, Not Slogans
To succeed in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), you need an engineered ecosystem, not a few keyword tweaks.
True generative visibility depends on:
- Technology: Proprietary tools or integrations that model how generative engines interpret, store, and reuse your data — not just rank trackers or keyword tools.
- Data: Access to and alignment of BI data, first-party data, and third-party knowledge graphs to feed retrieval and grounding signals. Without these, an agency can’t understand what’s being captured — or missed — by AI systems.
- Entity-Level Analysis: The ability to map and measure your brand’s representation inside knowledge graphs and RAG pipelines, not just URL visibility in Google Search Console.
- Content Engineering: Each page requires considerable time and depth — embedding original insights, data, or proprietary research to surpass “knowledge capture thresholds” and earn inclusion. The era of 800-word SEO blogs written for volume is over.
- Fact Density and Validation: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) content must include validated data, citations, and unique value creation. It’s not enough to write well — you must write provably.
Why “Bundled GEO” Is a Budget Trap
When an SEO agency claims Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is “included,” what they’re really offering is rebranded SEO: surface-level page edits and new blog posts that may look busy but fail to create the machine-readable knowledge required for generative inclusion.
That approach wastes budget in three ways:
- No visibility in AI systems: Pages aren’t being captured or cited by AI Search engines.
- No differentiation: Competitors who invest in real data, research, and entity mapping dominate AI-generated answers.
- No measurement: Without GEO analytics (retrieval rate, passage-level inclusion, citation monitoring), there’s no way to prove ROI, or even see what’s working.
GEO Isn’t an SEO Upgrade: It’s a Strategic Transformation
A Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agency doesn’t just “optimize pages.” It rethinks how your brand’s knowledge is created, structured, and validated for machine reuse. That means:
- Deploying internal tools to track AI crawler activity and generative citations.
- Engineering schema and fact frameworks that mirror knowledge graph relationships.
- Measuring not just traffic but generative visibility: how often your content is used to answer the market’s questions.
4. Most SEO Agencies Talk About AI: But Can’t Prove They Influence It
Every SEO agency now claims to “optimize for AI.” But ask them one simple question: Can you show me results inside generative engines, not search engines?
Most can’t.
That’s because traditional SEO metrics (rankings, impressions, and clicks) don’t translate into AI visibility or generative engagement. GEO requires an entirely new analytics layer that measures how often your content is captured, grounded, cited, or clicked through from AI-generated experiences.
Proof Beats Positioning
Go Fish Digital has seen what happens when Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is executed correctly:
- Chicco:
- +4,600% YoY increase in conversation-to-click rate inside AI search environments.
- +9,600% YoY increase in AI-driven ecommerce purchases.
These are measurable AI results, not projections, not guesses. Ask us for more!
Why SEO Agencies Can’t Replicate This
To influence generative engines, you must understand how they reason.
That means studying and applying insights from patents, such as:
- US11769017B1 (Google): detailing how Gemini integrates factual grounding and entity confidence scores.
- WO2024064249A1 (OpenAI): outlining retrieval-augmented citation systems used in ChatGPT.
Without reading and modeling against these architectures, SEO agencies are optimizing in the dark. Producing content that’s searchable but not reusable.
The GEO Difference: Data, Validation, and Transparency
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agencies don’t just promise inclusion; they measure it:
- Tracking AI Visibility Rate (AIGVR) and Citation Frequency.
- Auditing Passage-Level Inclusion across generative environments.
- Aligning all metrics back to business outcomes — revenue, leads, conversions — from AI-originating sessions.
5. GEO Is an Omnichannel Discipline: Not a Single-Channel Strategy
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) isn’t a channel; it’s a convergence layer where content, authority, and reputation meet.
To influence how AI systems understand and represent your brand, every signal — on-site, off-site, earned, and user-generated — must align. That’s why successful Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) programs integrate Digital PR, copywriting, and Online Reputation Management (ORM) into one coordinated ecosystem.
Why GEO Demands Integration
Generative engines don’t just read your website, they triangulate your credibility across the open web. They look for consistency between:
- What your site says
- What authoritative sources say about you
- What users say in reviews, forums, and UGC environments
If those three dimensions don’t align, your content won’t be grounded. And ungrounded content doesn’t make it into AI answers.
The Three Forces That Power Real Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
- Digital PR for Authority Signals: High-authority mentions, backlinks, and media coverage strengthen your external grounding layer. When LLMs validate your claims, these references increase your brand’s confidence score inside generative systems. Think of it as reputation scaffolding. Without it, AI won’t trust what you publish.
- Copywriting for Information Gain: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) copywriting isn’t about hitting word counts, it’s about crafting high information-gain passages that introduce new knowledge into the ecosystem. Each page should answer questions better and deeper than what’s already in the LLM’s training corpus. That’s what makes your content citable.
- ORM for UGC Integrity: LLMs pull from more than publisher content. They scrape user-generated sources — Reddit threads, reviews, Q&A sites. If unmonitored UGC misrepresents your brand or product, it can directly contaminate how AI engines describe you. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agencies deploy ORM as brand risk management for AI, ensuring UGC doesn’t distort generative perception.
Why Traditional SEO Teams Can’t Deliver This
An SEO-only team sees GEO as an “optimization channel.” But a real Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategy spans authority creation, data governance, and narrative control.
Without PR specialists feeding external signals, copywriters building fact-dense assets, and ORM teams protecting reputation data, the generative ecosystem sees an incomplete picture of your brand and fills the gaps with someone else’s narrative.
6. GEO Agencies Know You Still Need SEO, Because the Data Proves It
Some agencies say “SEO is dead.” Real Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) agencies know better. The truth: SEO is still required, but its role has evolved. Traditional SEO lays the groundwork, and GEO builds the structure for AI visibility.
Why SEO Still Matters in Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
According to Profound’s research (“AI Search Shift: ChatGPT’s Growing Alignment With Google’s Index”), they analyzed a subset of 240 million citations and found this trend:
- In April 2025, ChatGPT–Google alignment was ~12%.
- By July 2025 it rose to ~33%.
- Over the same period, ChatGPT–Bing alignment fell from ~26% to ~8%.
This shows that Google’s index is now playing a significantly larger role in what ChatGPT cites: reinforcing why SEO still matters.
The “Citation Flattening” Effect
Profound also studied 1,000 prompts where ChatGPT citations aligned with Google results. They found:
- Google #1 pages got ~27.5% of human clicks, but only ~10% of ChatGPT citations in those aligned case.
- Google #10 pages got ~2.5% of human clicks, yet ~4% of ChatGPT citations.
In short: while humans concentrate clicks at the top positions, ChatGPT distributes citations more evenly across the top-10. That’s the “flattening”.
What This Means for Your Strategy
- Ranking in the top 10 still matters: but the value of #1 vs #10 has compressed in the AI world.
- SEO remains foundational: if Google can’t index/crawl you, you can’t even enter the AI citation door.
- Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) shifts the measurement and strategy: you can’t simply chase rankings; you must track AI visibility, citation rates, and passage-inclusion, not just positions.
- Systems must evolve: daily/weekly monitoring, statistical trend analysis, and platform-specific strategies because AI-driven paradigms move far faster than classic search.
FAQs About Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Common questions and answers from experts:
1. What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
Generative Engine Optimization is the process of preparing your brand’s knowledge, content, and data to be captured, grounded, and cited by Large Language Models (LLMs).
Unlike SEO, which focuses on ranking in blue-link results, GEO ensures your expertise becomes part of the knowledge base these AI systems use to answer questions and make recommendations.
2. How is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) different from SEO?
SEO optimizes for discovery, helping users find you. GEO optimizes for understanding, ensuring AI systems can interpret and reuse your information accurately.
While both involve content, schema, and crawl accessibility, GEO adds new layers: knowledge-graph engineering, fact-density optimization, and entity-based visibility tracking inside AI models.
In short: SEO gets you seen (still important!); GEO gets you cited.
3. How should CMOs measure success in GEO?
Traditional SEO metrics (rankings, CTR, backlinks) don’t reveal generative performance. CMOs should track:
- AI Visibility Rate (AIGVR): Percentage of prompts where your brand appears in AI answers.
- Citation Frequency: How often your content is reused or referenced.
- Conversation-to-Click Rate: Click-throughs from AI-generated environments.
- AI-Attributed Conversions: Leads or purchases originating from generative search interactions.
4. How will the rise of the “personalized internet” change GEO strategy?
As generative engines evolve, search is becoming deeply personalized — not just by keywords, but by user context, intent, and behavior. Google’s patents (like US20240362285A1) show how future search experiences will tailor results using demographics, life events, and prior interactions.
In this new landscape, every user sees a different version of the internet, and that means static SEO playbooks will no longer work. Rankings will fragment, AI answers will adapt to each user’s profile, and brand visibility will depend on how well your content aligns with individual context.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is uniquely positioned for this shift because it focuses on knowledge comprehension and contextual retrieval rather than one-size-fits-all optimization. By structuring data, strengthening entity relationships, and feeding personalized intent signals into your content, a Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) strategy ensures your brand remains present and relevant in every personalized AI conversation.
More on AI search from Go Fish Digital
- How to Find Pages on Your Site That ChatGPT May Be Hallucinating
- OpenAI’s Latest Patents Point Directly to Semantic SEO
- Everything an SEO Should Know About SearchGPT by OpenAI
- How to See When ChatGPT is Quoting Your Content By Analyzing Log Files
- How to Rank in ChatGPT and AI Overviews
- Top Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Agencies
- Generative Engine Optimization Strategies (2025)
