How can you get ChatGPT to mention your startup? That’s the question forcing some founders to spend thousands of euros a month on new tricks and methods to ensure their companies appear in chatbot search results.
Some marketing experts are predicting the end of traditional SEO (search engine optimisation) and are warning companies to become fluent in GEO (generative engine optimisation) if they want to be found by users increasingly turning to chatbots as their primary source for information.
While search engines like Google and Bing still dominate the traditional search market, large language models (LLMs) are quickly gaining prominence. ChatGPT currently has over 900m weekly active users, up from 400m in February, according to data and research company Demandsage.
“AI visibility” experts have sprung up to help companies navigate this shift, as have AI search analytics platforms that help companies track their brand performance across various tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity.ai. Berlin-based startup Peec.ai, which raised €7m in funding within five months of launch, is considered among the frontrunners in Europe.
“GEO is the latest battleground of the SEO wars: the new arms race,” says Luke Costley-White, chief growth officer at DojoAI, a platform deploying agents to help companies with marketing tasks. “I'm seeing differing levels of fear, uncertainty and hype right now."
What is GEO?
The traditional way brands have made themselves more visible on the web is by improving their website’s ranking on the results pages of search engines like Google to attract more organic traffic — that’s SEO.
With GEO, the aim is to make your content more likely to appear in answers given by tools such as ChatGPT, or linked in Google’s AI snapshots or its generative summaries. Some companies optimise to rank as the first source quoted by chatbots in their answers.
Research from Semrush, a marketing tracker, predicts traffic from large language models (LLMs) will overtake traditional Google search by the end of 2027.
While SEO optimises for keywords a user might type into a search engine, GEO optimises for prompts (i.e. the sentence-length instructions given to chatbots).
Marketers are having to think more like prompt engineers, figuring out what exact phrases a potential customer would use to find their product — for example, ‘what is the best accounting tool for startups?’ — and how to structure content so that a model selects their brand in their response.
The difficulty is that LLMs are a black box; brands don’t know exactly what an LLM will show a user at any given time and are having to test various approaches to get “seen”.
“With traditional SEO, you had clear keywords. You knew that people searched for a service in a specific way, and you could build a strategy around those queries. With LLMs, it’s different — they try to anticipate the user’s intent,” says Pavel Shynkarenko, founder of Mellow, an HR tech company.
“Someone may ask one thing, but the model, trying to interpret their problem, suggests services that don’t strictly match the keyword but are ‘adjacent’. To appear in LLM recommendations, you now have to consider a much broader range of user scenarios — all the different ways people might describe their pain points, needs or tasks.”
The opportunity for brands
As people prompt chatbots in varied, conversational ways, there are “millions” of potential entry points where a brand or startup could show up — helping companies to grow at an even faster rate, Costley-White says. Seeing impact used to take years with SEO; with GEO, he’s seen impact within months, he adds.
Shynkarenko says his company gained 30 clients in four months from AI chatbots through very specific user queries that mentioned the terms ‘farshoring’ and ‘overseas talents’.
“They wouldn’t have found us via Google. But LLMs, unlike search engines, work as a chat: they guide the user step by step through their problem-solving process. That creates new entry points where your service can appear."
Many marketing experts say traditional SEO practices overlap with GEO.
“SEO and GEO are not separate things; they go hand in hand. A fast website, smart navigation and great content that actually answers user questions are still the most important things for both traditional SEO and the new AI-driven search,” says Adam Sidorczuk, freelance SEO expert.
Mellow gained the 30 clients via LLMs by doing the following. First, it analysed key queries using tools like Ahrefs and Semrush to see which keywords competitors rely on and how people search for related services.
“In our case that meant topics like ‘contractor management in hard-to-reach regions’. We created detailed content around those subjects — not AI-generated text, but edited, referenced material that other websites could link to,” says Shynkarenko. “We also worked with newsletters, media outlets and social channels to build those backlinks and visibility,”
Mellow also enhanced its profiles on directories such as G2, to ensure its brand positioning matched highly searched for user queries. “Those directories are well-indexed, and strong profiles there tend to appear more often in LLM outputs,” adds Shynkarenko.
The company then ran targeted paid ad campaigns to support the aforementioned topics which helped Mellow boost its overall search performance. “Ahrefs recently launched an AI monitoring tool that tracks which sources LLMs cite most frequently — it’s been useful in refining this strategy,” says Shynkarenko.
GEO tactics have helped online recruiter Ivee receive more traffic from chatbots too, says Lara Kennedy, the company’s senior marketing associate. The company starts by imagining user prompts that could lead people to their website. “So for example, ‘what support is there in the UK for women returning to work?’,” says Kennedy.
“Ideally, you want these prompts to be something that would lead to a click, rather than ChatGPT solving the query on its own,” she adds. The effort has paid off: “From ChatGPT alone, we've seen a 120% increase in site visitors the past three months compared to the previous three-month period. Given that that is covering the summer holiday period as well — which is famously slow for recruitment — it's an extremely positive sign.”
SEO ain’t dead
There’s no consensus, yet, on how brands should manipulate their content to get ChatGPT pickup.
That said, the quality — and to some extent, the quantity of content — matters.
Websites and blogs need to be clearly structured with punchy headlines that can easily be read by machines — like Q&A or listicles formats. As AI models will crawl various websites to find information, any facts about the company have to be up to date. Creating detailed FAQs also helps AI understand and extract relevant information more easily to cite in its answers.
“Content has to be sharper, more structured and genuinely helpful. We have to be writing for humans first, but with machines in mind,” says Maia Iva, cofounder and CEO of Kweet, a company that helps nonprofits with comms and fundraising.
Marketing experts also note that LLMs will reward companies that have positive, widespread mentions online. As with traditional SEO, brands should therefore focus on building authority through getting cited in reputable publications and studies, and getting mentions on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Youtube and Reddit.
The key for companies seeking chatbot mentions is to jump into conversations as they happen, says Costley-White, whether that’s publishing a blog in response to breaking news or engaging in Reddit conversations or LinkedIn threads so you can “be visible right at that moment.”
Companies have to be “crystal clear” on what their brand is, what it stands for, what it wants to say and who the target group is, says Miriam Rönnau, data intelligence and content lead at German PR firm Piabo. If you don’t know that, neither will an LLM.
Looking ahead, Costley-White thinks the traditional SEO manager role will eventually be “automated out.” In its place, he sees the rise of the content editor — a “tastemaker” who defines the brand’s voices, selects debates to chime in on and produces content that both interests humans and can easily be ingested by AI.
Sifted quizzed the experts to come up with a list of tips to helo you get started with GEO. You can find those here.
