Contributors:
Amol Ghemud Published: February 19, 2026
Summary
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of structuring content so AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, and Perplexity cite your brand in their responses, going beyond traditional SEO rankings. With AI Overviews now appearing in 57% of SERPs and organic CTRs dropping sharply, brands that are not optimized for AI citation are losing high-intent traffic to competitors who are. The solution is not to abandon SEO but to layer GEO on top of it, using structured answer blocks, original data, entity clarity, and clean schema markup to become the most citable source in your space.
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SEO gets you indexed. GEO gets you referenced. If you want revenue, you need both.
Organic click-through rates dropped 61% the moment Google started showing AI Overviews. Not over a year. Not gradually. The switch flipped, and the traffic fell off a cliff.
If your marketing strategy still treats Google’s blue links as the primary discovery channel, you’re optimizing for a game that’s already changed underneath you. The question isn’t whether to care about AI search visibility. It’s how far behind you already are.
This isn’t a definitions piece. upGrowth has been implementing Generative Engine Optimization for clients since before most agencies could spell it. What follows is what we’ve actually seen work, what the 2026 data says, and what you should do about it starting this week.
The Numbers That Should Keep You Up at Night
Let’s get specific about what’s happening in search right now.
Google’s AI Overviews now appear in 57% of search engine results pages, up from just 25% in August 2024. That’s not a trend. That’s a takeover. Nearly nine in ten queries triggering these overviews have informational intent, meaning the exact type of content most companies invest heavily in creating is the one being cannibalized the fastest.
When an AI Overview appears, only 8% of users click on organic results below it. Without a summary, that number is 15%. Still low, but almost double. The position one CTR for keywords that now trigger AI Overviews fell from 7.3% to 2.6% in just twelve months.
Zero-click searches are heading toward 70% of all queries. Users end their search session 26% of the time after seeing an AI Overview, compared to 16% for standard results pages.
The revenue impact is already measurable. Publishers are reporting traffic drops between 20% and 90%. HubSpot lost 70-80% of organic traffic on affected queries. Global publisher referrals from Google organic search fell 38% year-on-year in the US alone.
But here’s the part most people miss: brands cited in AI Overviews earn 35% more organic clicks and 91% more paid clicks. An average visitor from an LLM is worth 4.4 times as much as a traditional organic search visitor, based on conversion rates. AI-sourced traffic surged 527% year over year between January and May 2025.
The traffic isn’t disappearing. It’s moving. The question is whether it’s moving toward you or away from you.
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing your content so AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini cite your brand when generating answers. Where SEO focuses on ranking in search results to earn clicks, GEO focuses on being the source AI systems trust enough to reference.
The distinction matters because the economics are completely different.
SEO operates on a rankings-and-clicks model. You invest in content, build authority, earn a position on page one, and hope users click through. The value comes from the click.
GEO operates on a citations-and-trust model. You structure your content so that AI systems can parse, verify, and cite it. The value comes from being the recommended answer, whether or not the user ever visits your website. Your brand shows up inside the response itself.
Think of it this way. SEO is about being on the shelf in the store. GEO is about being the brand that the shop assistant recommends when someone walks in and asks for advice.
Both matter. But if you’re only on the shelf and the shop assistant never mentions you, you’re invisible to the growing number of buyers who ask before they browse.
Why “Just Do SEO Better” Won’t Cut It Anymore
There’s a popular argument that good SEO automatically leads to GEO visibility. It’s half right, which makes it dangerous.
76.1% of URLs cited in AI Overviews also rank in the top 10 of traditional search results. So yes, ranking well gives you a head start. But ranking well is necessary, not sufficient.
Here’s what we’ve seen with clients at upGrowth: two pages can rank in positions 3 and 7 for the same keyword, and the position 7 page gets the AI citation while the position 3 page doesn’t. Why? Because the page in position 7 had structured entity definitions, cited original data, and answered the query in a clean 50-word block that an AI system could extract and attribute. The higher-ranking page was better optimized for traditional signals but less machine-parseable.
AI systems don’t just check authority the way Google does. They evaluate whether your content can be quoted without distortion. Whether the information has a clear attribution. Whether the entity relationships in your content are explicit rather than implied. A well-written blog post that flows beautifully for human readers might be terrible for AI extraction if the key claims are buried in narrative paragraphs.
This is why companies that only “do SEO better” keep losing ground in AI search. The optimization targets overlap but are not identical.
After running GEO strategies across fintech, SaaS, healthcare, and D2C clients, here’s what we’ve found actually affects whether AI systems cite your content.
Entity clarity over keyword density
AI systems don’t think in keywords. They think in entities and relationships. When we optimized client content to define entities explicitly (what something is, how it relates to other concepts, what makes it different), citation rates improved significantly. This isn’t about semantic SEO as a buzzword. It’s about writing content where every important claim is self-contained and attributable.
Structured answer blocks
Every page needs at least one 40-60-word paragraph that directly answers the core question. Not buried in the middle of a section. Positioned prominently, formatted cleanly, and written so an AI can lift it without losing meaning. Think of these as citation-ready modules within your content.
Original data and proprietary insights
AI systems prefer citing specific numbers, original research, and unique frameworks over generic advice. When we added proprietary benchmark data to a fintech client’s content, AI citations increased because the systems couldn’t find that data elsewhere. If you’re writing content that could have been written by anyone with a Google search, AI has no reason to cite you specifically.
Source authority stacking
Being mentioned across multiple credible sources (industry publications, forums where experts discuss your space, case studies on partner sites) builds what we call citation gravity. AI systems cross-reference. If your brand and your data appear in multiple trusted contexts, you become a safer citation choice.
Technical markup that machines can parse
The FAQ schema, Article schema, HowTo schema, and clean JSON-LD are no longer optional. They’re the difference between AI systems understanding your content and guessing at it. Most agencies treat schema as an SEO checkbox. In a GEO context, it’s a primary signal.
What This Looks Like in Practice
We’ve been implementing GEO strategies at upGrowth long before the term entered mainstream marketing vocabulary. Our approach treats GEO not as a replacement for SEO but as a layer on top of it.
For a fintech client, we restructured their entire content library around entity definitions and answer-ready formatting. Pages that previously ranked well but generated declining traffic started appearing in AI Overviews for high-intent queries. The result wasn’t just recovered traffic; it was higher-quality traffic, because users arriving through AI-cited results already had context about the brand before clicking.
For a consumer finance brand, we focused on getting their product comparisons and pricing data cited by ChatGPT and Perplexity. This required structuring content in a very different way from traditional SEO best practices. Instead of long-form guides, we created modular content pieces where each section could stand alone as a citable fact. The brand started appearing in AI responses to “best [product category]” queries that drive bottom-funnel decisions.
The pattern across these engagements is consistent. Companies that treat GEO as a content formatting exercise miss the point. GEO works when it’s built into your content strategy from the ground up, when you’re creating content specifically designed to be the most citable source on a topic.
Here’s the framework we use with clients to integrate GEO into existing SEO workflows without burning everything down and starting over.
Step 1: Audit your existing content for citation readiness
Take your top 20 pages by traffic. For each one, ask: Can an AI system extract a clean, attributable answer from this page in under 50 words? If the answer is no, those pages are invisible to AI search regardless of how well they rank.
Step 2: Identify your citation-worthy differentiators
What data, insights, or frameworks does your brand own that nobody else has? This is your GEO moat. Original research, proprietary benchmarks, unique methodologies, case study results with specific numbers. If you don’t have any, that’s your first problem to solve.
Step 3: Restructure content for dual optimization
Every piece of content should serve both human readers and AI systems. This means keeping the engaging narrative flow that works for humans while adding structured answer blocks, clear entity definitions, and schema markup that works for machines. It’s not either/or.
Step 4: Build off-site citation gravity
AI systems don’t just look at your website. They look at where your brand appears across the web. Guest contributions on industry sites, data cited in publications, and mentions in relevant community discussions. This is the off-page SEO equivalent for GEO.
Step 5: Measure differently
Track AI citations alongside traditional rankings. Monitor your brand mentions in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews. Compare conversion rates for AI-referred traffic versus traditional organic traffic. Build dashboards that capture both SEO and GEO performance so you can allocate effort based on actual revenue impact.
Where Most Companies Go Wrong
The biggest mistake we see isn’t ignoring GEO entirely. It’s treating it as a tactical add-on rather than a strategic shift.
Adding FAQ schema to existing pages isn’t a GEO strategy. Rewriting a few definitions at the top of your blog posts isn’t a GEO strategy. These checkboxes might marginally improve your chances of being cited, but they won’t move the needle against competitors who’ve built their entire content approach around being the most citable source in their space.
The second biggest mistake is over-rotating away from SEO. Traditional search still drives most web traffic. 76% of AI Overview citations come from pages that rank in the top 10. Abandoning your SEO foundation to chase AI citations is like closing your retail store because e-commerce is growing. The smart play is doing both.
The third mistake is measuring GEO by the same metrics as SEO. AI citations don’t always generate direct clicks. Sometimes they generate brand awareness that converts through a different channel weeks later. Sometimes they create a trust signal that influences a buyer who’s comparing vendors. If you’re only measuring “did this page get more organic clicks,” you’ll miss the full picture of what GEO is doing for your pipeline.
If you’re a founder or marketing leader reading this, here are the first moves that will have the biggest impact.
Run a citation audit on your top-performing content. Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google (with AI Overviews enabled) and ask the questions your target customers ask. Is your brand appearing in the responses? Are your competitors? This ten-minute exercise will tell you exactly where you stand.
Identify your top five “must-win” queries. These are the questions that, if AI systems cited your brand in the response, would directly impact revenue. Not vanity keywords. Revenue queries. Focus your GEO efforts here first.
Pick one existing high-performing page and restructure it for dual SEO + GEO optimization. Add an answer-ready block, clarify entity definitions, update the schema markup, and ensure the page contains at least one piece of proprietary data. This gives you a controlled test to measure the impact before committing to a full content overhaul.
Review your off-site presence. Are you being discussed in the places AI systems scrape for training data and real-time citations? Industry publications, Reddit, Quora, niche forums in your space? If not, that’s a visibility gap that no amount of on-page optimization will fix.
SEO and GEO Aren’t Competing. They’re Converging.
The framing of “SEO vs GEO” is useful for understanding the differences, but misleading as a strategy framework. In practice, the companies winning in 2026 aren’t choosing between the two. They’re building content ecosystems that serve both human readers and AI systems simultaneously.
The companies that act on this now will compound their advantage. Those who wait for the “right time” will find themselves optimizing for a search landscape that no longer exists.
If you want to know where your brand stands in AI search and what it would take to get cited, book a GEO audit with our team. We’ll show you exactly which queries you’re missing and what the fix looks like.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is about ranking your pages higher on Google and earning clicks from search results. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is about making your content more likely to be cited by AI systems like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude.SEO wins rankings. GEO wins inclusion inside the AI-generated answer.
2. Does GEO replace SEO?
No. GEO builds on top of SEO. Most AI Overview citations still come from pages that already rank in the top 10, which means SEO remains your foundation. GEO is the layer that makes your content more extractable, verifiable, and citable once you’re already discoverable.
3. If I rank #1 on Google, why am I not getting cited in AI Overviews?
Because ranking is not the same as citation readiness, AI systems prioritize content that is easy to extract, clearly structured, and contains trustworthy, attributable claims. A page can rank well but still lose citations if the key answer is buried in narrative paragraphs or lacks clear entity definitions and supporting sources.
4. Does GEO work for B2B SaaS and fintech, or is it only for publishers?
GEO is especially powerful for SaaS, fintech, and B2B brands because AI-driven discovery often occurs during the research and comparison stages. If you can get cited in “best tools”, “pricing comparison”, “how to choose”, and “alternatives” queries, you influence purchase decisions even before the buyer visits your site.
5. Why is off-site visibility important for GEO?
Because AI systems cross-reference multiple sources to validate trust. If your brand is mentioned across credible publications, communities, partner sites, and industry databases, you gain “citation gravity.” Even if your website is strong, a weak off-site presence makes you a riskier citation target.
6. Should we rewrite old SEO blogs for GEO or publish new content?
Start by upgrading existing high-performing pages first. These pages already have rankings and authority, so adding GEO structure (answer blocks, schema, proprietary insights, entity clarity) can unlock AI visibility faster than starting from scratch. After that, build new content designed for SEO + GEO from day one.
Amol has helped catalyse business growth with his strategic & data-driven methodologies. With a decade of experience in the field of marketing, he has donned multiple hats, from channel optimization, data analytics and creative brand positioning to growth engineering and sales.
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