People Are Asking AI "Which One Should I Buy?" — How Do You Get Recommended?

A while back, I went to look something up.

By old habit, I would've opened Google, typed in two or three keywords, and scrolled through a pile of links.

But that day, I didn't do that. I opened ChatGPT, described my question in full — about twenty-something words, with context, budget, and my dilemma laid out. It came back with a long response, compared the pros and cons of a few products, and gave me a recommendation.

I froze for a second.

Not because the answer was so good, but because I suddenly realized: I didn't click a single link. Those "ten blue links" that used to stand between me and information — I skipped right past them.

And my customers? They're probably starting to do the same thing.

Which brings us to today's topic — GEO, Generative Engine Optimization.

What Is GEO?

Let me break it down for you.

In the old days of SEO, we bent over backwards to get Google to put us on the first page. A user searches "CRM software," we're ranked third, they see us, they click through.

GEO is different. The problem GEO tries to solve is this: when a user goes to ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google's AI Overviews and asks "recommend me a CRM" — how do you get your product named, cited, and written into that answer?

See, that's a completely different logic.

SEO fights for position. GEO fights for being synthesized into the answer.

AI engines don't rank you first or second. They take information from several sources, weave it into a single passage, and drop a citation at the end. So you don't just need to be seen — you need to be worth citing.

That difference changes everything.

How Urgent Is This? Do the Math

I don't want to scare you, but there are a few numbers I have to put on the table.

On Google, the average query is 4 words. A user types "Beijing guesthouse recommendation," Google gives you ten links, and you pick for yourself.

On ChatGPT, the average search is 23 words. A user will say, "Our family of four is going to Beijing early next month. We want to stay in a courtyard-style guesthouse in a hutong, budget around two thousand, traveling with kids — any recommendations?"

23 words vs 4 words. Let that sink in.

These aren't the same kind of question. This is the gap between "searching" and "consulting." The user is having a conversation with AI. They don't want links — they want answers.

Here's the number that really stings: ChatGPT's weekly active users have surpassed 800 million. Apple has already tucked Perplexity and Claude into Safari. An $80+ billion SEO industry is having its distribution monopoly challenged for the first time in decades.

This isn't something that'll happen in 2026. It's already happened.

Your customers are already there. The question is — when they ask AI for recommendations, are you in the answer?

Are GEO and SEO Enemies?

A lot of people's first reaction: "So SEO is dead, we throw everything out and start over?"

No.

Let me emphasize one thing: GEO is not a replacement for SEO — it's an extension. The two share four foundational pillars.

First, your content still has to be genuinely good. Give users what they actually want. Google built its empire on this, and AI engines need the same thing to keep users around. Their job is identical — find the best content.

Second, E-E-A-T still works. That's Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

Let me give you a real example. You search "CRM" on Google, and HubSpot is at the top. Then you go to ChatGPT and ask it to "recommend a CRM" — and it recommends HubSpot too.

Why?

Because when ChatGPT trains and retrieves information, it's looking at the entire web. When the whole web says HubSpot is the leading CRM, it's not going to recommend something nobody talks about. Your authority on Google "carries over" into AI answers.

Third, keywords still provide context. AI engines haven't stopped recognizing words — they just do it in a more sophisticated way. If your content doesn't contain core terms like "CRM" or "customer management," AI can't match you to the query even if it wants to.

Fourth, your technical foundation can't crumble. Slow page loads, broken mobile layouts, crawlability issues — these problems are just as fatal in the eyes of AI engines as they are for Google. AI engines need to crawl you too.

So every dollar you've invested in SEO hasn't gone to waste. GEO is layered on top, not swapped in.

So What Does GEO Actually Add?

It adds these things.

The structure has changed. Google gives users ten links, so you write an in-depth long-form article and gradually guide the reader. AI engines don't read you that way. They break your content apart, extract from it, and stitch it together with content from others.

So what do they love? Lists, clear heading hierarchies, bolded key facts, and definitive sentences they can lift directly.

A marketer named Chris Long, who does GEO testing, shared something on LinkedIn. He said that over the past six months, they ran extensive GEO tests and found that AI search engines especially love to grab "highly structured" content — bullet points, clear subheadings, listicle-style articles.

Put simply: the smarter AI gets, the less it wants to interpret for you. Feed it ready-made, grab-and-go sentences, and it'll take them.

The metrics have changed too. SEO measures rankings, clicks, and traffic. GEO measures — how many times you got cited, how AI describes your brand, and the conversion rate of users who come over from AI platforms.

Here's something interesting: websites doing AI optimization have consistently found that while traffic from AI is lower than from Google, the conversion rate is actually higher.

Why? Nate Tower, president of Perrill, said something I completely agree with. He said when people chat with AI, they treat it like a friend. They go deeper, ask more detailed questions, and make decisions more seriously.

Someone who randomly clicks around on Google and bounces, versus someone who chatted with an AI for six minutes before deciding to click your link — the purchase intent of those two people isn't even in the same league.

Fewer visitors is fine. One comes in, one converts.

Five Steps to Get GEO Going

Alright, let's talk about how to actually do it.

I've laid out 5 steps for you. This isn't some textbook framework — these are things you can genuinely start doing today.

1. First, see yourself through AI's eyes.

Go to ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews, and ask them: "Hey, I sell XX — what do you think of me?"

See how they describe your product. Do your selling points and your differentiation show up in the AI's answer?

AI engines assemble their picture of your company from content across the entire web. What you write on your website, what you say in your blog, how other sites mention you — all of that combined is the "you" in AI's mind.

If you want it to recommend you, you first need to make sure the web's description of you aligns with how you want to be recommended.

2. Stop targeting keywords — start targeting questions.

In the Google era, you'd think "how big is the search volume for this term?" In the GEO era, you need to think "how would a user ask AI this in plain language?"

They won't search "marketing automation." They'll ask, "Our team is just 5 people and we spend a whole day every week sending email campaigns — is there a tool that can save us that time?"

You need to write content that responds to these long-form questions, with answers laid out crystal clear. A tool that can help — like AlsoAsked — lets you look up what related, off-the-wall questions users ask about a given topic.

3. Go deep with your content.

AI engines have zero patience for surface-level articles. A short page cranked out to hit a word count, touching on everything but explaining nothing — it won't bother citing that.

What it wants is content with E-E-A-T that digs down to the root of a topic, with expert quotes and original data. You need to write the kind of thing in your field that makes AI think, "Yeah, this paragraph is worth lifting."

How specifically? Include expert quotes, your own original data, real case studies, and insights nobody else has.

4. Wrap your content in a shell AI loves to eat.

This is the most easily overlooked step.

No matter how good your content is, if it's a wall of dense text, AI won't bother parsing it. What you need to do:

• Use questions as subheadings ("How Can Marketing Automation Save You Time?" instead of "The Benefits of Marketing Automation")
• Turn core points into context-rich lists, each item followed by a specific benefit or number
• Bold key facts so AI can spot them at a glance
• Keep paragraphs short — 4 sentences or less
• Use structured data (schema) where applicable

Remember, AI engines are scraping you, not reading you. The easier you make it to scrape, the more they'll give you a seat at the table.

5. Test, and keep testing.

GEO doesn't have the mature toolchain that SEO does. You can't log into a dashboard and check your rankings.

But there are a few things you absolutely must do.

Regularly go to ChatGPT and Perplexity, and ask questions using keywords from your industry. See whether your brand gets mentioned, whether the mention is positive or negative, and whether the context is right.

SEO coach Liam Carnahan has a habit I really like. He says he'll open Perplexity first, type in the keywords he wants to rank for, ask in his client's voice, and then see if his content shows up in the citation list.

Simple, old-school, but effective. HubSpot also has a free AI Search Grader tool that scans your content's performance in AI search and gives you a health report. You can use it as a starting baseline.

Different Platforms, Different Personalities

One detail worth mentioning.

ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews — they're all called "AI search," but they have different preferences.

ChatGPT loves content that covers a topic comprehensively and deeply, with expert backing, citations, and a tone that's professional yet conversational. Its defining feature is "chatting," so your content needs to hold up in a conversation.

Perplexity is a stickler for rigor. What it values most is citations — whether your content has sources, whether the data is verifiable, and whether it's up to date. On Perplexity, if it has no source, it's as good as unsaid.

Google AI Overviews is the closest to the SEO you already know. It ties traditional ranking signals together with AI synthesis capabilities. If you rank well on Google, have featured snippets, and have proper schema markup, you're more likely to show up in AI Overviews.

So don't count on one piece of content to conquer everything. For different platforms, make different micro-adjustments to the same content — add more data sources for Perplexity, go one layer deeper on logic for ChatGPT, and maintain your existing SEO advantage for Google.

A Few Pitfalls to Avoid

Finally, let me flag a few cautionary tales from the GEO trenches.

First, AI hates keyword stuffing just as much. Don't think that because it's a machine, it's easy to fool. Cramming "CRM software" 50 times onto a page looks like spam to AI just as it does to Google.

Second, thin content equals zero content. A short page that says nothing of substance basically doesn't exist in AI engines. AI wants paragraphs with information density — content it can lift directly for answers.

Third, outdated data is a cardinal sin. AI engines are extremely sensitive to information freshness. If your page says "a 2022 survey showed" while your competitor's page says "the latest 2025 data" — AI will cite the latter.

Fourth, inconsistent brand information. Your website says you're "a CRM for small and medium businesses," a review site labels you as "an enterprise-grade solution," and another blog calls you "a free tool" — AI mashes all of this together and ends up with a muddled image of who you are. And then it stops recommending you.

Fifth, chasing traffic instead of conversions. During the GEO transition, traffic data will look weird — total traffic might drop, but the conversion rate from AI sources could actually climb. Don't agonize over pageviews. Focus on the part that's actually bringing in business.

Wrapping Up

I'm not going to give you a rallying cry.

GEO, at its core, comes down to one sentence: when your customers start "chatting" with AI instead of "searching," your business needs to be in the room.

Being in the room doesn't mean paying off AI platforms (most of them don't take your money anyway). Being in the room means your content, your brand narrative, and the traces you've left across the web need to make AI naturally write you in when it synthesizes an answer.

SEO taught us how to fight for a spot among ten links. GEO teaches us how to get named in a single passage.

The two aren't in conflict. But the latter — most people haven't even started doing it yet.

Whoever starts first, gets remembered by AI first.

And being remembered, in the coming years, might be worth more than any ranking.

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When I sat down to write this, I looked it up: ChatGPT's weekly active users have broken 800 million, Apple has already embedded Perplexity and Claude into Safari. The $80 billion SEO industry — for the first time in decades, someone is actually taking a slice of its pie.

I'm not saying SEO is dead. I'm saying — stop staring at those ten blue links.

Your customers have already started chatting.