Sverre works with AI, technology and digital trends at Frontkom. GEO is something he follows closely, and something he believes most organisations are still dangerously underestimating.
In the first five months of 2025, traffic from AI tools to commercial websites grew by 527 percent year over year. That is not an interesting statistic. It is a signal that something fundamental is changing in how people find information and make decisions.
And for the vast majority of organisations, the strategic response to this shift has not yet been formulated.
What is GEO?
GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization, and it is the practice of optimising content so that it is cited or recommended by AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude when someone asks a question in your category.
The term was formalised by researchers at Princeton University in 2024 and is now a rapidly growing field. The core question is: when someone asks an AI model something in your industry, is your organisation part of the answer?
Traditional SEO is about ranking highly in Google results and getting clicks. GEO is about something different: being cited in the answer. SEO gets you clicked. GEO gets you cited.
Why this shift is happening now
ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users as of 2026. Perplexity processed 780 million queries in May 2025 alone. Google AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries at the top of Google search results, now appear in between 15 and 60 percent of all searches, depending on category.
Gartner estimates that traditional search volume will fall by 25 percent by 2026 as users shift to AI-based answers. This is not a trend that is about to happen. It is happening.
For organisations investing heavily in SEO but not in GEO, this is a problem that is already affecting their visibility, even if they cannot yet see it in Analytics.
What separates GEO from traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO rewards content that ranks highly based on keywords, backlinks and technical factors. GEO operates on different signals:
- Authority and credibility. AI models prioritise content from sources they consider reliable. This is built through consistent, fact-based and well-structured content over time.
- Direct answers. Content that clearly and precisely answers a question within the first 40 to 60 words is cited far more frequently than content that circles around the topic.
- Structure and readability. Clear headings, defined sections and FAQ formats make it easier for AI models to extract and cite relevant information.
- Statistics and specific data. Research from the Princeton study that formalised the GEO concept shows that content with specific numbers and statistics receives up to 40 percent higher visibility in AI-generated answers.
What this means for your organisation
GEO is not a replacement for SEO. It is a necessary addition. Both matter, and they share some fundamental principles: high-quality, authoritative content is the foundation for both.
But GEO also requires something extra: content structured to give AI models fast, precise and citable answers. That means FAQ sections, clear definitions, concrete statistics and authoritative sources matter more than before.
At Frontkom we have started integrating the GEO perspective into all content work we do for clients. We evaluate whether content is structured to be cited, not just to be clicked on.
Want to know how visible your organisation is in AI-driven searches, and what the concrete steps are to improve it? Get in touch with Sverre for a review.
