What is GEO? The new rules of visibility in the AI era

Search behaviour has fundamentally changed in the last two years. Users now ask 'what's the best accounting software' not to a search engine but to ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity. The AI gives one answer — and if you're not in it, you don't exist for that customer.

GEO vs SEO

SEO was a game of ranking on a results page: ten blue links, and even position three earned traffic. In GEO, an AI typically recommends 2-3 brands. You're either on that list or you're not — there is no middle ground. That makes GEO harsher than SEO, but far more rewarding when done right.

Where do AIs learn about brands?

Large language models learn about your brand from training data and web searches: Wikipedia, industry directories, review sites (G2, Trustpilot), comparison content and your own site. Without a consistent, strong presence in those sources, AI either doesn't know you or knows you wrong.

Step one: measure where you stand

Before any GEO work you need to know how AIs describe you today. That's exactly what FoundGeo does: it asks 10 real customer questions to 7 AIs, analyzes the answers and produces a single GEO score with an action plan. You can't improve what you don't measure.