{"id":15041,"date":"2025-09-29T09:04:00","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T07:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/uncategorized\/geo-the-new-era-of-seo\/"},"modified":"2025-10-06T10:28:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T08:28:59","slug":"geo-the-new-era-of-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haimagazine.com\/en\/it-and-technology\/geo-the-new-era-of-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"\ud83d\udd12 GEO: the new era of SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

We, SEO specialists, like to say that we operate in the most dynamic industry in the world. There’s always something changing: a new Google update, new ranking factors, or yet another “death of SEO” that the industry press announces every few months. We proudly took up the challenge and checked the veracity of Google experts. But then came a time when these changes started to seem like a walk in the park. That moment was the entrance of AI into the world of search engines. Now we’re slowly reaching a point where we’re even redefining the foundations of our actions, like the fact that in SEO, we’re no longer just fighting for traffic, but also for “mentions”.<\/p>

What is GEO?<\/h4>

As you might have guessed, the GEO mentioned in the title is nothing but generative engine optimization. Instead of returning a traditional list of links, these engines can independently construct answers. This isn’t just another algorithm trick or a cosmetic change in how results look, as there’s a fundamental difference: users get a ready summary, not a catalog of sources.<\/p>

You can also come across different names for this phenomenon. For instance, people often talk about AEO (AI Engine Optimization). But all these terms are trying to capture the same trend \u2014 optimizing content not just for the classic Google ranking algorithms, but also for language models that respond directly to the user.<\/p>

There are different smart-sounding acronyms, sometimes more marketing-oriented, sometimes more technical, but they boil down to the same: our content needs to be visible and serve as a base for AI-generated responses so that it’s eventually cited as a source or recommended site. SEO experts will stop worrying about traffic as a KPI and focus strictly on conversions.<\/p>

A chance to break Google’s dominance<\/h4>

From the start, AI smelled like a chance to break Google’s monopoly among search engines. The first steps in this direction were made by Bing, which \u2014 to many’s surprise \u2014 actually got ahead of Google this time. Sadly, their integration of AI search results from 2023 didn’t lead to a spectacular success \u2014 Bing’s market share in search engines only grew from 3% to nearly 4%. Soon after, AIO (AI Overviews) emerged, offering generative responses from the Mountain View giant. Its first version quickly went viral with memes. The issue was feeding the AI content from Reddit, which resulted in advice like: “if the cheese falls off your pizza, glue it back on.” Google’s delayed start on AI work and the poor first version merely caused them a bit of a hiccup, as their market share in search engines dropped from 93% to 89.9%!<\/p>

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Source: https:\/\/gs.statcounter.com\/search-engine-market-share<\/a>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Google has indeed done its homework, and today we’re dealing with a much more mature form of AIO that is actually starting to change the way we use the search engine (although it’s still not infallible \u2014 see the image below). Meanwhile, Perplexity, which I’m a big fan of, has made a strong entrance, showing that new players can also attract users’ attention.<\/p>

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Source: https:\/\/google.com<\/a>\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Yet, the biggest competitor in this race for Google might turn out to be ChatGPT. Although it’s not a typical search engine, it allows for searching information online and providing sources in the responses. This leads many people to switch from traditional search engines to the OpenAI tool, as confirmed by SimilarWeb studies<\/mark><\/a>, showing a 25-fold increase in visits to news sites from January to May 2025 compared to the same period in the previous year.<\/p>

Stages of information search<\/h4>

Here we’re touch on a key issue \u2014 how the way users search for information is changing. The previous search lifecycle was simple: we’d type short phrases into Google, click one of the top results, and browse the pages for answers. Today, the process looks a bit different.<\/p>

Stage 1: change in the way we search<\/strong><\/p>

Until recently, short, specific phrases like \u201cgravel bikes\u201d<\/em> or \u201cwomen’s running shoes\u201d<\/em> dominated Google. That’s how SEO worked \u2014 the content had to match brief queries, and SEO experts competed in analyzing key phrases and their variants. However, the arrival of ChatGPT and similar tools has led us to start typing into the search engine the way we talk to a person. Users no longer just type a keyword, but formulate full natural sentences: \u201cWhat kind of gravel bike is good for off-road riding? I’m mainly looking for comfortable products\u201d<\/em>.<\/p>

Stage 2: change in the search results structure<\/strong><\/p>

Next, after typing a query into the search engine, we were used to a list of sites with content tailored to our query. There were also ads, knowledge graphs or maps next to some of them.<\/p>

Today, whether on search result pages or in ChatGPT responses, we often first see a detailed answer generated by AI \u2014 graphically highlighted, taking up quite a bit of space and catching our attention. On Google, the ad section appears just below it, and then, much lower down, the first organic results.<\/p>

This is a huge change in the structure of the results themselves. A page that looked somewhat similar for years has suddenly gained a new hierarchy: the AI summary is now the most important part. Users no longer start with a list of links, but with an answer that Google serves up in a central spot. This means the battle for attention has moved to a whole new level, even though Google had been trying to answer in search results through direct answer boxes for quite some time.<\/p>

Stage 3: change in the way we consume information<\/strong><\/p>

Here we’re currently dealing with 2 types of behaviors:<\/p>