After years of retooling their companies for engines like google, model and retail leaders say they’re preparing for a brand new frontier: GEO.
The time period, which implies generative engine optimization, refers to optimizing internet content material to point out up in outcomes from AI-driven search platforms, like ChatGPT or Google Gemini. It’s a brand new manner for manufacturers to face out and attain clients, particularly contemplating that practically 60% of U.S. customers have used a generative AI instrument for assist with on-line buying, per an August 2025 survey from Omnisend. If a buyer asks an AI engine about shopping for lip gloss or a T-shirt, the related manufacturers wish to ensure that they present up.
However it’s not a straightforward journey, executives conceded this week in interviews with Fashionable Retail and through panels at Shoptalk Fall in Chicago. Manufacturers and retailers have spent many years crafting their search engine marketing playbook, determining which key phrases to incorporate on product pages, blogs and extra internet content material to point out up in Google or Yahoo. Now, with GEO, platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity are pulling and rating info — oftentimes, in response to hyper-specific inquiries, moderately than one-word or two-word requests. This might even have monetary penalties for manufacturers, particularly as these brokers begin enabling checkout.
Getting forward of GEO is a brand new actuality for manufacturers, as Jose Nino, vp of world digital and e-commerce for the U.S. Polo Assn., stated throughout a panel on Wednesday. He talked about trying to find trainers on Google Search a month in the past, after which every week in the past, and getting fully totally different outcomes from the “AI mode” on the prime. With GEO, he stated, “You may bid all you need, however the Gemini responses are taking up, and also you don’t even know precisely what’s pushing that response. … Out of the blue, somebody is controlling that narrative, and also you don’t know the way they function it but. If anybody says they know precisely what’s driving it, they’re not 100% positive.”
On the similar time, GEO can also be an enormous alternative — a white area the place manufacturers are desperate to experiment. “When you’re not maintaining an eye fixed open and actually understanding what’s occurring within the GEO area, you will miss out,” Erica Randerson, chief digital officer and gm of Edible Manufacturers, stated on Thursday.
How corporations are gaming GEO
Manufacturers and retailers are taking totally different steps to get forward on the subject of agentic AI outcomes, though many acknowledged that there are lots of unknowns. As Brad Larabell, director of efficiency advertising at Each Man Jack, advised Fashionable Retail, GEO “is absolutely nonetheless in its infancy, in comparison with search engine marketing.”
Ranjeet Bhosale, vp of digital product administration at Goal, stated that “the way forward for search engine marketing isn’t just about key phrase rating.”
“The way forward for search engine marketing is to come back into GEO,” he stated throughout a panel on Thursday. “We have now to ensure we’re coaching the brokers to allow them to perceive and characterize our merchandise successfully.”
Bhosale defined that Goal now prioritizes 5 key elements with search: value, product, promotions, availability and insurance policies. It’s ensuring its web site is up to date accordingly to make this knowledge “machine readable” and prepared for AI engines to tug from — whether or not internally (by means of Goal’s brokers) or externally. “That manner, when the visitor is trying to find ‘wholesome dinner for 4, gluten-free choices, lower than $20, accessible for pickup now in Atlanta,’ the visitor is getting outcomes that are related and are in inventory of their explicit locality,” Bhosale stated.
At Edible Manufacturers, the corporate is “centered on long-term content material that helps reply questions,” Randerson stated. “Tapping into the content material our groups have already been creating, and having or not it’s rather more of a Q&A-type dialogue, we’ve discovered, actually helps by way of GEO optimization.” From a technical standpoint, she stated, Edible Manufacturers can also be ensuring metadata is “structured appropriately.”
“It’s actually essential that these brokers and generative LLMs are in a position to learn and perceive the content material [and] the worth which you could convey to customers,” Randerson stated.
At Credo Magnificence, the corporate is “nonetheless very early on” on the subject of GEO, Rebecca Armstrong, director of e-commerce at Credo Magnificence, advised Fashionable Retail. However the retailer can also be ensuring it’s staying on prime of what persons are trying to find. “Simply this morning, we noticed individuals trying to find ‘basis for olive pores and skin tones,’” she stated. “So, how will we incorporate that [into our messaging]?”
Nonetheless, she acknowledged that manufacturers can’t tweak their web sites for each sizzling search time period. “We’re small, so we will’t be updating each little factor, just for it to alter two days later.” She talked about the model desires to take “a couple of month” in between updates, because the e-commerce crew is at present made up of two individuals.
Each Man Jack is in additional of a test-and-learn part on the subject of GEO, stated Larabell. However it’s additionally taking concrete steps to have an effect on search outcomes. The model has discovered that AI LLMs are inclined to favor “real, long-tail conversations” on locations like Reddit when making suggestions, Larabell shared. So, he defined, “We’re working extra intently with our neighborhood and built-in advertising crew to ensure we will facilitate genuine conversations on these platforms to drive incremental visibility.”
Each Man Jack can also be creating content material on its web site that’s solely seen to LLMs to “perceive what the fashions search for and serve in solutions,” he stated.
Not throwing away search engine marketing
At the same time as manufacturers put together for the brand new daybreak of GEO, they’re not completely abandoning search engine marketing.
At Goal, the vast majority of clients are nonetheless utilizing “the normal one-keyword, two-keyword-based search,” Bhosale stated. Randerson stated the identical, saying, “We’re very nonetheless rooted in conventional search engine marketing.” Nino agreed that search engine marketing is “nonetheless an enormous channel.”
“Thirty to forty % [of traffic] comes from search engine marketing,” he stated.
However, retail leaders acknowledged, clients aren’t slowing down their use of instruments like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. And plenty of are literally altering their habits, in consequence, once they use extra conventional search features on retail internet pages. At Goal, “We’re seeing visitors adapting and utilizing longer queries, being extra conversational in that specific trend,” Bhosale stated.
Finally, manufacturers try to get forward of GEO, however they nonetheless have questions on the way it all works. And plenty of need additional transparency from the engines themselves.
“What’s ‘essential’ to LLMs?” stated Larabell, pointing to the unanswered questions. “What info do we have to present to them with the intention to maximize the chance for our enterprise, and the way do we offer that info?”
