Most likely, the person who asked you doesn’t actually know what GEO is. Let’s say it’s a senior board member, so we’re all visualizing the same person, hearing the same intonation. They heard about it at an event, or maybe they saw people squabbling about it on the LinkedIn echo chamber, so now they know just enough to know it’s important, but not enough to speak to it with any level of confidence.

Which puts you in an interesting spot. Because maybe you don’t know either. Maybe you’ve told yourself you’ll dig into it when you have time.

Well, now you’re here. And I’ll guide you through it. After you read this, you’re going to sound super duper smart the next time you’re asked about GEO.

What is GEO?

Definitionally, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of optimizing your content and digital presence so that AI-powered search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google’s AI Overviews) surface, cite and synthesize your brand when generating responses to user queries.

In human speak, GEO is SEO for AI tools.

It’s possible you’ve heard the term AIO (Artificial Intelligence Optimization), which is the same thing as GEO. Neither are creatively named, but the consensus seems to be that GEO is what we’re going with. As you see in the Google Trends report below, GEO (shown in red) has won the title.

Whereas SEO earns you a position in a ranked list of links, GEO earns you a mention inside the actual answer a person reads within their AI tool of choice.

Instead of a blue underline or a click of a link, your brand is woven into the response as a credible source, or not woven in at all. A growing number of organizations are in the second category and haven’t figured that out yet.

Where Did GEO Come From?

GEO didn’t emerge from a clever agency rebrand or a LinkedIn thought leader in need of content. It emerged from a real and disorienting gap that SEO practitioners began to notice as AI search tools matured and spread.

As ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s generative features began handling a serious volume of informational queries, marketers and SEOs found themselves confronting an uncomfortable reality: strong organic rankings weren’t translating into visibility in AI-generated responses.

A brand could hold a dominant position on page one of Google for a competitive keyword and still be completely absent from the AI answer a prospective customer received about that same category. The usual playbook wasn’t covering the new field.

Researchers at Princeton, Georgia Tech, and IIT Delhi were among the first to formalize what practitioners were already sensing in the field, publishing rigorous academic work that coined the term and began mapping the specific content signals that influence AI citation behavior. The terminology stuck, outlasting the aforementioned AIO, and the practitioner community organized around it, and GEO has been developing as a distinct discipline ever since.

GEO vs. SEO: What’s the Difference?

SEO and GEO share enough surface-level vocabulary that it’s easy to assume they’re the same mannequin, simply sporting different fits. While they’re related disciplines, they possess meaningfully different mechanics, objectives, and success metrics.

SEO optimizes for ranking algorithms that evaluate pages and return an ordered list of results. The user sees that list and decides where to click. GEO optimizes for generative AI systems that read across many sources, synthesize a response, and hand the user an answer. The user reads that answer, often without visiting any website at all. In SEO, winning means a position. In GEO, winning means inclusion in the output.

The practical takeaway is that strategic SEO remains a worthwhile investment and builds real infrastructure that GEO strategy can extend. But organizations treating these disciplines as interchangeable are optimizing for a version of search that handles a shrinking share of the queries that matter most.

Getting back to my hypothetical in the introduction, whoever asked you about GEO is right. You need to have a plan, and that plan cannot be a carbon copy of your SEO strategy.

How Generative Engines Work

Generative AI search tools are trained on vast heaps of text scraped from across the internet. Through that training, they develop a dense web of associations between concepts, entities, claims, and sources. When a user submits a query, the model draws on those learned associations and, increasingly, on live retrieval from current web sources, to synthesize a coherent and authoritative-sounding response. This is why, instead of a list, a user gets an answer.

Take a look at the image above. The same search, one on Google. The other on ChatGPT.

Now here comes the somewhat frustrating part. What determines whose content gets pulled into that answer? We don’t know for certain.

AI tools are less forthcoming with their, for lack of a better phrase, ranking factors than search engines like Google and Yahoo are.

We do know that a combination of impact, answer structure, authority, and citation density is preferred by the tools. However, that knowledge has been gleaned largely by researchers, and not from the engineers of the tools themselves.

This is a marked difference from SEO where Google engineers would regularly provide guidance to SEO practitioners.

Why GEO Matters Right Now

ChatGPT crossed 100 million users faster than any consumer product in recorded history, reaching that milestone in two months. Instagram needed two and a half years. It took Gmail over 5 years. The growth curve of AI search adoption is truly unprecedented. It is, at once, tremendously exciting and horrifying.

A large and growing share of informational queries, the kind that move prospective customers through awareness and into consideration, are now being answered directly by AI tools. Users get a synthesized response and often go no further.

That means a company can maintain a strong, carefully tended organic search presence and still be invisible to a meaningful portion of the audience that matters most to them, simply because their content isn’t being surfaced in AI-generated answers. Scary!

AI tools develop persistent associations between brands and categories over time, as citations reinforce familiarity, which in turn drives further citations. Getting into those patterns early, before a category’s default sources are calcified, is a genuinely time-sensitive advantage – much in the same way that organizations that adopted SEO early still dominate rankings today. 

How to Optimize for GEO

Now you know what GEO is. You have a basic understanding of how it works and how it differs from SEO. You know why it’s important. Now lets get into actionable steps you can take.

1. Start by auditing your existing content for citability

Pull up your highest-value pages and read them with a specific question in mind: does this page make a clear, quotable claim, and is that claim findable within the first two paragraphs? Pages that bury their value proposition under extended setup are the first candidates for revision.

2. Map your content to the questions your audience is actually asking AI tools.

AnswerThePublic, Reddit threads in relevant communities, and direct customer research are all useful here. The goal is to understand the specific, conversational questions your audience is typing into ChatGPT and Perplexity, then build content that answers those questions with genuine depth and specificity.

Another tool is Trakkr, which provides you with some insight into how you’re currently showing up in AI tools. 

3. Establish named, credentialed authorship across your content.

Every substantive piece should carry a named author whose expertise is verifiable and documented externally, on LinkedIn, in published bylines, in speaking appearances, and in press coverage. AI systems factor author authority into citation decisions, and anonymous or generic corporate content loses that signal entirely.

Actively build your off-site footprint. Pitch bylines to credible trade publications and legacy media. Pursue earned media coverage that mentions your organization and your people by name. Seek out podcast appearances, speaking engagements, and partnership content that generate third-party references to your brand. The goal is a diverse, credible web of external mentions that corroborates your own content.

Build an AI presence monitoring practice. Run your most important queries in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews on a regular schedule. Track when your brand is cited, when it isn’t, and which competitors are appearing in your place. Without this feedback loop, you have no way to know whether your investments are working.

Who Needs to Care About GEO

Is GEO relevant to your organization? Most agencies will tell you YES! But in reality, it’s not as important to some organizations as it is to others. It all depends on your buyers’ activity.

The single most useful question to ask is: Does my buyer use search, or something that behaves like search, to research before they make a decision? If the answer is yes, GEO deserves serious attention. If the answer is no or sometimes, it should sit lower on the priority list than the people trying to sell you GEO retainers would prefer.

Organizations that should prioritize GEO now:

Professional services firms, B2B software, and SaaS companies must have a GEO plan. Their prospective buyers shop for their solutions in a comparative manner. Being cited as a credible voice in your category before a buyer ever hits your website is a real and meaningful advantage.

Consumer brands in considered-purchase categories (home improvement, financial products, health and wellness, insurance, higher education) also have strong GEO incentives. These are purchases where buyers spend real time gathering information, and AI tools are increasingly where that process starts.

Content-driven media organizations and publishers have an obvious stake. Being cited is, in many ways, the new being read.

Organizations where GEO is a lower priority:

Local service businesses with hyperlocal demand (plumbers, dentists, dry cleaners) operate in a world where Google Maps and direct referrals still dominate discovery. GEO is unlikely to move the needle for them in the near term.

Businesses driven almost entirely by word-of-mouth and relationship sales, certain enterprise deals, niche professional networks, and family-owned distributors have buyer journeys that don’t run through search of any kind. No amount of AI citation optimization changes that.

Commodity e-commerce competing on price and speed is also a weak fit. When the decision is “who has this item cheapest and fastest,” the buyer isn’t consulting an AI for a synthesized answer about brand authority. They’re checking price and shipping timeline.

The underlying logic is consistent: GEO is valuable in direct proportion to how much your buyer’s decision-making process involves open-ended research. The more research-dependent the journey, the higher the return on getting in front of it.

Go Sound Smart

You now know what GEO is, where it came from, how it works, and what to do about it. That is more than most people in your building can say.

When the board member asks again, you won’t be nodding along, hoping the conversation ends. You’ll have something real to say.

Tunheim works with organizations just like yours. If you want to talk through what a GEO strategy looks like for your brand, let’s get into it.

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There’s a certain myth around the “breakthrough idea” — the kind of concept that reinvents a product, captures the imagination of a market, or creates something entirely new. We treat it like lightning: random, rare, and impossible to harness. But the truth is, real breakthroughs — the kind that move companies forward and shift customer expectations — don’t come from luck.

They come from process.

Why Breakthroughs Matter Now More Than Ever

The cost of sameness is getting higher. In every sector, from consumer retail to B2B services, audiences are bombarded by messages that blend together. Standing out isn’t just a marketing challenge — it’s an existential one.

Breakthrough ideas are how brands get unstuck. They capture attention, redefine categories, and invite people to see a future they hadn’t imagined. But they only work when they’re grounded in something more meaningful than a clever stunt.

Breakthrough Is a Brand Strategy, Not a Tactic

Here’s the first principle: breakthrough ideas aren’t standalone tactics — they’re manifestations of your brand’s mission, vision, and positioning.

They emerge from clarity. Clarity about what you stand for, the future you’re building toward, and how you’re different from everyone else in your category.

When we’ve helped companies in retail and B2B services unlock breakthrough ideas, it always starts with this internal alignment. If you don’t know your long idea — your unique and bold view of the future — you’re not ready to break through.

Tunheim’s Breakthrough Method: A Process that Works

Here’s the framework we use and adapt:

1. Define Breakthrough for You
   Breakthrough must align with your brand’s positioning — not just a new idea, but a bold expression of your core purpose. It should be recognizable as you even if it’s something you’ve never done before.
2. Share Your Particular Future
   Great brands don’t just respond to trends — they define them. Be willing to articulate the future you believe in, even if Wall Street isn’t ready to put it on a calendar. Whether it’s the future of sleep or the transformation of care delivery, that future becomes the foundation for ideas with impact.
3. Leverage Your Differentiators
   You likely already have the ingredients. Your tech. Your data. Your insights about customers or the market. These are your competitive advantages — but only if you use them to craft ideas no one else could credibly execute.
4. Address What Customers Really Care About
   Every sector has its burning issues — the problems your audience wakes up thinking about. Use your research and insights to address those head-on. That’s where breakthrough ideas resonate most deeply.
5. Use What You’ve Already Got
   Breakthroughs don’t need new budgets or blank slates. They need new thinking applied to existing platforms. One retail client built a high-impact activation campaign by reimagining how to use their store footprint during the holidays. A B2B firm developed an award concept that turned client partnerships into category leadership.
6. Find the Right Tone and Voice
   Even the best idea will fall flat if it sounds generic. The tone of your breakthrough should surprise, delight, or provoke — whatever matches the essence of your brand. But it must cut through.
7. Measure and Refine
   Not every idea hits. That’s okay. Breakthrough organizations treat innovation like a lab: test, measure, learn, and try again. Over time, this becomes a muscle — and a strategic advantage.

It’s Not Just About One Idea, It’s About Building a Machine.

The goal isn’t to have a breakthrough. It’s to build an organization that can generate and sustain them. That means establishing a process, creating the conditions for creativity, and empowering teams to think beyond what’s easy or safe.

Done right, breakthrough becomes part of the culture — and the brand.

Breakthrough is Not Magic, It’s Method

And it starts by asking better questions — not “what’s a big idea?” but “what’s our big idea?” and “what does our future demand?”

When you can answer that, the breakthroughs begin.

Curious what a breakthrough process looks like for your organization? We would love to show you.

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Imagine a nonprofit rolling out a bold new mission at an upcoming press conference. The CEO’s speech is polished, her hair looks great, the deck sparkles, reporters tweet sound bites about innovation and the potential impact.

Meanwhile, back in the office, a project manager sends a Slack message to their marketing colleague: “Did anyone know we were doing this?”

Silence. A few confused GIFs ensue. 

Same brand, two stories. Whether you’re a bootstrapped nonprofit, a growing consumer product brand, or an established Fortune 500 company, if you don’t tackle this misalignment head-on, the difference will trickle out into the world and in front of your target audience.

Brand alignment is not marketing fluff. It is the connective tissue between the promises you make in public and the values you live by internally. Let that tissue tear and watch engagement sag, decisions bog down, and reputation wobble.

Why Inside-Outside Alignment Pays Off

Employees Are Your First Storytellers

A Gallup study revealed that only one in four employees feels plugged into their organization’s purpose. If staff cannot explain why you exist, they will not be able to defend you when questions arise with your audience.

How can you determine the level of engagement your team has with your organizational vision? Try an employee survey that has them answer questions in their own words. 

Stakeholders Will Spot the Gaps

Customers, donors, and journalists cross-reference everything. When your website says one thing and frontline teams mumble another, your credibility drops in real time.

Your organization can correct this misalignment by having messaging and positioning crafted and made available to your entire team. Not sure where to start with that? We can help.

Misalignment Slows Progress to a Crawl

The progress of any project stalls when people argue over what the brand really stands for. Anyone who has been involved with a website refresh project can attest. 

Shared language shortens approval cycles and puts campaigns back on rails, chugging along to the next station. 

Three Alignment Checks You Can Run This Week

Okay, so by now, you may have discovered that you might have an issue. Here are a few quick checks you can do to help pinpoint the alignment problems.

1. Leadership Narrative Check
Ask each senior leader to write a 30-word purpose statement. If you get more than two versions, block time for a leadership messaging session. Consistency starts at the top and trickles down.

2. Employee Understanding Check
This one is similar to our earlier recommendation to conduct an employee survey, but it is more active and can be fun. 

At the next all-hands meeting, select three employees from different teams and ask them to describe the brand in their own words. Wide variation is a warning light. If there is misalignment, this exercise also highlights the importance of alignment to your team. 

3. Channel Consistency Check
Scroll through your latest social posts, press releases, job descriptions, and earned media headlines. Make note of buzzwords or claims that surface in only one place. Tailor to the audience, yes, but keep the core promise the same.

Quick-Win Checklist

1. Compare your website’s “About” section to your employee onboarding deck. Rewrite whichever is weaker.
   
2. Replace jargon with verbs real people use. If it would not land at a backyard cookout, cut it.
   
3. Start every campaign brief with a one-sentence brand promise. Make it the ruler for creative review.
   
4. Share small wins across teams. The more sales hears HR language and HR hears the customer’s voice, the faster the messages converge.
   
5. Appoint a “message steward” for the quarter. Empower them to flag drift and suggest fixes.

Clarity inside fuels credibility outside. If the echo in your hallways sounds off-key, we can help you get it tuned in. Get in touch with us today.

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As you gather your team together to hash out the details of your 2023 plan, here are some things to consider as you evaluate digital marketing’s role.

6 Digital Marketing Considerations For 2023 Planning

1. Virtual or Hybrid Event(s)? Dual Planning for Event Marketing

Last year marked a return to mostly masklesness and a return, at least in part, to in-person gatherings. But confidence in face-to-face events is not universal and who knows what viral varients may disrupt in-person plans? 

And despite having mostly emerged from the COVID pandemic, there is still plenty of expectation that events offer virtual options for attendance.

You know how to plan traditional events but this uncertainty calls for dual-track planning. If you haven’t yet hosted a virtual event, these are some things you’ll want to think through. 

The virtual event tool you need will depend upon the type of event you plan to host.

If you are planning a smallish (100 or fewer attendees) event or a typical webinar, there are plenty of easy-to-use options, including Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Zoom.

If you are planning a larger event such as a conference and therefore need additional features, you’ll want to look beyond basic video conferencing to review proper virtual event tools, such as AirMeet or Hopin.

These platforms provide features for hosting hybrid as well as fully virtual events. In addition to conference sessions, they allow you to create virtual sponsor booths, networking tables and even one-on-one networking opportunities. They handle registration, ticketing and offer event analytics.

When reviewing your options, you’ll want to ask about day-of event support offered, the technology required of participants, and most importantly, how the matching algorithm works for one-on-one networking.

Networking is typically the weakest link for these platforms, so you’ll want to give a lot of thought to ensure participants enjoy a positive networking experience. If you’re not convinced the one-on-one networking feature will provide good matches, you might want to forego that feature.

For virtual networking tables, you’ll want to ensure each table includes a skilled moderator and conversationalist.

Finally, you’ll need to thoroughly prep your speakers to ensure their technology works, they know how to use the platform, and that their lighting, sound and background are acceptable.

2. Leverage Public Relations

Get as much mileage out of your public relations efforts as possible. 

If you are participating in events, look for additional opportunities to get exposure for your efforts. Consider creating mini-interviews of your event speakers to use as teaser videos to use online.

Promote your earned media hits on your social channels and be sure to tag the outlets and reporters involved in the coverage. Use social advertising to raise visibility for your coverage among select, strategic audiences. 

Conduct keyword research and have an SEO expert optimize your press releases for the greatest reach. Ask the media you are working with for links to boost your search visibility. 

3. Flexible Advertising Budgets

Digital advertising is in flux. The demise of third party cookies, Apple’s move to enforce stricter privacy measures on its devices, much greater reliance on machine learning, and societal and political pressure on the social channels have decreased the effectiveness of advertising tactics that worked in the past. 

How, then, to prepare for all this turmoil? 

Set budgets for your preferred channels but be prepared to use alternate channels and expect to be nimble enough to adjust allocations on the fly.

Amidst all this change, there is no time better than the present to set aside a percentage of your budget for testing.

4. Dip Your Toes In The Water

Speaking of testing, it’s not a bad idea to start experimenting with channels you have yet to use. 

The turmoil currently roiling Twitter has created an opening to compete for disaffected users with the likes of Mastodon, CounterSocial, Post and Spoutible attracting those fleeing the Elon Musk version of Twitter.

Audiences appear to be fragmenting, so it would be wise to explore these new channels to see if they are a fit. If they are, it is typically far easier to build a community on a new channel than doing it from scratch on an existing channel.

Podcasting has been around since the early 2000s but it has yet to be widely adopted as a business marketing tool, despite its obvious advantages. Podcasting addresses many business needs, including: 

• Reach,
• Engagement,
• Expert positioning 
• Business development,
• Content development, and 
• Search engine optimization.

TikTok has not been around for nearly as long as podcasting but its growth has been explosive and it is an obvious tool for consumer-focused brands. It has even provided glimpses of utility for B2B brands.

Reddit has become much more brand-friendly of late and Quora could be a really smart niche play for specific purposes. 

If your organization relies on messaging with your audiences via automated dialog systems such as those offered by Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp or even smart speakers like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, there are vast opportunities that have been largely left untapped by the market.

Though it’s early, the Oculus headset promises to finally deliver a virtual reality experience that can have broad public appeal. If it fits your organization’s objectives, exploring VR development or at a lower level, simple 360 video could make a lot of sense to reach Oculus headset owners.  

Speaking of gaming, Twitch is a massive platform that has largely gone under the radar as a marketing tool. 

On the advertising front, streaming audio platforms such as Spotify, Pandora, and even now YouTube, are offering self-serve audio advertising options that are worth exploring. 

Even over-the-top streaming video platforms are beginning to open up, with Hulu providing a self-serve advertising service that warrants attention. 

5. Re-assess Your Tactics & Metrics

The turmoil that is effecting the digital media giants is also affecting many of the tactics and KPIs digital marketers have previously relied upon.  

Facebook’s well-documented troubles have forced the social media giant to severely restrict its advertising targeting capabilities. Gone are the days when plowing budget into Facebook advertising was a sure-fire way of returning rich results at low-cost. 

Apple, meanwhile, has been positioning itself as the defender of privacy while quietly building out its own advertising platform. 

Two power plays illustrate Apple’s positioning:

1. The company now requires third-party apps to ask their app users to opt into tracking and
2. The implementation of Apple’s “Mail Privacy Protection.” 

The obvious result of asking people to opt into letting apps track their behavior is that they will say no. That very requirement essentially eliminates a rich dataset app developers have relied upon. 

Facebook used that data to enable its hyper-targeting of advertising. 

Apple’s “Mail Privacy Protection” essentially replaces the third party pixels that email marketing providers have used to measure open rates with its own pixels. Apple also runs email received via an Apple mail app through the company’s own servers, thus disguising IP addresses. 

The end result is that any email sent to an Apple mail app user will be counted as an open, regardless of whether or not the recipient actually opened the email. 100% open rates renders that metric meaningless. 

Given all these changes, 2023 is a good time to re-examine long-standing digital tactics and re-assess the metrics and key performance indicators you have tracked in the past. 

For example, any email automation programs that rely on opens as triggers are likely breaking right now. What can you do to replace opens as a triggering signal?

6. Gather Your Data

To date, marketers have relied heavily on third party platforms and their data to achieve objectives. 

It has always been important to use third party platforms such as social media and search to drive audience acquisition. If you’re playing only on TikTok or Facebook or LinkedIn, you’re leasing their audience and subjecting yourself to the whims of their algorithms. 

Once you have your audience’s email address or phone number, you have a direct relationship that is no longer dependent upon a third party intermediator. 

Given the loss of access to third party data, it is increasingly important to view these direct relationships in terms of the data they generate. 

Start with the basics of website, email and call data you currently possess. From there, think through what additional insights you can gain, and what systems you have in place to take advantage of that data. 

If the past several years have done anything, they have at least helped us to acclimate to change and uncertainty. Virtual conferences were an idea that seemed to have died in 2009 and who had even heard of Zoom in 2019?

As we say sayonara to 2022, we can hope for a calmer, more stable 2023. But even so, opportunities arise within the chaos of change…if you can recognize and are nimble enough to capitalize on those opportunities. 

At Tunheim, we are happy to help you think through the change. Contact us today to get started. 

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