I’ve been trying to make sense of how AI search engines decide what content to show. Google’s AI Overview, ChatGPT Answers, Perplexity, all of it. Not from a “formal SEO research” perspective, but more like: okay… what do I actually need to do differently now? I did a bit of digging.
The first thing that hit me: SEO isn’t dead. Everyone had a small panic attack when AI Overviews showed up, as if traditional search would disappear overnight. But almost 80% of searches still happen in the classic Google search box. GEO isn’t some replacement discipline. it’s basically SEO with an extra layer built for machines that read differently. If your old-school SEO foundation is weak, AI won’t magically rescue you. AI still depends on the same signals: relevance, quality, clarity. It just consumes them differently.
One idea from the video stuck with me more than anything: ChatGPT’s real-time browsing actually uses Bing (not 100% after GPT 4, according to ChatGPT). Meaning… if you never optimized for Bing, you basically closed the door on ChatGPT. The simplest fix is to register on Bing Webmaster Tools and submit your sitemap literally a five-minute task that ensures your site is even allowed into the ChatGPT ecosystem (Don't ignore Google Search Console). I can’t believe how many business ignore Bing entirely when it’s now one of the main highways into AI search visibility.
And then there’s the way AI “reads.” Humans like flow and narrative. AI likes structure. A lot. It doesn’t want your beautiful intro, your subtle transitions, your storytelling arc. it wants:
lists, tables, direct answers
If you phrase an H2 like a question and answer it in the first sentence, AI will almost always extract that as the “official” answer. It hates vague lead-ins. Something like “This depends on several factors…” is basically invisible to it. A table, especially, is like catnip for AI. If you put pricing, features, or comparisons into an HTML table, you’ve essentially carved a clear channel for the model to pull information straight from your site.
This made me rethink the entire way I format content. Not to pander to the machine, but because ignoring how it reads is like whispering in a room full of people shouting.
There was also a part about robots.txt that genuinely made me pause. A surprising number of websites accidentally block GPTBot, Bingbot, or even Googlebot. If you do that, all the great content in the world won’t matter—the AI literally can’t see you. The saddest kind of invisibility is the kind you create for yourself without realizing it.
The identity verification piece also resonated with me. AI systems are obsessed with figuring out whether you—or your business—are a real, trustworthy entity. It cross-checks structured data, schema markup, third-party databases… basically the entire internet. When everything matches, the model treats you as a credible source. When things are inconsistent, it downgrades you without asking.
So it actually helps to make yourself “findable”:
- Wikidata
- Crunchbase
- Google Business Profile
When the AI sees you everywhere, described the same way, it stops doubting you. It’s funny how machines work—trust is consistency.
One last trick from the video that I thought was oddly clever: lists. Not your lists. Other people’s lists. AI loves referencing “best of” and “top X tools” style articles. When someone asks “What are the best products in this category?” AI often checks public ranking pages instead of inventing answers. So getting your brand mentioned in those listicles—even without a link—creates a disproportionately strong signal. The model reads it as social proof. “If these people say you belong on the list, then you’re probably relevant.”
It’s almost like modern word-of-mouth, except the “mouth” is an LLM scraping everything you’ve ever been mentioned in.
When I zoom out and try to summarize everything I’ve learned, it all feels surprisingly simple:
- you need to be mentioned
- you need to structure content in a way AI can parse instantly
- you need to keep things fresh
- you need to make your identity machine-verifiable
- and you need to stop pretending Bing doesn’t exist
GEO is not about tricking AI. It’s about making your presence easy to understand, easy to reference, and impossible to overlook.