Does Cityline Websites do GEO?
A good client asked me today about GEO.
QUESTION: "A friend of mine is doing a lot of AI optimization work and taking a course right now and she was learning a lot about GEO. Have you heard of this? Do you know how to get this done?"
Below is my answer
Yes, we help optimize our marketing clients for AI.
GEO is the essentially the same as AIO. Both are a continuation of SEO.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) started off by ranking according to how many times you had a word or a phrase on a page. Companies would have pages of white text on white backgrounds to do well in the search engines (a bunch of private companies, eventually to be dominated by Google).
As time went on, Google became better at figuring out really what people were wanting – resulting in a more relevant list of websites when they did a search.
Fast-forward a decade or 2: Google (and Bing) started adding maps, shopping results, and other tidbits of information on top of the list of search results
People started asking questions (eg “What do I feed my hamster if he wont eat pellets” instead of just “pet stores”)
Some of this extra info included coloured boxes with an additional summary, “you might also” boxes, or “People Also Ask” sections. This was the start of AI results. Google was predicting what you really wanted to know and summarizing this information without having to read a web page.
Now, AI is everywhere. It has been built on the evolution of standard searches. If a company has good SEO, they are 80% of the way to doing well in the AI results. Where I think AIO / GEO is different is that for the other 20%, the AI results put more weight on reviews and 3rd party lists / sites more than traditional search engines do. THIS MAY CHANGE. We are still in beginning days as to what priorities the AI engines put on what factors (eg what review sites they use, who they trust, etc).
Currently the vast majority of people still use Google search results for finding a product or service. However, this is changing.
I just asked Gemini what fraction of people use AI before buying a product or service online:
Answer: Roughly 4 in 10 people now use AI to research and discover products, but nearly 9 in 10 still rely on standard Google Search or Amazon to make the final transaction.
To answer your question, Cityline Websites is heavily into optimizing for AI. We have been doing this since Google first started coming out with their tweaks to the search results page. It is part of our standard online marketing package. Good AIO / GEO must include traditional optimization. Good SEO must include new techniques to be found by the AI engines.
If you are interested in our AI expertise, you can read our AI Optimization blog articles: