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From SEO to GEO: how do you stay visible when customers search via AI?

Imag­ine a poten­tial cus­tomer has a prob­lem. They used to open Google, type in a few key­words, and click through the first results. Today, that same per­son increas­ing­ly just asks Chat­G­PT, Gem­i­ni, or Per­plex­i­ty a ques­tion. No list of links, just one direct answer. Which rais­es the ques­tion: does your brand show up in that answer?

13 August 2026

What changes when customers search via AI instead of Google?

“It used to be the Googles and the Bings of the world where search engines were used,” says Lieselot, man­ag­ing part­ner at Fluo, the mar­ket­ing agency with­in the Hype­r­i­on ecosys­tem. ​“What we’re see­ing now is that this wave has been build­ing for a while: peo­ple are using all the LLMs, so Gem­i­ni, Per­plex­i­ty, and oth­er tools, to get infor­ma­tion from the mar­ket. It’s already hap­pen­ing with­in search engines too. Google’s AI mode is almost built right into that search engine now.”

That’s more than a tech­ni­cal detail. It changes what it means to be ​“found.” No longer rank­ing in a list, but sur­fac­ing in the answer to the ques­tion some­one is asking.

Why does a brand mention matter more than a link?

For years, online vis­i­bil­i­ty large­ly revolved around back­links: oth­er web­sites refer­ring to yours. Accord­ing to Lieselot, that focus is shift­ing. ​“What we’re see­ing now is that those links aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need­ed any­more. It’s about the brand being men­tioned. It does­n’t have to be about links any­more, it’s sim­ply about the fact: is my brand men­tioned, and how?”

That could be media cov­er­age, but just as eas­i­ly a pos­i­tive men­tion with­in a niche com­mu­ni­ty or on a forum. For AI sys­tems, every place where your brand is men­tioned con­sis­tent­ly and favor­ably feeds into the pic­ture they build of you.

The propo­si­tion itself also needs to be clear. Claim­ing too many dif­fer­ent direc­tions at once does­n’t just con­fuse your tar­get audi­ence, it also con­fus­es the AI sys­tems that need to deter­mine, based on those sig­nals, exact­ly what a brand is good at.

Does this mean the end of SEO?

No, and that’s a mis­con­cep­tion Lieselot explic­it­ly warns against. Gen­er­a­tive Engine Opti­miza­tion, or GEO, is about opti­miz­ing your mar­ket­ing for AI sys­tems and AI search. But the foun­da­tion stays the same as always: a tech­ni­cal­ly sound web­site that’s crawlable and index­able, and con­tent that match­es what your audi­ence is actu­al­ly search­ing for.

If you ever heard someone say we should stop doing SEO and put everything into GEO, that wouldn’t really be useful. GEO builds on top of SEO, it doesn’t replace it.

Lieselot Huysman managing partner @ Fluo

How do you approach this practically, without getting lost in frameworks?

When GEO was still new ter­ri­to­ry, a wave of big the­o­ries and ready-made step-by-step plans imme­di­ate­ly appeared. Lieselot delib­er­ate­ly kept her dis­tance from that. Fluo prefers to start with a con­crete sta­tus quo: how is a brand already per­form­ing with­in AI answers today, and where are the gaps com­pared to competitors.

That’s how the project with itsme came about. itsme is most­ly known as a con­sumer app, but also has a sig­nif­i­cant B2B pres­ence. The project start­ed in Novem­ber 2025 as a clas­sic SEO project, but quick­ly grew into a com­bined SEO and GEO approach: where does a brand need more pres­ence out­side its own web­site, which chan­nels like LinkedIn or YouTube deserve more atten­tion, and how is the propo­si­tion told con­sis­tent­ly everywhere.

That approach, first look­ing at where an orga­ni­za­tion stands today, only then defin­ing a strat­e­gy in con­sul­ta­tion with the client, turns out to be the most acces­si­ble way for many orga­ni­za­tions to get start­ed. No heavy upfront research need­ed to already get a first, con­crete pic­ture of where the oppor­tu­ni­ties lie.

The next ques­tion is no longer whether AI search affects your mar­ket­ing, but how quick­ly you respond to it. Who­ev­er gets their propo­si­tion and men­tions in order today has a say in how they show up in AI sys­tems’ answers tomorrow.

Want to take the step together?

Reach out to us, and let’s explore how we can build future-proof solu­tions togeth­er. We’re just a mes­sage away!

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