The world of search is changing – fast and forever. In fact, much of the change has already happened.
If you’re a B2B marketer still focused solely on Google rankings, you’re missing the new front lines of visibility: AI search assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews along with Gemini..
We call it GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation) and it’s changing how B2B buyers discover, research, and evaluate software.
This post tackles the most common (and important) questions we hear from marketers trying to get their heads around GEO. No fluff, no hype, just sharp answers grounded in what’s happening now.
What actually is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) or AI Search is the process of improving your visibility, influence, and presence inside AI powered search tools.
That includes tools like:
- ChatGPT with browsing enabled
- Perplexity (which combines LLMs with real-time search)
- Claude, Gemini, and more
- Google’s Search Generative Experience (SGE)
Unlike traditional SEO, where keyword volumes were easy to measure and rankings were static and predictable, GEO is probabilistic – every prompt gets a slightly different answer, pulled from different sources, depending on how it’s phrased and who’s asking.
We believe in a B2B marketing context, GEO is:
- Prompt driven, not keyword driven
- Built for LLMs, not legacy search engines
- A process of buyer journey orchestration across the full length of the B2B buyer journey, not just a measure of brand visibility
Is it called GEO or AIO or AEO or LLMO?
Marketers and agencies (let’s be honest, mainly agencies) are throwing all sorts of acronyms around:
- GEO = Generative Engine Optimisation
- AIO = AI Optimisation
- LLMO = Large Language Model Optimisation
- AEO = Answer Engine Optimisation (typically used in voice/search)
We use GEO because it reflects a broader truth: search has shifted to generative engines. It’s not about optimising for one tool. It’s about understanding how AI systems are generating answers, and making sure you’re present when they do.
We also feel GEO is a nice natural next iteration of SEO.
What is a GEO agency?
Think of a GEO agency like the next generation of a SEO agency. A GEO agency should help you:
- Understand how your buyers are using AI search assistants
- Track your brand’s visibility across generative tools
- Map prompts to buyer journey stages
- Influence the sources LLMs pull from
- Build content strategies optimised for prompt driven journeys
- Monitor and adapt visibility over time
At FirstMotion, we specialise in B2B software. Our methodology is built around deep audience intelligence and buyer context, prompt mining, and influence intelligence – not just guessing prompts and writing blog posts.
How does GEO differ from SEO?
At a foundational level, SEO was about rankings. GEO is about probabilities.
In SEO, you aimed to get on page one of Google. Ideally position number one. In GEO, there’s no single ranking – just the likelihood of your brand or content being surfaced in response to a prompt.
GEO is more dynamic, more contextual, and more dependent on structured data, semantic language, and trust signals from third party sources.
That said, there are plenty of areas of overlap. In some verticals we’ve seen strong correlation between ‘traditional SEO performance’ and AI search performance. And some of the ‘tactics’ we use to improve a brand’s visibility and performance in GEO will be similar to SEO.
It’s not about one or the other – it’s about understanding your customers, the tools they use to search, discover and evaluate, and shaping strategies to influence their journeys in the right way and the right time.
How does AI search or GEO change the B2B buyer journey?
It compresses it. Blurs it. Personalises it. Makes it harder to measure. But also presents lots of opportunities for B2B software brands to accelerate the sales cycle, influence it earlier and turn AI search into a channel that drives growth.
B2B buyers now use ChatGPT and Perplexity as buyer enablement co-pilots – not just top of funnel discovery tools.
GEO doesn’t just influence top of funnel. It influences:
- How buyers shortlist vendors
- What features they evaluate
- What reviews or use cases they see
- What integrations or differentiators get mentioned
- What questions they ask vendors
- How they evaluate and make a final decision
Our own framework, PromptPath™, aligns GEO strategy to the full buyer journey:
- Problem Identification
- Solution Exploration
- Requirements Building
- Supplier Evaluation
And we then map ICPs, personas and prompts to every B2B buyer journey stage using our ContextualJourney™ technology platform.
What are the best analytics tools for measuring AI visibility?
Right now, the most useful tool in our stack is Peec AI which is a purpose built analytics tool for AI prompt visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and other platforms.
We also use our own ContextualJourney™ platform for the audience intelligence, prompt mining and some of the content strategy parts of our work and to help us reverse engineer generative engine visibility success for our clients.
GEO visibility is harder to measure than SEO – but it’s possible, it’s essential, and it should be happening consistently.
What’s the most important part of a GEO strategy?
Without question, our perspective at FirstMotion is that it’s audience intelligence.
You can’t optimise for prompts if you don’t deeply understand your ICPs, personas, and buyer journey, along with some strong competitor analysis.
At FirstMotion, our ContextualJourney™ platform uses millions of B2B buyer data points, enrichment, intent data and AI to:
- Deeply understand B2B buyer pain points and goals
- Building buying units
- Understand the buyer journey
- Translates those insights into likely AI prompts (searches)
- Builds a Prompt Matrix mapped across journey stages
No prompt strategy is complete without deep, enriched buyer context – and we don’t believe it’s possible to define a winning AI search content strategy without deep audience intelligence.
Will AI tools like ChatGPT eventually overtake Google?
Maybe not entirely. But in many B2B software categories, they’re already the first stop – especially for:
- Problem framing
- Tool comparison
- Feature evaluation
- Writing RFPs or spec sheets
- Identifying possible risks/red flags
- Asking what to ask on a demo call
Think less in terms of Google vs ChatGPT. Think more in terms of parallel influence. Either way, we believe AI tools are playing an active role in the decision making unit.
GEO is already shaping decisions – and that’s only going to increase.
Is GEO just about discovery and top of funnel?
Not at all. We strongly believe AI tools are buyer enablement co-pilots across the full B2B buyer journey. We think less in easy to attribute linear funnels, and more in non-linear journeys that are complex, considered and hard to measure.
GEO can influence:
- What problems buyers prioritise
- Which tools they consider
- How they build shortlists
- What questions they ask during demos
- How confident they feel in supplier selection
That’s not top of funnel. That’s revenue impact.
Are sources like G2, Gartner, Reddit & Quora more important for GEO?
Yes, massively. At FirstMotion we’re doing lots of search into the sources that influence B2B software related search queries.
LLMs don’t just crawl your homepage. They pull trusted, cited content from:
- G2, Capterra, TrustRadius
- Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn Pulse
- Forrester, Gartner and other analyst reports
- Niche industry media sources
- Third party blogs, integrations directories, and guest posts
We call this influence intelligence – knowing which sources AI tools cite for prompts in your category, and earning visibility in those locations.
Do I need to focus on Bing for to improve visiblity in ChatGPT?
If you want to be visible in ChatGPT’s web search mode, then yes, 100%.
When ChatGPT doesn’t have a confident answer within its training data (the knowledge already built into the model), it uses Bing to search the web. If your content isn’t ranking on Bing, ChatGPT may never find it.
We cover this in detail in this post.
How do I figure out what prompts my buyers are using?
That’s the million dollar question, and the heart of GEO.
At why at FirstMotion, we start with strong audience intelligence that considers:
- Not just job titles, but buying behaviour
- Use lots of data enrichment and intent data sources
- Use AI to reverse map likely prompts by persona and journey stage
- Analyse source language from reviews, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc
- Feed all this into our Prompt Matrix for each client
It’s not about guessing or simply taking ‘SEO keywords’ and converting them easily into prompts. Prompts are much more contextual, and often much longer than a keyword.
We wrote this post exploring the type of prompts B2B software companies should think about being visible for.
How can I track clicks from AI answers in ChatGPT?
Not reliably, and that’s part of the dark funnel problem we unpack in this post.
ChatGPT often paraphrases your content without linking. It might mention your brand name, but not include a link to your site. Buyers may then search your brand separately in Google after seeing a mention. That means no attribution, no UTM, no referrer from ChatGPT – even through ChatGPT was where the discovery moment happened, or what prompted the user to come to your site.
One thing to keep an eye out for is an increase in branded searches to your site. Maybe a tool like ChatGPT is recommending your brand name, but the ‘referrer’ is still organic search because the user still has to Google you.
We’ll keep this page regularly updated with some of our most frequently asked questions about AI search and the shift from SEO to GEO – let us know if you have questions you want answering.