Or: How we accidentally discovered our client was losing 67% of their pipeline to an invisible competitor
Three months ago, we sat in a boardroom with the CMO of a Series B fintech. Their SEO was immaculate: position #2 for their main keyword, 40% YoY organic growth, conversion rates that made their investors smile.
Then we asked them to open ChatGPT.
"Ask it to recommend solutions in your category," we said.
The result? Their top three competitors appeared. They didn't.
We ran the same query in Perplexity. Different competitors showed up. Still no mention of our client.
Claude? Same story, different cast.
This CMO was winning at SEO while losing at discoverability. And they had no idea it was happening.
The game changed while we were optimizing meta descriptions.
Here's what nobody wants to admit: we're all still playing by 2019's rules in 2025's game.
While marketing teams obsess over ranking #1 on Google, their potential customers are having full conversations with AI that never mention their brand. The data is staggering: 90% of B2B buyers now use AI tools in their research process. Yet when we audit companies, only 14% consistently appear in AI-generated recommendations.
The math is simple and brutal: you're invisible to 86% of the market's new discovery behavior.
Think about that. You could rank #1 for every keyword in your category and still lose deals to competitors who show up in ChatGPT's answers. It's like dominating the Yellow Pages in 2010: impressive, but increasingly irrelevant.
Traditional search was built on links, but AI search is built on language.
That's not just a poetic distinction. It fundamentally changes how visibility works.
SEO taught us to think in keywords and pages. But when someone asks ChatGPT, "What's the best solution for managing remote engineering teams?" they're not searching for keywords. They're having a conversation. And that conversation pulls from an entirely different data architecture than Google's PageRank algorithm.
The shift is already massive. We've seen companies where AI-driven traffic converts to signups at 6x the rate of Google traffic. Sure, there are downstream conversion challenges still being solved, but that initial intent signal? It's undeniable.
What's more striking: ChatGPT and Google's AI disagree on recommendations 62% of the time. That's not a bug. It's the new reality. Different models, different training data, different answers. Your brand could dominate one and be invisible in another.
The best-performing brands in AI search aren't always the best at traditional SEO.
After auditing over 50 B2B SaaS companies, we discovered something counterintuitive: the winners are the best at being understood, not just indexed.
Think of your website as having three layers:
Layer 1: The Visible (What humans see) Your beautiful design, compelling copy, that hero video that cost $50k.
Layer 2: The Structural (What crawlers parse) Meta tags, schema markup, the stuff your SEO agency handles.
Layer 3: The Contextual (What AI reads) This is where things get interesting. AI models weight this layer equally, sometimes more, than what humans see. Hidden contextual paragraphs, comprehensive FAQ sections, detailed schema markup that goes beyond basic SEO requirements. This is the layer most companies ignore.
One client added detailed JSON-LD markup and contextual HTML comments explaining their product's unique approach. Result? 115% increase in AI citations within 6 weeks. They didn't change a single visible word on their site.
Here's what's actually working right now to get into AI responses.
Take your best content and explode it into atoms.
Your best-performing blog post shouldn't live in one place. Here's the atomization strategy:
- Core article stays on your site (optimized for both SEO and AI comprehension)
- Pull out 3-5 standalone answers for Reddit/Quora
- Create a technical breakdown for developer forums
- Develop a contrarian take for LinkedIn
- Build a data visualization for Twitter
Each piece links conceptually but stands alone. AI models see this distributed presence as validation. When multiple sources discuss your brand similarly, you become the pattern, not the anomaly.
User-generated content has become your most powerful trust signal.
Reddit citations in AI overviews jumped 450% in three months. User-generated content now makes up 21.74% of all AI citations.
Why? Because AI models treat peer discussions as trust signals.
We helped one client systematically engage in 20 highly relevant Reddit threads over 60 days. Not promoting, but genuinely contributing expertise and occasionally mentioning their experience with their own product when relevant. Their ChatGPT visibility went from 0% to 31% for their core category queries.
Is it scalable? Not really. Does it work? Absolutely.
Freshness beats everything else in AI visibility.
AI models are obsessed with recency. Content from the past 60 days gets weighted dramatically higher than anything older.
While your competitors update their pillar pages quarterly, you could be refreshing micro-content weekly. Add new data points. Update statistics. Add "Last updated" timestamps prominently.
One client refreshes their top 20 pages every two weeks with minor updates. Their AI citation rate is 3.4x their nearest competitor.
Most companies will fail at this because GEO requires breaking down silos.
The biggest challenge isn't technical. It's organizational. GEO requires coordination across teams that typically don't talk to each other:
- Customer Success needs to drive detailed reviews on G2 and Capterra (AI models frequently reference review platforms for product comparisons)
- Product must publish transparent pricing and detailed documentation
- Community should be actively engaged in relevant forums
- Marketing has to think beyond their own website
Most companies can't pull this off. Silos run too deep, and nobody owns "AI visibility" as a metric.
The companies winning at GEO have either appointed an "AI Visibility Owner" or partnered with specialists who can orchestrate across departments. Guess which approach is faster?
The window for competitive advantage closes in 2027.
Semrush predicts LLM traffic will overtake traditional search by end of 2027. We think they're conservative.
The signals are everywhere:
- ChatGPT hit 700 million weekly active users faster than any product in history
- Sales conversions from AI recommendations are up 436%
- Gen Z trusts AI recommendations at 30% confidence vs. 20% for all buyers
But here's what really matters: the window for competitive advantage is closing.
Right now, most of your competitors are still figuring out what GEO means. In 12 months, they'll be implementing. In 24 months, it'll be table stakes. The companies that move now get to define how their categories are understood by AI models that will power discovery for the next decade.
Your next customer is probably talking to ChatGPT about your category right now.
We've been intentionally direct in this post because the situation demands it. You're either visible in AI-driven discovery or you're not. There's no page 2 in ChatGPT.
At West Operators, we've spent the last 18 months developing frameworks that consistently increase AI visibility by 186% within 6 weeks. Not because we're smarter than your current agency, but because we recognized this shift early and built our entire practice around it.
The choice is simple: adapt now while there's advantage to be gained, or scramble later when it's survival at stake.
Want to know how often ChatGPT mentions your competitors versus you? We'll run a free AI Visibility Audit for qualified companies. It takes 15 minutes to gather the data that might explain why your pipeline feels lighter despite your traffic growing.
The future of search isn't coming. It's here. And your next customer is probably talking to ChatGPT about your category right now.
What's it saying about you?
Frequently Asked Questions
What exactly is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
GEO is the practice of optimizing your content to be understood, cited, and referenced by AI language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Unlike traditional SEO which focuses on ranking in search results, GEO focuses on being included in AI-generated answers.
How is GEO different from traditional SEO?
Traditional SEO optimizes for search engine algorithms using keywords, backlinks, and technical factors. GEO optimizes for language models using semantic clarity, structured data, content freshness, and distributed presence across multiple platforms. SEO gets you ranked; GEO gets you referenced.
Do I need to abandon SEO to focus on GEO?
No. SEO remains important as the foundation. GEO builds on top of good SEO practices. Think of SEO as getting you indexed and discovered, while GEO gets you cited and trusted. The most successful companies do both.
How quickly can I see results from GEO efforts?
Based on our client data, initial improvements in AI visibility can happen within 2-6 weeks, especially with technical optimizations like schema markup. Building substantial presence across multiple AI platforms typically takes 3-6 months of consistent effort.
Which AI platforms should I focus on first?
Start with ChatGPT (largest user base at 700 million weekly active users), then expand to Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and Claude. The specific mix depends on where your target audience searches for information.
How do I measure success in GEO?
Track citation frequency in AI responses, brand mention sentiment, share of voice versus competitors, and referral traffic from AI platforms. Tools like Profound, Semrush's AI toolkit, and SE Ranking's AI Visibility Tracker can help measure these metrics.
Can small companies compete with enterprises in GEO?
Yes, even more so than in traditional SEO. GEO rewards clarity, freshness, and authentic expertise over domain authority. Small companies that move quickly and provide specific, detailed information can outperform larger competitors who are slower to adapt.
