Forget SEO. Welcome to the World of Generative Engine Optimization (www.wired.com)

This holiday season the search landscape is shifting from Google-style queries to AI-driven discovery: Adobe predicts up to a 520% jump in retailer traffic from chatbots and AI search engines vs. 2024, and OpenAI’s new Walmart partnership lets users buy directly inside ChatGPT. In response, marketers are pivoting from traditional search engine optimization (SEO) to “generative engine optimization” (GEO)—a growing cottage industry estimated near $850 million—aimed at getting products and brand information surfaced by LLMs and chatbots rather than ranked links. Technically, this is more evolution than revolution: GEO repurposes SEO instincts (anticipate questions, optimize content) but adapts to how models consume information. Industry practitioners report the overlap between top Google links and AI-cited sources has dropped from roughly 70% to below 20%, and models favor concise, structured formats—FAQ pages, bulleted lists and highly granular product answers—over long-form, promotional posts. Brands are both reshaping content strategy toward specificity and using AI to generate that content, focusing first on awareness and authoritative data feeding models rather than immediate conversion metrics. The upshot for AI/ML teams and marketers: optimize for how models ingest and cite sources (structure, granularity, provenance), not just traditional ranking signals.