WPP’s chief AI officer Daniel Hulme makes a compelling case: SEO may not be dead, but it’s no longer the sun around which brand visibility orbits. As chatbots and personal AIs take charge of shopping behaviors, traditional keyword-centric strategies are losing relevance. Instead, we’re stepping into the era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), where a brand’s usefulness to AI—not just humans—determines discoverability. With Gartner predicting 25% of searches will bypass engines entirely next year, optimizing for AI recommendation is now a necessity.
The move from links-to-answers to direct answers-with-links means the battleground has shifted. LLMs pull from training data en masse, so if your brand isn’t frequently or meaningfully represented in those patterns, you simply don’t appear. That’s the brutal truth. But there’s a payoff: GEO-driven visitors come with higher purchase intent—if they can find you. Hulme advises marketers to start by probing the models themselves. Ask the AIs what they know about your brand, and brace yourself—the answers may vary wildly and uncover worrying gaps.
To stay relevant, Hulme recommends three action items: understand how different models handle training and real-time retrieval; optimize content semantically (drop the jargon, speak like your customer); and create materials that help AIs form strong conceptual linkages. Don’t wait for a perfect GEO playbook—it doesn’t exist yet. Start auditing your brand’s AI reputation now and keep a running baseline over time. It’s not about if GEO will matter, but whether your brand will show up when the AI makes the next big recommendation.
Full story at The Drum.