GEO Could Be the Remedy. But Read the Label First

More and more people no longer ask only Google. They ask ChatGPT, Gemini or Perplexity who to hire. And the AI, in a way, "prescribes" some businesses and leaves others out.

GEO exists to get your business into that prescription. And like any medicine, it has indications, timing, expected effects and a right way to use it. This is the label.

1Composition: what GEO is

GEO is the set of practices that increase the chance of a business's content being found, understood and cited by AI-powered search and answer systems.

The term was formalized in a study by researchers from Princeton and IIT Delhi, published in 2024 at KDD, one of ACM's leading data science conferences. They built a set of 10,000 queries, tested changes to the text of web pages and measured how much those pages appeared in the generated answers.

2Indications: what it is for

The best news is for smaller businesses

The same study found that the sites that gain the most from GEO are precisely the ones that are not at the top of Google:

"Notably, lower-ranked websites, which typically struggle for visibility, benefit significantly more from GEO."

In practice, this is good news for SMBs that have never reached the top spot on Google. The authors point out that many lower-ranked sites belong to small creators and independent businesses. GEO gives them a new chance to compete.

3Contraindications: when not to use it

GEO is not for anyone looking for shortcuts. The very study that coined the term showed that the oldest SEO trick, repeating keywords, does not help:

"Our observations, such as the ineffectiveness of traditional SEO methods like Keyword Stuffing, are further highlighted, as it performs 10% worse than the baseline."

With AI, what works is quality and proof, not repetition.

4Dosage: timing and follow-up

GEO does not work overnight. In Tentacron IA's experience, the most consistent results appear between 90 and 180+ days. That is why the treatment has two phases: the foundation, delivered in one go, and continuous adjustment, month after month, with the Tentacron Method™.

1. Weeks 1–4GEO Audit 5.0: diagnosis and foundation. Five AI agents analyze, in parallel, the 6 dimensions that matter to AI systems: citability, brand authority, E-E-A-T, technical infrastructure, schema and AI platforms. We record how AI systems describe the business today, implement the technical work and the new content context, and deliver a before/after report with a GEO Score from 0 to 100. Delivered in 2 to 4 business weeks.
2. Month 2 onwardContinuous optimization. With the Tentacron Method™, we look for bottlenecks in 360 degrees: the page, the business and the behavior of each AI. We test, cross-check and adjust whatever is needed, because AI systems change often. Every month, the Tentacron LIVE SCAN™ report shows progress with real evidence.
3. Months 3–6+Maturation. This is when we usually see the most consistent effect in AI answers. Early signs may appear sooner.

Since June 2026, Google has been gradually rolling out a dedicated AI features report in Search Console, showing your business's impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode. It is one more way to track progress with real data.

5Expected effects

More visibility in AI answers

This is the core effect, shown in a controlled experiment: up to 40% more visibility in the Princeton and IIT Delhi study. When the authors repeated part of the test on Perplexity, adding quotations also improved visibility, by about 22% on one of the metrics.

Being inside the answer matters more than ever

When an AI summary appears, people click less on traditional results. A Pew Research Center analysis of 900 U.S. adults and 68,879 Google searches found that people clicked on a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary was shown, compared with 15% when there was none.

A field experiment with 1,100 U.S. Google users, released on arXiv in August 2026, confirmed the trend: people who used AI Mode only clicked through to external sites 18.8 percentage points less.

What this means for your business: more and more, the decision starts inside the AI's answer. If your business is not in it, the customer never even sees your website.

Visitors from ChatGPT buy more than visitors from paid social

A peer-reviewed study published in 2026 in Marketing Science analyzed 973 e-commerce websites. Traffic arriving from ChatGPT converted clearly better than traffic from paid social media, which had a 53% lower likelihood of conversion. And in high-complexity categories such as business and consumer services, law and government, and finance, ChatGPT's conversion rate even exceeded that of organic search, direct traffic and email.

6Interactions with other treatments

GEO + SEO: each one strengthens the other

Google states that SEO best practices still apply to AI Overviews and AI Mode. To appear as a link in an AI answer, a page must be indexed and eligible for regular search. That is why, at Tentacron IA, the technical SEO foundation comes first and GEO is built on top of it.

GEO + brand authority (earned media): the strongest combination

AI systems do not read only your website. A 2025 study by researchers at the University of Toronto compared the sources cited by AI search systems and by Google, and found a clear preference for authoritative third-party sources:

"AI Search exhibit a systematic and overwhelming bias towards Earned media (third-party, authoritative sources)"

Press, review sites and industry publications carry weight with AI systems. That is why Tentacron IA's work does not stop at the website: it includes directory profiles, genuine reviews and presence in the sources AI systems consult, always with the same information everywhere.

GEO + Ads: different roles

An ad buys space for as long as you pay. GEO builds a presence that, when maintained, keeps working in AI answers. The two can work together, each measured by its own results.

7Label summary

8Tested on ourselves

Before offering GEO to clients, we applied it to Tentacron IA. We documented how we went from invisible to cited by ChatGPT in 60 days. It is our case, not a promise. But it shows that we do what we say and measure the result.