If you’ve been following the buzz around Generative Engine Optimization, or “GEO,” you’ve probably seen some wild claims.
“AI is going to replace Google.”
“SEO is dead.”
“It’s time to completely reinvent your content strategy.”
But the future of search marketing isn’t about abandoning SEO for something new. It’s about adapting proven strategies to work across AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.
GEO isn’t a replacement for traditional search optimization—it’s the next natural evolution of it.
Let’s cut through the noise and talk about what the future of search marketing actually looks like for QSR brands in the AI era.
What Is Generative Engine Optimization?
You may have seen the terms “Generative Engine Optimization” (GEO), “Answer Engine Optimization” (AEO), and “AI SEO” thrown around by the marketing “gurus” flooding your LinkedIn feed. All of these terms describe essentially the same thing: the need to optimize your content so AI-driven platforms can find, understand, and recommend your QSR brand.
That might sound revolutionary, but here’s the truth: GEO is a trendy reframing of a discipline that is anything but new.
Many of the tactics that make your content discoverable to large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Perplexity are the same ones that have always made content discoverable to search engines:
- Crawlability
- Schema markup
- Backlinks
- Content quality
- Topical authority
- Technical performance
These are the building blocks of good SEO, and they’re also the foundation of GEO.
As long as people have been searching the internet, SEOs have been adapting. Keyword stuffing used to work—until it didn’t. SEO was always a blogger’s game—until video platforms like YouTube and TikTok became search engines in their own right. Every algorithm update, new ranking factor, or platform quirk has required marketers to adapt their approach. That’s no different in the age of AI.
GEO is about teaching these new models to understand who you are and what you offer. Yes, the way LLMs retrieve information is different than traditional search engine crawlers. So we’ll adapt again. That’s what SEO has always been about.
How Does GEO Actually Work?
When LLMs like ChatGPT and Google Gemini process your search query, they don’t just look for one perfect source. Instead, they generate a web of questions related to your original query, then search for all of them at once and synthesize the best information. This process is called query fan-out.
If you have multiple pieces of content ranking for different branches of a query, it signals to the AI tool that you’re an authority on the topic—and makes it more likely that your content will be cited in the response it generates.
In other words, if your site isn’t already ranking in Google, chances are it’s invisible to AI too.
Early testing supports this conclusion. 99.5 percent of pages cited in Google’s AI Overviews also rank in the search engine’s top 10 organic results. This synergy between Google’s first-party platforms might be expected, but even on ChatGPT, brands that ranked on the first page of Google were the same brands cited in AI answers 62 percent of the time.
And while tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity claim to use their own independent indexes, recent developments indicate OpenAI has been using data scraped from Google to answer real-time queries.
The takeaway? If you rank well in Google today, you’re already well on your way to showing up in AI-driven results. Strong SEO equals stronger GEO.
The Future of Search Marketing: What’s Actually Changing
Just over 41 percent of all search queries result in zero-click search—up from 25 percent just three years ago. More people are finding answers directly in search results or AI-generated summaries without ever clicking through to a website.
This shift matters because it changes how marketers and brands think about success. It’s now possible to influence search behavior without ever winning the coveted click. While traffic is still a valuable metric, brand visibility and citation frequency in LLMs are becoming just as important.
So, how can you ensure you’re showing up?
AI engines pull information from the web differently than traditional search. They prioritize structured, comprehensive, and authoritative content. They also overwhelmingly prefer third-party sources when making recommendations to users, making your PR strategy more valuable than ever. In fact, PRNewswire was ranked 12th among the domains most often cited by LLMs in October 2025, appearing in nearly 5 percent of all responses—and trailing closely behind giants like Reddit and Wikipedia.
Your content still matters, but mentions by real customers and trusted publications help amplify your visibility in ways brand-owned content can’t. Pairing your GEO strategy with a strong PR plan is the best way to make sure you’re covering all of your bases.
The Bottom Line: GEO and SEO Are Partners, Not Rivals
GEO is the next step in SEO’s natural evolution, not a reset button. Most brands winning in AI search are the same brands already winning in traditional search.
The fundamentals that have always mattered still matter. Content quality. Technical performance. Topical authority. Site structure. The best GEO strategy starts with exceptional SEO.
Helen Eckhard is SEO Marketing Manager at Elysium Marketing Group, a full-service marketing agency that helps brands build search strategies designed for today’s landscape and tomorrow’s curveballs.
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