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Analysis · Enterprise Software & IT

AI search shifts from SEO to GEO

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Date
Company
Writesonic
What it does
AI search visibility and content optimisation platform
Kind
Analysis
Sector
Enterprise Software & IT

What they do

Writesonic helps companies track how often their content appears in AI chatbot answers and improve it

What happened

The story covers the industry-wide shift from SEO to GEO, where AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini generate answers, reducing traditional search traffic

Why it matters

AI referral traffic converts at nearly double the usual rate, but it is only about 1.08% of total sessions, signalling a small but growing opportunity

The details

  • The search industry is shifting from SEO (search engine optimisation, or making web pages rank high on Google) to GEO (generative engine optimisation, or making content get picked by AI chatbots).
  • AI chatbots like Gemini, ChatGPT, and Claude now answer 20-word questions with synthesised answers, so users rarely click through to websites.
  • Google accelerated this change with AI Overviews, which show answer-led results and reduce click-through behaviour.
  • OpenAI reported that its search usage nearly tripled in a year, and its ads pilot reached over $100 million in annual recurring revenue in under six weeks.
  • Conductor analysed over 3.3 billion sessions and found that AI referral traffic was about 1.08% of all sessions, but it converted at almost double the usual rate.
  • Publishers that relied on search traffic have seen big chunks of their SEO business wiped out, and zero-click search is growing.
  • Brands can rank high on Google yet still be excluded from AI-generated answers, so visibility now depends on being remembered and trusted by AI models.
  • Companies like Writesonic and Gushwork are building tools to track AI visibility and generate leads from AI search engines.

The bigger picture

  • OpenAI raised $122 billion last month to build an AI superapp, showing the scale of investment in AI search.
  • People now ask longer, more detailed questions instead of short keywords, forcing content to be written differently.
  • AI answers often cite third-party sites like Reddit or Wikipedia more than a brand's own website.
  • Traditional SEO signals like page rank matter less; AI models interpret intent and run multiple internal searches.
  • For Google, brands optimise for a ranked list; for AI, they must optimise for recall.

About the business

  • Writesonic's tool measures how often a brand appears in AI search results, spots where competitors are winning, and suggests content changes.
  • Gushwork creates AI marketing agents that bring in leads from AI search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity.
  • Gushwork studies which sources ChatGPT and Perplexity cite most to understand what content gets surfaced.
  • Dr Rajeev Sharma of Tata 1mg says the industry is moving beyond simple keyword optimisation to structured, machine-readable content.
  • MakeMyTrip's GenAI assistant Myra makes interactions more contextual and expressive, using data from 100 million users.
  • Shopify is enabling merchants to sell via AI chats, and Razorpay is providing seamless experiences to convert discoveries into purchases, called agentic commerce.

What happens next

  • Brands are expected to build 'answer surfaces' and track metrics like AI visibility and traffic.
  • Content strategies will evolve towards structured, machine-readable data that LLMs can interpret accurately.
  • Technical SEO, content engineering, and external authority signals will work together.

Founders

  • Samanyou Garg, Founder and CEO of Writesonic
  • Nayhrit B, Co-founder of Gushwork

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