How Brands Show Up in AI Search

For most of the internet era, brands have obsessed over showing up in a list of links.

Now people can ask a question and get an answer.

What should I buy? Where should I stay? Which running shoes are best for bad knees? Who are the experts in this space? What company should I hire? Which restaurant should I book? What happened yesterday? What do people think about this product?

ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and AI-powered search experiences are increasingly answering those questions directly.

That changes something fundamental about brand discovery.

Welcome to the answer era

The industry has landed, at least for now, on Generative Engine Optimization, or GEO, as one of the names for the work of improving how brands appear in AI-generated answers.

You'll also hear AI search optimization, answer engine optimization, AEO, AI visibility and several other acronyms fighting for survival.

I'm less interested in winning the acronym war. I'm interested in this question:

When someone asks an AI system about your category, what does it know about you?

And then a few more:

• Does it understand what you do?

• Does it describe you accurately?

• Which sources does it trust?

• Does it mention your competitors instead?

• Does your brand appear when someone never mentions your name at all?

And that last one is especially interesting. Asking ChatGPT, "Tell me about Nike," measures whether the system understands Nike.

Asking, "What are the best running shoe brands for a new runner?" measures whether Nike has earned a place in the answer.

It’s a very different test.

Your website is only part of the answer

Marketers spent decades learning how to optimize the pages they own. And AI makes the information environment around the brand matter even more.

An answer engine might encounter:

• Your website

• News coverage

• Trade publications

• Product reviews

• Reddit discussions

• LinkedIn posts

• YouTube videos

• Creator content

• Executive biographies

• Conference appearances

• Research

• Wikipedia

• Industry directories

• Social media

• Other people talking about you

Suddenly PR, content, social, reputation, search, influencer marketing and corporate communications have a fascinating new shared problem.

They are all creating signals about who you are. Some of those signals agree, but some are stale, vague, or maybe some were written by somebody in 2017 and have somehow achieved digital immortality. Congrats!! But AI has to make sense of all of it.

There is one model to focus one today

GEO helps you show up in the answer. Algorithms help you show up in the journey. And brands need both.

Discovery still happens everywhere. Yes, we’re talking TikTok. Instagram. Reddit. YouTube. Google. LinkedIn. Creators. Friends. Group chats. News. Podcasts. A random screenshot somebody sends you at 11:47 p.m. (that was probably me).

Now AI adds another layer. And sometimes AI will be the destination, or sometimes it will sit invisibly inside another experience. And sometimes it will summarize the rest of the internet for you.

That means the future of discovery belongs to brands that understand both sides. Can people encounter you?

And when they ask about you, does the internet have enough evidence to give them a useful answer?

WE Start by asking what AI thinks it knows

One of the easiest things a brand can do today is also one of the most revealing. Go ask!!!

Start with the obvious prompts:

• Who is our company?

• What are we known for?

• What products do we make?

• Who are our competitors?

• What are our strengths?

• What criticisms come up?

• What sources are informing the answer?

• Then remove your brand name.

• What companies are leaders in our category?

• What products should someone consider?

• Who are experts on this topic?

• Which brands are innovating here?

• What organizations can help solve this problem?

Run the questions across several systems, change the wording, try buyer questions, journalist questions, investor questions, employee questions and completely clueless consumer questions. And let me tell you, you will learn things.

Clear facts are underrated

AI has an easier job understanding an organization when the public information surrounding it is current, consistent and specific. Yes, that sounds incredibly boring. But it is also useful.

• Executive titles matter.

• About pages matter.

• Product descriptions matter.

• Dates matter.

• Structured data matters.

• Third-party biographies matter.

• Clear language matters.

If your website says one thing, LinkedIn says another and a three-year-old conference page says something else, you've created a tiny identity puzzle.

The internet has millions of those puzzles. Cleaning them up is part of the work. Hooray!

Authority has always mattered. Now you can see why.

Your company can publish 50 pages declaring that you are the greatest provider of Thing X in North America. The internet may remain unconvinced.

Authority grows when there is evidence outside your own domain.

• Original research.

• Journalism.

• Trade coverage.

• Expert commentary.

• Reviews.

• Useful participation in communities.

• Conference appearances.

• Creators with genuine experience using the product.

• Other credible people independently connecting your brand with a topic.

PR people should find this whole era particularly interesting and exciting. It’s your time!! Earned media has always influenced reputation and discovery. Now we have another system consuming that public record and turning it into answers.

Publish things worth citing

There is already an impressive amount of generic content on the internet. We can probably stop making "10 Trends Every Marketer Needs to Know" articles now. Please.

The more interesting opportunity is publishing things that contribute something.

• Original data.

• Specific expertise.

• A surprising point of view.

• Actual experiments.

• Useful explanations.

• Primary-source information.

• Named experts who know what they're talking about.

• Answers to questions people genuinely ask.

AI systems need source material so… give the internet better source material! PS: Humans tend to appreciate that, too.

GEO measurement gets DEEP quickly

Search marketers grew up looking at rankings, but AI answers are much more fluid.

The same question can produce different answers depending on the wording, system, model, context, location and date.

So I think about GEO measurement across several dimensions:

• Presence. Do you appear?

• Accuracy. Is the answer right?

• Association. Which topics does the system connect with you?

• Authority. Which sources seem to influence the answer?

• Competition. Who appears when you don't?

• Recommendation. Does the system include you when somebody asks what they should consider?

• Change. Are those answers moving over time?

There are plenty of dashboards for this, but the important thing is knowing what you are trying to learn before somebody sells you the dashboard.

This is bigger than search

I've spent a lot of my career paying attention to the places where technology changes communication (ahem… Blogs. Social networks. Mobile. Platforms. Creators. Algorithms. Generative AI.).

The pattern I find most exciting is what happens after a new behavior stops feeling new.

• People adapt quickly.

• Organizations usually take longer.

• AI-powered discovery feels like one of those shifts.

My work at FINN Partners focuses on futures and client transformation, helping teams understand changes in technology, platforms, culture and communications and figure out what to actually do with them.

Will your brand show up when somebody asks?

I'm going to keep experimenting until we understand the answer. And then things we’ll change and we’ll figure out the next thing, too! Are you ready? -Greg