AI search has given marketers another thing to optimise for.
Jenna Kamal, content marketing lead at GWI, says ‘marketers naturally want their brand to show up wherever their audience is searching’ and that to do so, they should ‘consider generative engine optimisation (GEO) as part and parcel of search engine optimisation (SEO)’.
But before working on their GEO, marketers must first understand how the LLM search engines work and how consumers are using them.
Two types of searches
Michael Brito, global head of analytics at Zeno Group, explained that there are two types of searches: category (also known as unbranded) search and branded search. According to Brito, users typically begin with a broad category search by, for example, asking ChatGPT to offer them options for affordable standing desks.
‘It’s going to cite sources from Amazon, Reddit, X, etc, where people are talking about different standing desks that they’ve purchased,’ Brito explained. ‘But if I already know of a standing desk that I like and if I were to ask what the feedback of this brand’s standing desk is, then it’s going to give me responses that are going to be a little bit different.’
When conducting a branded search, Brito added, the AI tool crawls: company websites, press releases, earned media, owned media, social media platforms, including Reddit.
Knowing this, some brands may try to advertise under the radar or participate in Ask Me Anything (AMA) sessions on Reddit to increase their visibility. But, Brito says, AMA sessions can pose a reputational risk, since ‘there are always going to be trolls and [their comments] will get indexed in AI and could turn up as a potential outcome’ during a brand search.
Brito’s team does not advise clients on how to interact on Reddit; instead, they advise them to look at the platform as a source of insights to understand ‘the sentiment and the context and the unmet needs or opportunities that Redditors are talking about’.
Optimise your website
If a branded search generates negative feedback from Reddit, said Brito, then it also means that the AI is not pulling information from your website. In this case, brands should optimise their websites to include structured data such as: FAQ pages, specs, tables and lists.
‘These are technical things that we’re counselling clients to do to ensure that when they’re building content on their website, it’s actually indexed, and that they’re telling OpenAI and Anthropic and Google Gemini to index their content,’ Brito said.
Earned media reigns supreme
But Brito also said that tests by Zeno Group have shown that ‘depending on the category, between 90% and 94% of citations from a branded query in ChatGPT are earned media.’ He added that the rest is owned content and social media platforms, with Reddit being the most important one.
It follows then that brands would benefit more from sparking conversations than optimising webpages or advertising on forums.
‘The secret to success is brand mentions across the internet, so focusing on digital PR efforts, generating organic third-party conversations on forums such as Reddit or blogs, and encouraging customer reviews will work wonders,’ GWI’s Kamal said.
‘You want to be generating authentic buzz — just like Airbnb did when it saved the day after TikTok star Alix Earle was scammed, or when the Hilton’s 10-minute TikTok went viral,’ she added.
Main image by Ahmet Yüksek on Unsplash
