Changing focus following shift in search
This year’s edition of
WARC’s annual publication ‘The Marketer’s Toolkit’ reveals that 24% of web marketers are planning to move their primary focus from SEO (search engine optimisation) to GEO (generative engine optimisation) in 2026. With almost 30% of those surveyed already seeing the impact of Gen AI on search results, that transition is only likely to accelerate in the coming months.
For those unfamiliar with GEO, it’s the process of optimising content to increase the opportunity for visibility within AI-generated answers (such as Google AI overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity, etc.)
Bain & Company’s research shows that approximately 80% of search users rely on AI summaries for at least 40% of their searches, and that around 60% of searches on traditional engines now end without a click – a structural shift away from traffic-driven SEO toward influence-driven inclusion in AI outputs.
If you are looking to get on top of best practices for GEO optimisation, a great starting place is
Shane H. Tepper’s white paper, which combines statistics, experiments and a guide to the fundamentals of achieving practical results.
