SEO's Colonial Ambitions Over GEO Are Crumbling. About Time.
Search marketer Tom Critchlow argues that AI search is revealing a fundamental risk: the SEO industry may lose its assumed ownership over Generative Engine Optimization outcomes. GEO, the practice of optimizing content for how AI systems synthesize and present information, was treated as SEO's natural territory. AI search interfaces are now demonstrating that this assumption was premature.
This teaches you that optimizing for traditional search rankings and optimizing for AI-generated answers are diverging disciplines. You must stop assuming that your SEO playbook automatically transfers to AI search environments. The workflow change is to audit how AI systems currently represent your brand, rather than merely tracking your position on a search engine results page.
Tom Critchlow, a search marketing consultant and writer, identified this risk in analysis published on Search Engine Journal. His work focuses on the strategic evolution of search marketing.
Step 1: Open an AI search tool such as Perplexity, ChatGPT with browsing, or Google AI Overviews and query your brand name or a key product you offer. Step 2: Compare what the AI generates against your actual website content; note what it includes, omits, or misrepresents. Step 3: Identify one specific factual claim or description you want corrected, then locate the source page on your site and revise it for clarity and directness, as AI systems favor explicit, well-structured statements.