AI platforms and AI search features are starting to shift the way consumers find information and explore products. In fact, over a quarter (26.4%) of the US population will be a generative AI search user in 2026, a growth of 12.7%, according to EMARKETER's June 2025 forecast.

That shift is giving rise to new tactics for ensuring marketing content and product info show up prominently in AI answers. But consensus on whether these tactics work is still developing.

In a new EMARKETER guide titled "5 expert perspectives you can trust on the hype vs. reality of GEO," we spoke with experts to help marketers assess where there’s hype, and where there’s real incentive around generative engine optimization (GEO) tactics.

Nate Elliott, EMARKETER's principal analyst covering how AI impacts marketing, advertising, and commerce, told us how he sees GEO differs from SEO and what steps marketers can take right now.

Q. What do you see as the single most important difference between GEO and SEO?

A. Almost every GEO response is different from every other GEO response. If you query Google with the same question 10 times, you'll get a pretty good sense for what Google's going to tell you in search results. I don't know that we know that for GEO. There's some consistency, but because they're aggressively customizing each response to what the model already knows about the user and the previous prompts in the conversation, there's a much higher likelihood that the response will change.

Q. What are some of the largest misconceptions about GEO?

A. The two biggest misconceptions I've heard is that good GEO is good SEO. And then on the flip side of that: The biggest misconception is that GEO is 100% different from SEO.

Whether you hear folks saying "Good GEO is just good SEO," or whether you hear people saying "SEO is dead, GEO is completely new," the tactics they recommend are strikingly similar. And the reason I would cast those as a misperception is that the data simply doesn't support that following these modern SEO best practices leads to GEO success.

Q. Are there lessons from SEO that can be applied for developing your GEO strategy?

A. Anyone who says they have the answer is either wildly overconfident or trying very hard to sell you something, or possibly both. The reality is, GEO as a concept didn't really exist until about a year ago. If AI was search, it's 1998 right now, and SEO in 1998 was a disaster.

And at the same time, AI is changing so much faster than search changed at this point in its development. It's changing so fast, and it's so new that we simply don't have these best practices.

Q. Do you have a few concrete tactics marketers can use to start their GEO strategies?

A. Understand that it doesn't look like GEO and SEO are actually the same thing, and so you need to think about the differences between how people use these tools and the way they generate responses. Use that as you try to optimize content or appear more heavily or more frequently in AI responses.

Also, have a look at the websites your targeted AI engine most commonly cites as a source, and think about ways that your brand can appear on those sites. That might mean sponsoring a competition or running a sponsored AMA on Reddit to increase conversation about your brand. It might mean posting your own YouTube videos or sponsoring creators on YouTube to post videos about your content. But also think about your own category, and what kind of consumer forums are most popular in your own category. If you're a financial services company, see if you can get mentioned in Nerd Wallet conversations. If you're a hotel chain or resort, try to figure out how to get people talking about you on TripAdvisor.

Read the full report.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.