Your Next Customer Found You in ChatGPT — Here's Why
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Generative AI is changing how audiences discover, consume and trust information — and with it, the rules of PR and marketing. As tools like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT become the front door to content, a new discipline is emerging: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
Companies must understand how GEO is reshaping brand visibility, why earned and owned content must evolve, and what businesses should be doing to prepare for a generative-first future.
Join top CEOs, founders and operators at the Level Up conference to unlock strategies for scaling your business, boosting revenue and building sustainable success.
What is GEO, and how does it differ from traditional SEO?
GEO is the practice of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT or Google's Search Generative Experience (SGE). It differs from SEO in important ways:
Audience: GEO prioritizes content that is clear, relevant and easily understood in a conversational context, making it more accessible to AI systems generating human-like responses. In contrast, traditional SEO is designed to optimize content for search engine crawlers and ranking algorithms.
Placement: GEO aims for inclusion in AI summaries and answers, not just search engine rankings.
Format: GEO favors concise, well-structured and authoritative content that large language models (LLMs) can easily interpret and synthesize.
Metrics: GEO success isn't clicks; it's citations, mentions and inclusion in AI outputs.
Tools like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT are changing how customers discover and trust information. They are reshaping discovery by delivering instant, synthesized answers instead of directing users to multiple sources. They're also shifting trust from traditional websites to AI-generated summaries making the model the new gatekeeper of credible information.
Related: AI Can Burn Out Your Team — Or Save It. Here's the Difference
"Visibility" has acquired new meaning with the advent of GEO. Here's how I define visibility in a generative-first content landscape: it means being recognized and trusted in a noisy space that is saturated with content. It also means showing up consistently and meaningfully in the right communication channels and conversations and standing out with credibility.
Earned media placements and PR-driven content create greater visibility, influencing generative AI outputs. When your company is featured in respected media outlets, it shapes how AI systems "learn" about you. Those placements become part of the digital fabric that makes your narrative discoverable, contextualized and reinforced across both human and machine interpretation.
How teams can prepare for a generative-first future
You have to intentionally shape how your brand shows up in AI-generated outputs. To check for accuracy and credibility, search your company, executives and products using generative AI tools and see what comes up. This "audit" will show you how, or if, your company is showing up.
Invest in PR to drive ongoing, high-quality earned media coverage. Generative models rely on trusted public data. Coverage in authoritative outlets and consistent thought leadership help define your narrative in the AI ecosystem. Create quality, consistent, well-tagged content like press releases, FAQs, blogs and explainers that AI can easily parse and summarize.
Build out a machine-readable foundation of facts about your company's people, products, milestones and positioning. This helps prevent misrepresentation and hallucination in AI responses. PR, SEO and data strategy disciplines are converging fast. Collaborate across content, communications and digital strategy to build a unified approach to visibility in both search and AI-generated outputs.
There will be new skill sets and roles designed to manage visibility across both human and machine audiences. Here are three interesting roles I've heard about:
An AI Visibility Strategist is a hybrid role combining PR, SEO and data science expertise.
Prompt Architects are focused on crafting and refining prompts that shape AI-generated content, both for internal use (marketing, sales, comms) and external influence (e.g., training custom models or fine-tuning LLM assistants).
The AI Ethics & Brand Integrity Lead ensures that content generated or amplified by AI aligns with company values, brand standards and regulatory guidelines, especially in high-stakes sectors like finance, healthcare or public policy.
Related: How AI Is Transforming the SEO Playbook — and What Businesses Must Do to Ensure Long-Term Relevance and Visibility
Recommendations for remaining relevant
Business leaders must take a broader view of content strategy to serve both human audiences and AI systems. PR can no longer focus solely on generating buzz. It must evolve to engineer discoverability, ensuring your brand appears accurately and consistently in both media coverage and AI-generated content.
Focus on securing high-quality earned media coverage. Amplify expert-driven content that positions your brand as a credible authority in the space. Generative AI pulls from high-quality, trusted sources. And make sure to use clean headlines, consistent messaging and well-tagged digital assets (like FAQs, explainer blogs or press releases) that can be easily indexed and understood by machines, not just people. AI models value clarity and context.
Be intentional with keywords, brand voice and accuracy. Everything you publish feeds the AI ecosystem. From a podcast quote to a bylined article, assume it could be surfaced, summarized or cited in future outputs.
How GEO will reshape the relationship between PR, marketing and search
I predict that in the next two to three years, GEO will collapse the silos between PR, marketing and search. PR will become a core visibility driver for AI-based discovery. As generative engines replace traditional search for many users, PR will shape machine understanding. Media placements, quotes and thought leadership will become ever more critical data inputs that influence how AI summarizes and represents your brand.
SEO will evolve into narrative optimization. Marketers will need to ensure brand messaging is consistently structured, credible and reinforced across all public touchpoints. GEO will require optimization not just for ranking but for inference, context and coherence in AI-generated content.
Marketing will shift from campaigns to context-building. Brands must feed the AI ecosystem with high-quality, high-context materials that can be surfaced across any platform or prompt. That means marketing will spend more time on source authority, content integrity and long-term discoverability.
No company survives by doing what it's always done and ignoring innovation. GEO is a powerful new branch of SEO, and you need to capitalize on it to be seen by decision-makers now that AI summaries dominate search queries. Use the strategy and recommendations discussed above to chart your own course to getting the visibility your brand deserves.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
22 minutes ago
- Forbes
Amazon's App Store Decision—48 Hours To Delete Your Apps
You have been warned. Amazon has confirmed that 'starting August 20, 2025, you will no longer have access to the Amazon Appstore on your Android device.' That's just 48 hours from now. The retail giant says it will now focus its efforts on its own devices. For anyone who has installed an app from the store, this is a potential security threat and you need to act before the deadline. All apps must be deleted. Per Android Police, 'once no longer supported, apps downloaded via the Amazon Appstore "will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices." That means no support, which not only risks apps becoming 'highly unstable' but also means any security vulnerabilities will not be patched. While Amazon's advice is to install replacement or replica apps from Google's Play Store, you actually need to do more than that. Any apps you may have installed from Amazon's store need to be deleted. If they remain on your phone in an unsupported state, then it outs your device and your data at risk. Amazon also confirms that 'we will also be discontinuing the Amazon Coins program on August 20, 2025.' Those who have used the store and still have Amazon Coins will see those refunded, albeit details on how and when that will be done seem scarce. Android users should focus on Play Store only for apps, it remains your best bet when it comes to security safeguards and works in tandem with Android's core OS and the Play ecosystem that underpins it. That includes Play Protect, which protects your phone from dangerous apps from any source. It's also worth noting that Google is pushing a wider clampdown in third-party stores with its new Advanced Protection Mode, albeit Amazon would no doubt have been seen as an official store for all phones had it continued longer term.
Yahoo
36 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Google's AI pointed him to a customer service number. It was a scam.
Alex Rivlin was tackling a last-minute task for his European vacation. That's how he got snagged in an artificial intelligence-enabled scam. Rivlin, who runs a real estate company in Las Vegas, needed to book a shuttle to catch a cruise ship. From his kitchen table, he searched Google for the cruise company's customer service number, chatted with a knowledgeable representative and provided his credit card details. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Rivlin said that the number he called was highlighted in Google's 'AI Overviews' - AI-generated responses to some web searches. The next day, Rivlin saw fishy credit card charges and realized that he'd been fooled by an impostor for Royal Caribbean customer service. He'd encountered an apparent AI twist on a classic scam targeting travelers and others searching Google for customer help lines of airlines and other businesses. I found the same number he called appearing to impersonate other cruise company hotlines and popping up in Google and ChatGPT. Welcome to the AI scam era. Experts warn that old scammer and spammer tricks that have swamped the web, social media, email and texts are now also manipulating AI information - and Rivlin is among an early wave of victims. 'I'm pretty technologically advanced, and I fell for this,' said the founder of the Rivlin Group at lpt Realty. I'll walk you through how to guard against experiences like Rivlin's, and what companies such as Google should do to stop crooks from warping AI information. - - - How scammers fooled Rivlin and Google Rivlin told me that the bogus customer service number and the impostor representative were believable. The rep knew the cost and pickup locations for Royal Caribbean shuttles in Venice. He had persuasive explanations when Rivlin questioned him about paying certain fees and gratuities. The rep offered to waive the shuttle fees and Rivlin agreed to pay $768. Rivlin said that he was suspicious of oddities, including an unfamiliar company name that came through on the credit card charge. When two bogus card charges landed the next day, Rivlin knew he'd been tricked. He canceled his credit card and the charges were reversed. Rivlin mostly blames the crooks and himself for falling for the scam. But I've seen so many versions of similar trickery targeting Google users that I largely blame the company for not doing enough to safeguard its essential gateway to information. So did two experts in Google's inner workings. Here's how a scam like this typically works: Bad guys write on online review sites, message boards and other websites claiming that a number they control belongs to a company's customer service center. When you search Google, its technology looks for clues to relevant and credible information, including online advice. If scammer-controlled numbers are repeated as truth often enough online, Google may suggest them to people searching for a business. Google is a patsy for scammers - and we're the ultimate victims. Google's AI Overviews and OpenAI's ChatGPT may use similar clues as Google's search engine to spit out information gleaned from the web. That makes them new AI patsies for the old impostor number scams. 'Manipulating these new answer engines using techniques from 30 years ago is like shooting sitting ducks,' said Mike Blumenthal, analyst at Near Media, a consumer search behavior research company. (Blumenthal told me about Rivlin's Facebook video relaying his experience.) Blumenthal and I found Google and ChatGPT identifying the same number that fooled Rivlin as a customer service number for other cruise lines, including Disney and Carnival's Princess line. In a statement, a Google spokesman said that AI Overviews and web search results are effective at directing people to official customer service information for common types of searches. The spokesman said that the company has 'taken action' on several impostor number examples I identified and that Google continues to 'work on broader improvements to address rarer queries like these.' Royal Caribbean's customer service number is 1-866-562-7625, which the company says it shows on its websites, apps and invoices. Disney and Princess didn't respond to my questions. OpenAI said that many of the webpages that ChatGPT referenced with the bogus cruise number appear to have been removed, and that it can take time for its information to update 'after abusive content is removed at the source.' (The Washington Post has a content partnership with OpenAI.) - - - What you and companies can do to ward off this scam - Be suspicious of phone numbers in Google results or in chatbots. Rivlin said that he looked for Royal Caribbean's customer service contact number in its app. No luck. Google or chatbots are natural next spots to look for business numbers, but it's worth being extremely careful of numbers they show. Eyeball associated links in Google or ChatGPT before you call. Read more advice on fake customer service scams. - Why is Google making it easier for scammers? The company knows the long history of people being fooled by bogus customer service numbers they find in search results. You'd be safer if Google didn't show AI Overviews - which seem like authoritative 'answers' - for business number searches, said Lily Ray, vice president of search engine optimization strategy and research at the marketing firm Amsive. 'By allowing AI Overviews to appear for business phone number queries, they're opening up a new opportunity for scammers - and one that scammers are clearly already using to their advantage,' Ray said by email. Ray and Blumenthal say that Google has databases of vetted information, including for businesses, and that the company should ensure search and AI results only grab information from there. Back home this week after a great trip, Rivlin said that he's watching for more bogus charges or attempted identity theft. And Rivlin wants to spread the word that even being well informed about scams and a believer in AI didn't make him immune to AI-enabled trickery. 'I can't believe that I fell for it,' he said. 'Be careful.' Related Content Ukraine scrambles to roll back Russian eastern advance as summit takes place Her dogs kept dying, and she got cancer. Then they tested her water. D.C.'s homeless begin to see the effects of Trump's crackdown Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
43 minutes ago
- Yahoo
She fell in love with traditional Japanese homes during a high school trip. At 24, she bought one in the countryside.
Coline Aguirre bought a traditional house in the Japanese countryside when she was 24. She left France and moved to Japan alone to restore the property and start her own real-estate consultancy. "It's been three years now, but it still feels like a dream," Aguirre said. Coline Aguirre first began to imagine her future during a high school exchange program in Japan a decade ago. Aguirre, who was born in Paris but moved around a lot as a child, spent a year studying in Kanagawa, a prefecture about 40 miles outside Tokyo. During a visit to her host family's grandparents in the countryside, she discovered that they lived in a traditional Japanese house built in the '70s, with elegant wooden beams and beautiful tatami rooms. "That was the first time I slept in a tatami room. Before that, I had only been in really modern city houses in Japan," Aguirre told Business Insider. "I fell in love, and in that moment, I knew I wanted to own a traditional house in Japan." Love Business Insider? Add Business Insider as a preferred source on Google to see more of us. Fast-forward to 2021: Aguirre was back in France and working as a freelance photographer. Over the years, she and her mother had nurtured a shared hobby of scrolling through real-estate websites and window-shopping for homes. "At the time, I was discovering the real estate market in Japan and noticing the really low prices," Aguirre said. In France, a countryside home could easily set her back by 200,000 euros. In contrast, some houses in rural Japan can go for as low as $500. The contrast was striking, and it got her thinking about the possibilities. "In France, if I wanted to buy something new with the money I had then, it would be a car or a garage. I don't want to live in a car or in a garage," she said. 'A hundred years old, minimum' Thus started her hunt for a "kominka," or a farmhouse, in the Japanese countryside. Aguirre was looking for a large property, with enough room for a photo studio. She also wanted an old house because she felt that they were built with materials meant to last. "My criteria was like, a hundred years old, minimum," Aguirre added. When she chanced upon the listing for a 3,200-square-foot property in Uda, a small town about 50 miles south of Kyoto, she knew she had found the one. "It matched all my expectations. It was huge, maybe a bit too huge, but it had an inner garden, two bathrooms, two kitchens, and a lot of bedrooms," Aguirre said. It was also a 15-minute drive to the train station, and about an hour and a half from the ocean. With the help of a consultant on a real-estate portal — who sent her a 20-minute video tour of the listing — Aguirre bought the two-story house remotely, without seeing it in person. Aguirre says she paid about 4.9 million Japanese yen for the property in 2022, and at the age of 24, achieved her dream of buying a traditional house in the Japanese countryside. Her husband, who is in the French Army, knew this was her plan soon after they first got together. "From the moment we started dating eight years ago, I already told him I'm going to be a house owner in Japan one day. And it eventually happened," Aguirre said. She officially moved to Japan alone later that year. "I had no plan. I was just trusting the universe," Aguirre, now 27, said. Her parents were also supportive of her move. It helped that they were already familiar with Japan: Her father had spent a year working in Tokyo, and her mother had been to the country multiple times on vacation. Growing up, she was used to her parents buying and fixing up old houses in France. "I had no perception of what was scary or not," Aguirre said. "We've been doing that so many times, it just felt normal for me to buy a house." Restoring the house Aguirre's house sits on a street where the old market used to be. The street reminds her of Kyoto, with its shops and old houses. "The post office is in front of me, while there's a bank at the end of the road," she said. When her house was first built in the 1920s, the front section facing the street served as a soy sauce shop. Before she bought it, the previous owners had used it as a summer home whenever they visited from the city during the holidays. In terms of restoring the property, Aguirre, who now runs a real-estate consultancy, says she has tried to keep as much of the original structure as possible. The main thing she's changed so far is getting rid of the septic tank and connecting the property to the public sewage system. "I haven't really destroyed so many things besides everything that was added during the '70s," she said. There's plenty left to do, including remodeling the kitchen and removing the fake ceilings on the second floor. Considering the size of the property, it's been a slow process. "I try to do all the DIY I possibly can," Aguiree said. Local contractors were often more accustomed to working on newer homes with modern materials like plastic insulation, which wasn't what she envisioned for her own space. "I started to learn a lot of DIY stuff, like making tiles and waterproofing the shower. But it's fun. I really enjoy it and I like power tools a lot," Aguirre said, adding that she dived into online tutorials, read books, and got advice from her father. These days, between managing her business and working on the house, Aguirre also runs an online boutique selling vintage kimonos and accessories. On the side, she offers kimono photography sessions, too. Living the dream Aguirre is part of a growing wave of foreigners who are relocating to Japan. The number of foreign residents in Japan reached a record high of 3,768,977 at the end of 2024 — an increase of 10.5% from the previous year, per data from the country's Immigration Services Agency. Four Americans who spoke to BI in 2023 listed Japan's safety standards and relative affordability as reasons for their move. Others told BI they were drawn to the idea of renovating one of the country's 8 million abandoned homes. Though much of the experience has been rewarding, Aguirre says the hardest part of her move was staying focused on her goals. "It is super challenging to own that kind of big house that needs constant attention, while also starting a business from zero in a new country with a new language," she said. She hopes to improve her Japanese language skills, but hasn't found the time to take lessons. "For now, my language classes are me talking to my neighbors," Aguirre said. Most of her neighbours are between 50 and 90 years old and have been living in the area for decades. Many of them once attended the local elementary school, which has since been transformed into a maple park. That said, meeting new people hasn't been difficult. A fairly large group of foreigners — mostly from the US and the UK — are living in Uda, she said. "When you go grocery shopping and you see someone else who is a foreigner, you basically go and talk to them because it's so rare," Aguirre said. Over the years, she's been introduced to new people, sometimes even on the street. Aguirre lives in her house in Japan full-time, and her husband comes to visit her whenever he can. Regarding what is often a long-distance relationship, Aguirre said, "It's challenging, but I mean, he said yes eight years ago." Looking back on her journey, Aguirre says it feels like she's only begun to scratch the surface. "Three years is just a trial," she said. Sometimes, she added, you'll need to wait for the thrill of the move to die down before you know if it's really for you. That said, Aguire knows she made the right choice. She hopes to continue growing her real estate business, now a team of three, and eventually connect traditional Japanese homes with buyers seeking homes and spaces for their creative projects. "It still feels like a dream," Aguirre said. "I just added more layers to my dream." Do you have a story to share about building your dream home in Asia? Contact this reporter at agoh@ Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
