Hello, this is Yuk Chae-rim from Elephant Company 😃
Not long after I joined the company, a team member assigned me a task. It involved reading and summarizing two global insights reports related to SEO and GEO every morning. To be honest, at first I thought, “It’s just summarizing some reports,” and started out with a casual attitude.
However, whether in SEO reports, B2B purchasing behavior studies, or AI traffic analysis, the perspective on the current market was consistent. It was thatpeople who used to search for information by typing keywords into a search bar are now asking AI questions using complete sentences.
When I revisited the research materials I’d gathered over the past three months, the overall picture became much clearer. So today, I’ve compiled the insights I discovered during that three-month research period. I’ll share all the information I’ve gathered on the seven conditions that enable AI to learn about and recommend our brand!
60% of all searches end without a click; AI now influences purchase decisions beyond mere browsing
Nowadays, customers consume ready-made answers curated and served to them by AI, rather than searching for information on their own. While traditional SEO focused on securing a spot on the first page of search results, GEO now aims to have our brand “cited” within AI-generated responses.
| Category | SEO (Search Engine Optimization) | GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Top rankings on the first page of search results | Brand/content mentions in AI responses |
| Key Strategy | Keyword optimization, backlink building | Entity Definition, Topic Clusters, Structured Data |
| Key KPIs | Organic traffic, keyword rankings | Model Share, Number of AI Citations |
| Content Format | Blog posts that match search intent | Q&A format, inverted pyramid structure, FAQ, table |
These changes are already reflected in concrete figures. According to one survey, 60% of all searches end without a click, signaling the full-scale arrival of the “zero-click era.” This is because customers are making purchasing decisions through AI; in fact, the percentage of daily AI search users in the U.S. rose from 14% in February 2025 to 29.2% in August 2025.
Try asking ChatGPT or Gemini right now, “What are the advantages of our company’s solution?” If the AI can’t give you a proper answer, you should read this article all the way through.
Try it now. 7 Ways to Become a Brand That AI Cites
1. Try changing the content structure: AI prefers content that’s easy to find over well-written content
It is said that AI prefers structures that make it easy to extract information over emotionally charged writing. Therefore, it is a good idea to structure your content in a machine-friendly way so that large language models (LLMs) can efficiently extract the information.
Rather than the traditional essay format with a long introduction, a reverse pyramid structure—conclusion → evidence → detailed explanation—is more effective. The key is to place a clear answer immediately after the reader’s question . In fact, research shows that applying the “answer capsule” technique increased AI citation rates by 40%. It can also be helpful to include only one idea per paragraph and use H1, H2, and H3 heading tags to clearly define the hierarchy.
✅ Practical Tip! Action Item
: Place a three-line summary box at the top of your blog post, and make full use of FAQs, lists, and tables to create the "goldmine" type of content that AI loves.
2. A Different Perspective on Performance Metrics: Just as visitor numbers matter, so does the share of AI-generated responses
Has your website traffic been declining lately? Don’t worry too much. What’s needed now is a new perspective: “Share of Model”—that is , how often and in what context your brand appears in AI-generated responses.
While the number of visitors coming from simple informational searches may decrease, users who arrive when AI includes your brand in its responses are much more likely to have a strong intent to purchase. In fact, datashows that the conversion rate for visitors coming through AI is 4.4 times higher than for general search, and the bounce rate is 27% lower. Now, rather than traditional metrics like average keyword rankings or total backlinks, the frequency of brand exposure in AI could become a more important performance metric.
✅ Practical Tip! Action Item
Select 50–100 key questions related to your service and test them once a week using AI tools like ChatGPT or Gemini. By measuring and recording brand mention frequency and content yourself, you can manage your market share.
For more details, please refer to the content below.
👉 The Ultimate Guide to Measuring GEO Performance: AI Search Optimization Metrics for B2B Marketers
3. Introducing Your Brand to AI Using Schema Markup: You Need to "Tag" It to Get Recommended
To ensure that AI recommends our brand effectively, we must first clearly define what our brand is. This involves helping the AI recognize our brand as a distinct “entity.” Schema markup is a very useful tool for this purpose.
When AI reads text on the web, it can sometimes have trouble distinguishing whether a term is a company name, a product name, or a common noun. By using schema—a form of structured data—you can provide a clear “label” stating, “We are a company that provides B2B marketing solutions.” In particular, properly implementing the Organization schema—one of the many schema types commonly used on corporate websites— issaid to increase the likelihood of appearing in the Knowledge Panel by 3.7 times.
✅ Let’s get started! Action Item
: Request that your development team implement JSON-LD schema markup, or try using a tool that makes it easy for marketers to create schemas. Elephant is currently developing “Schema Buddy” for marketers—fill out the form below to be the first to hear when it launches! ⏰
Sign up for Schema Buddy notifications
For more details, please refer to the content below.
👉 Structured data that helps Google's search engine make the right choices
4. Consistently building expertise in a single subject: You should be seen as a continuous journey, not just a series of isolated points.
In the age of AI search, it’s more important to cover specific topics in depth than to produce one-off content. This is because AI evaluates a site’s overall context to assess its expertise and authority in a given field. A highly effective strategy for this is the “topic cluster.”
A topic cluster is a strategy that centers on pillar content covering a broad topic, creates multiple cluster pieces that delve into specific details, and tightly interlinks them through internal links. By systematically building in-depth content around a single topic in this way, AI is more likely to recognize the website as a reliable source of information in that field and cite it.
✅ Practical Tip! Action Item
Choose one key topic where your brand wants to establish expertise, list at least 10 related sub-questions, and create a content map. Approach this with the goal of dominating the entire topic, not just writing a single post.
5. Building a reputation outside your website: Mentions from external sources are also important signals
To gain the trust of AI, the content on our website alone may not be enough. It’s also important for our brand to be frequently mentioned in various external channels, such as news outlets, online communities, and industry forums.
At GEO, we consider not only traditional SEO backlinks but also unlinked mentions to be meaningful signals. This is because AI views the frequent appearance of a brand name in a positive context as a measure of credibility. Data showing that the rate at which press releases are cited in AI responses increased by 500% in the second half of 2025underscores the importance of external mentions.
✅ Practical Tip! Action Item
Shorten your press release distribution cycle and take the initiative to spark meaningful brand-related conversations in industry-specific communities or on LinkedIn. Positive mentions from external sources send a strong signal of trust to AI.
6. Content Is Just as Important as Sales: Customers Narrow Down Their Options Before Meeting You
The purchasing journey of B2B customers has changed significantly. These days, customers research a great deal of information well before meeting with a sales representative, and AI has become a key source of information during that preliminary research process.
According to a report, B2B buyers have already completed about 73% of their decision-making process by the time they contact a sales representative. Customers ask AI, “Tell me what to consider when implementing the OOO solution,” and based on that response, they narrow down their options to an average of 3.8 candidates. If our brand isn’t mentioned at this early stage, we might not even get the chance to submit a proposal. 😱
✅ Practical Action Item
: Compile a list of questions the sales team frequently receives from customers and create detailed content to address them. It’s important to provide high-quality information sources in advance so that AI can use our content as a reference when answering customer questions.
7. Presenting a perspective unique to a trusted brand: When it comes to philosophy, AI simply cannot replicate it
While the amount of information continues to grow, it’s becoming increasingly important for our brand to stand outfrom the crowd. One thing AI simply can’t replicate is a unique perspective and the insights that come from firsthand experience.
AI can now easily explain general definitions like “What is CRM?” However, only we can share experience-based stories such as “the trials and errors we encountered when implementing CRM and the specific insights we gained along the way.” This is precisely why 94% of B2B marketers cite “trust” as the key to success.
If you're wondering exactly what kind of content to write, check out the Elephant Blog. We share content packed with insights, perspectives, and know-how from our team members.
✅ Practical Tips! Action Item
: Don’t use AI-generated drafts as-is. Be sure to go through a process that adds your own unique voice and authenticity, such as including interviews with team members, behind-the-scenes project stories, and accounts of both failures and successes.
Marketing in the AI Era: Be Discovered by AI and Chosen by Humans
If you’ve reviewed the seven conditions so far, you’ve likely noticed an important pattern. Conditions 1 through 5 are closely aligned with “the language of machines” (structure, schema, entities, clusters), while conditions 6 and 7 are closely aligned with “the language of people” (purchasing psychology, experience, perspective, trust).
If you want to excel at B2B marketing in the age of AI, I believe these two conditions must be met simultaneously.
💡Content that’s machine-friendly but lacks a unique perspective may be cited by AI, but it won’t move buyers.
💡Content with a great perspective but no structure will end up being nothing more than an AI-generated response, even if it’s well-written.
Ultimately, the brands that make it onto a customer’s shortlist will be those that combine a “structure that AI can recommend” with a “perspective that buyers trust.” This is the new competitive formula in B2B marketing today, as revealed by the dozens and hundreds of research reports I’ve collected over the past three months. 👀
What if AI doesn't know our brand? Now is the time to start.
Once you’ve checked all seven conditions, you might be thinking, “I get it, but where do I start?” Keeping up with SEO is challenging enough, so you may feel like you don’t have the time or resources to tackle GEO as well.
That’s why Elephant Company is here! Elephant Company is a reliable partner for B2B companies, dedicated to solving exactly these kinds of challenges.
👌Here'swhat Elephant does!
- We optimize our website to ensure it is cited by search engines, using structures and strategies tailored to the AI search environment.
- We build websites that generate leads even in the age of AI.
- We create high-quality brand content—from corporate blogs and LinkedIn posts to eBooks—that drives results.
- We design lead nurturing scenarios that drive real conversions.
- We create marketing dashboards that allow you to track the performance of your content with precise metrics.
To ensure you make it onto customers’ shortlists even in the age of AI, Elephant will be with you every step of the way—from start to finish.
