Before You Optimize for AI Search, You Need to Understand How Your Buyers Use It
As AI becomes a primary discovery channel, companies are rushing to implement Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) tactics to increase visibility across platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. Logic being, if buyers are discovering brands, products, and expertise through AI-generated answers, then showing up there becomes increasingly important.
The problem is that most organizations are starting in the wrong place.
Many lack a clear understanding of how their customers actually use AI. They do not know which platforms buyers rely on, the questions they ask, or where AI fits into the decision-making process. Without that foundation, it is difficult to determine specific GEO activities that will tangibly impact visibility.
And visibility is only part of the equation. The bigger question is how AI is reshaping customer behavior.
AI is changing how people discover information, evaluate options, build trust, and make decisions. Organizations that fail to understand these shifts risk optimizing for outcomes they do not fully understand. The AI Discovery Framework was developed to help organizations understand this change before deciding how to respond.
Why It Matters
Most organizations approach GEO as if it were a new version of SEO. It is not. Companies that get this right focus on how their customers are using AI.
Knowing how buyers use AI leads to better strategic decisions, stronger authority building, more focused content priorities, and ultimately greater visibility across AI platforms.
The Missing Layer in Most GEO Programs
Most GEO efforts center on rankings, citations, prompts, and content production. But AI visibility is the result of a much larger system.
Different buyers use AI in different ways. They ask different questions, trust different sources, use different platforms, and rely on AI at different stages of the buying journey. Yet many GEO strategies assume a uniform user behavior. That assumption creates blind spots, while organizations that understand these differences gain a meaningful advantage.
The AI Discovery Framework
A proper GEO program connects customer research, AI visibility analysis, website architecture, content development, third-party authority and ongoing measurement.
Our GEO framework consists of six phases:
- Measurement: Track performance and use those insights to continuously improve the program.
- Audit: Understand how customers use AI and where your brand currently stands.
- Strategy: Determine the prompts, audiences and topics you need to win.
- Foundation: Make your website and brand information easy for AI systems to understand.
- Content: Create useful, authoritative and citation-worthy information.
- Authority: Build external signals that increase trust in the brand.
Measurement
Measurement closes the loop and helps improve the program over time.
Track how often the brand appears across priority prompts, where it ranks, how it is described, which sources are being cited, and how performance changes against competitors. Metrics such as Share of Answer, citation rate, prompt coverage, sentiment and position can help identify where progress is being made and where gaps remain.
The goal is to turn AI visibility into something that can be measured, diagnosed and continuously improved.
Audit
The audit establishes where the brand currently stands and how customers are using AI within the category.
It should examine customer behavior, priority competitors, existing AI visibility, citations, brand positioning and the website itself. The objective is to understand where the brand appears today, where competitors are stronger, and what may be limiting visibility.
This creates the baseline for the entire GEO program and helps separate genuine opportunities from assumptions.
Strategy
Strategy determines where the brand should compete and what needs to change to improve visibility.
This means defining the audiences, topics and prompts that matter most, then prioritizing them based on customer relevance and commercial value. It also means deciding which AI platforms matter, what success looks like and where resources should be focused first.
The result is a clear GEO roadmap built around the conversations that can actually influence the business.
Foundation
The foundation makes the brand and its information easier for AI systems to understand.
Website architecture, structured data, entity information, internal linking, crawlability and consistency all contribute to how clearly machines can interpret a company, its products and its expertise. Important information should be accessible, specific and consistent across the site.
A strong foundation reduces ambiguity and gives AI systems clearer information to work with when interpreting the brand.
Content
Content gives AI systems useful information to surface, explain and cite.
The focus should be on answering the questions that exist within the priority prompt universe. This can include educational resources, comparison guides, original research, product information, FAQs and deeper authority content.
Useful GEO content should provide clear answers, credible evidence and enough context for both buyers and AI systems to understand why the information matters.
Authority
Authority builds the external signals that increase confidence in the brand and its claims.
Earned media, expert commentary, independent reviews, third-party citations, industry publications, research and relevant community discussions can all contribute. These sources provide validation beyond what a company says about itself.
The stronger the relationship between the brand, its priority topics and credible third-party sources, the stronger the signals AI systems have when deciding what information and brands to surface.
The Real Insight
AI visibility is an outcome and should not be treated as a standalone strategy. Visibility is the product of a larger system that requires sequential inputs. Each layer informs the next. Understanding how buyers use AI reveals the conversations that matter. Those conversations shape authority-building efforts. GEO then helps make that authority visible to AI systems.
Organizations that begin with customer intelligence are often better positioned to improve visibility than those that begin with tactics alone.
By the Numbers
What are are seeing in terms of how buyer behavior is shifting in relation to AI search.
According to TechCrunch Google reported that AI Overviews now reach more than 2 billion monthly users globally, making AI-generated answers one of the largest discovery surfaces on the internet.
Research from Forrester found that 94% of buyers now use AI during the buying process, and generative AI was identified as a more important information source than vendor websites, product experts, or sales representatives.
Recent research from McKinsey & Company found that half of consumers intentionally seek out AI-powered search experiences and that many now view AI-assisted search as a primary source for purchase decisions.
Bottom Line
AI visibility is not created through optimization alone. It is earned through a deep understanding of customer behavior, information discovery, and authority.
Looking Ahead
The AI Discovery Framework helps organizations understand how AI influences customer discovery and allows for operationalizing those insights.
That requires a broader system encompassing research, content strategy, earned media, authority development, technical optimization, measurement, and continuous refinement.