Your brand is more likely to be cited in AI-generated search responses when it is clearly understood, consistently referenced, technically accessible and trusted across multiple sources. AI search engines do not simply “rank” pages. They retrieve, compare and summarise information from websites, social platforms, reviews, forums, PR coverage and other authority signals.

For brands, this means the goal is no longer just to rank on Google. 

The goal is to become a reliable answer.

The short answer: make your brand the clearest, most trusted answer

To increase your chance of being cited by AI platforms such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and other answer engines, your brand should:

Make key pages answer-first

Build topical authority around customer questions

Keep technical SEO strong so AI crawlers can access your content

Earn trusted mentions beyond your own website

Use structured data to clarify meaning

Create content that reflects real customer needs, not generic AI copy

Monitor how your brand appears in AI responses

As Steve Grant, Managing Director and Co-Founder of Figment, said during Pimento’s Marketing Spice webinar:

“It’s all about being the answer.”

That is the core shift from SEO to GEO, Generative Engine Optimisation.

AI search cites brands it can understand, trust and verify

AI-generated search responses are built from patterns of evidence. Your website matters, but it is not the only signal.

Anthony Barone, Co-Founder and Managing Director of StudioHawk UK, explained that AI platforms look beyond your site:

“They’re going to bounce off those other sources to try and verify who you are.”

That means your brand’s visibility in AI search depends on consistency across your website, LinkedIn, YouTube, Reddit, reviews, Google Business Profile, digital PR, third-party articles and relevant industry mentions.

Your website is still the source you control

Your website remains the most important place to define your brand clearly. It is the one digital asset you can fully control.

AI systems need your site to answer basic questions quickly:

Who are you?

What do you do?

Who do you help?

What problems do you solve?

Why should your brand be trusted?

Where is your evidence?

Why is your answer better than a generic one?

If those answers are buried, vague or written only for traditional keywords, AI systems may struggle to retrieve and cite your content.

Topical authority matters more than isolated page quality

A single optimised page is not enough. AI search engines look for depth and consistency across a topic.

To build topical authority, create connected content around the questions your audience is already asking. For example:

How does AI search affect brand visibility?

What is GEO?

How is GEO different from SEO?

How should CMOs measure AI search visibility?

What makes a brand trustworthy in AI-generated answers?

How do paid search, SEO and AI visibility work together?

Each article should answer one clear question, link to related pages and reinforce your brand’s expertise.

AI search rewards original insight, not generic content

Generic AI-written content is unlikely to make a brand distinctive. The webinar speakers repeatedly warned against content that simply repeats what everyone else is publishing.

The strongest GEO asset is original expertise. This can include:

Proprietary research

Expert commentary

Customer insight

First-hand experience

Sector-specific examples

Webinar discussions

Client learnings

Contrarian but well-supported views

Structured data helps, but it is not a substitute for clarity

Schema markup, headings, internal links, FAQs and clean page structure all help search engines and AI systems understand your content.

But structured signals only support the answer. They do not create authority on their own.

Use structured data to clarify:

Organisation details

Author credentials

FAQs

Articles

Events

Reviews

Products or services

Breadcrumbs

Then make sure the visible page content is just as clear as the markup.

Brand mentions are becoming as important as backlinks

Traditional SEO focussed heavily on backlinks. GEO also values brand mentions, citations and third-party confirmation.

To improve AI retrievability, brands should aim to be mentioned in credible places where their audience and AI systems can verify relevance.

These include:

Industry publications

Partner websites

Review platforms

Webinars and event pages

Podcasts

YouTube descriptions

LinkedIn posts

Relevant forums

News coverage

Expert roundups

The goal is not simply more mentions. The goal is consistent, high-quality evidence that your brand belongs in the answer.

Expert insights: Pimento Member Views

Does the shift to AI discoverability require a rethink of paid media?

Yes, but paid media’s role is indirect rather than algorithmic. AI systems do not cite brands based on ad spend, but they do rely on signals shaped by paid activity.

As AI reduces clicks and increases zero-click behaviour, paid media becomes more important for driving awareness, search demand, reviews and brand mentions. These signals feed the wider ecosystem that AI systems observe and learn from.

This creates a dual challenge. Brands must influence both people and machines. While humans respond to creativity and emotion, AI responds to consistency, authority and relevance.

The key shift is towards brand-led paid strategy. Strong campaigns build recognition, trust and consistent positioning across channels. Paid media also amplifies earned and owned content, helping generate the signals that increase the likelihood of being cited in AI-generated search responses.

MORE DETAILS: The Grove Media

Brand-Led SEO Wins AI Citations

GEO is not a glorified version of SEO. The principles of both may overlap, but SEO aims to rank websites in link-based search results, whereas GEO focuses on getting cited in AI-generated answers. This is why GEO is not a matter of just publishing vast amounts of content. AI search tools need context, relevance, semantic fields and machine-readable answers to common questions. It goes far beyond the words that live on your website - think Reddit threads, third-party recommendations, YouTube videos and ongoing PR. 

But, the biggest realisation for me, and this might be because I am a writer by trade, is that GEO content should not be created at the cost of your brand identity,  tone-of-voice and individuality. Businesses are currently operating in a time where soulless, AI-generated “slop” is being pumped out to allegedly appease the machine. But what happens when a human being reads your content and does not like what they see? They are far less likely to spend money with you; because getting found is not the same as getting chosen. 

MORE DETAILS: Neely Khan at kahani

E-commerce Content Strategy: Specificity Wins in AI Search

Since search has shifted toward personalised AI and LLMs, e-commerce brands must focus on creating content with high information density to remain visible. In 2026, AI models do not just look for keywords; they scan for specific details to determine if a product is the right fit for a user’s unique query. To perform well, your content needs to be incredibly thorough, covering exactly who a product is for and who it is not for. By providing clear evidence of benefits and specific features, you educate both the customer and the AI. This level of detail allows LLMs to confidently recommend your brand because they have the "proof" needed to verify your quality. In this new landscape, being vague is a risk, while being specific is a competitive advantage.

How to win in AI search:

• Define your audience: Clearly state who the product is designed for and who should avoid it to help AI models match you to the correct personalised searches.

• Focus on utility: Detail every feature alongside its direct benefit so LLMs can synthesise your content into helpful answers for shoppers.

• Build AI trust: Use specific data and authoritative facts to increase the "verification confidence" of AI search engines, making them more likely to cite your brand.

• Educate the model: Treat your product pages as a training manual for the AI, providing enough depth that it can answer complex follow-up questions about your items.

High-quality content is now the primary signal for authority. If your descriptions are too thin, you become invisible to the AI agents that customers are using to make their buying decisions.

MORE DETAILS: Studiohawk

Why GEO is the second coming for earned media

Building your business into a brand that is both trusted and commercially viable is the holy grail for any brand and their marketing team.

However we all know that man/woman cannot live on word of mouth alone.

In this evolving age of the algorithm, how your next legion of fans find you and follow you, is worth a sleepless night or two.

SEO has always been a key player at the comm table, but if you're not on page one, you're dead.

GEO presents a new complimentary opportunity - before the great data scrape starts to contract, the opportunity is now to ensure our new AI friends are reading the right articles about you, to help them recognise and recommend your brand.

To win that battle, earned media is a vital cog in your marketing and search wheel.

Articulating your purpose and creating something newsworthy and insightful for the right journalists, not only unlocks earned media, but it also catnip to the likes of ChatGPT.

Cited links are from prioritised sites with a high domain value, from non paid media - with a dominant proportion written by influential journalists.

So whereas publishers are battling how to monetise their online audiences and produce content that Google likes -  feeding the right journalists with stories that appeal, makes you friends in the newsroom but also builds your brand within GEO.

MORE DETAILS: OlleyPR

The best way to be cited in AI search is to become the best answer

Brands that want to be cited in AI-generated search responses should stop thinking only about rankings and start thinking about answer-worthiness.

The brands most likely to win in AI search will be those that:

Know their customers’ real questions

Answer those questions clearly

Build authority across a topic

Make their content easy to retrieve

Earn trust beyond their own website

Keep technical SEO fundamentals strong

Add original insight that competitors cannot copy

In an AI-first search landscape, visibility belongs to brands that are clear, credible and consistently useful.

Contact us

Pimento connects brands with independent marketing agencies and specialists across the UK. Through the Pimento Independent Agency Network, brands can access expertise in SEO, GEO, AEO, paid search, social discovery, digital PR, brand strategy, content and performance marketing.

As search moves from blue links to AI-generated answers, brands need joined-up expertise. GEO is not just an SEO task. It involves content, technical performance, authority-building, paid media, social visibility, analytics and brand positioning.