image: remix of a flork
When I worked on the product side, marketing felt clear. You had to understand your user, build something useful, and communicate it honestly. Agencies, though, are different beasts (I’ve been on that side as well). They thrive on complexity. They need new jargon to keep selling discovery calls. GEO (generative engine optimization) is heaven for that type – it’s just nebulous enough to justify a monthly retainer filled with “AI-readiness assessments” and “content retraining packages.” And most of it, truthfully, adds no real value to the business or the user.
What really bothers me about GEO is that it doubles down on the industrial content machine that already wrecked the internet…
image: remix of a flork
When I worked on the product side, marketing felt clear. You had to understand your user, build something useful, and communicate it honestly. Agencies, though, are different beasts (I’ve been on that side as well). They thrive on complexity. They need new jargon to keep selling discovery calls. GEO (generative engine optimization) is heaven for that type – it’s just nebulous enough to justify a monthly retainer filled with “AI-readiness assessments” and “content retraining packages.” And most of it, truthfully, adds no real value to the business or the user.
What really bothers me about GEO is that it doubles down on the industrial content machine that already wrecked the internet. SEO filled the web with keyword-stuffed, regurgitated sludge. GEO will do it with auto-generated LLM sludge. We’re now training future models on data that was artificially inflated to sound optimized for machines. So the next generation of models will be trained on synthetic content designed for older models – and quality will just keep sinking in a recursive spiral. Truth is, most people claiming to optimize for “the future of AI search” are just optimizing for the next invoice.