The Syndication Shuffle Webinar Series: Episode 4

Watch the Recording now!

Episode 4: GEO Foundations

AI is changing how shoppers search and how brands get recommended. Traditional SEO focused on ranking. GEO focuses on inclusion in AI-generated answers.

In this session, Alexis Gunn shares practical insights into how Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) intersects with product content strategy.

Let’s chat about:

•  What GEO is and why it matters for syndication
•  How GEO + SEO work together
•  What makes product content “recommendable” by AI

This session builds on the foundations and processes covered in earlier episodes, bringing the focus to visibility, recommendation, and the next evolution of syndication content strategy.

Continue the conversation and dive deeper into GEO concepts in our new blog series, starting with The End of Pages, The Rise of Answers and Is GEO > SEO? Why Executive Focus Must Shift

Transcript

Host: Georgette Suggs (Director, Data & Content Services, Sitation)
Guest: Alexis Gunn (AI Prompt Design and Content Specialist, Sitation)

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Georgette Suggs: Hey, everybody! Welcome to the Syndication Shuffle. This is episode 4. And today we’re going to focus on GEO foundations. But before we get started, I want to introduce myself. My name is Georgette, I’m one of the hosts of the Syndication Shuffle. And, normally Jessica is here with us, but she is out at a conference, so she won’t be here. And we have Alexis, our wonderful, guest speaker here today. I just, just want to start out by saying, my goodness, I didn’t introduce myself other than say I am the host of this session, so I’ll start out, I’ll just let you know I work with a consulting company called Sitation. We have started, this webinar to kind of just talk about syndicating content out to retailers, operators, websites. And we are really focused on product information management, and have been for a long time. And I’ve been doing it for about 20 years. Alexis, can you introduce yourself?

Alexis Gunn: 01:07 Yeah, hi guys, I’m Alexis Gunn, also working at Sitation, and I’m an AI prompt design and content specialist, so I work with our in-house tool, Draft, which produces content In the masses very quickly, and do some things with optimization, such as search engine optimization, and then now, GEO, or Generative Engine Optimization, which is what we’re here to talk about today.

Georgette Suggs: 01:32 So, just a quick, an additional rundown on what is the syndication shuffle. We are, like I said, we work with Sitation, we work with a lot of different systems, operate, you know, systems for managing content. But we also really want to focus this webinar on winning that last mile. How do you get your content from your system out to the retailers, the operators, the websites? How do you navigate all those systems that they have, and, you know, what they’re doing with their content? And of course, like we said, today, we’re going to focus on GEO foundations. 

Now, in past webinars, we’ve talked about your PIM, we’ve talked about your processes, we’ve talked about how to send, and we’ve talked about different syndication things. We’ve had a guest come in who was a brand owner, and she talked about how her organization is set up and how her PIM is set up. Today, we’re just kind of changing a little bit of our direction to talk about GEO. So, Alexis, you said generative engine optimization. I just want, I’m gonna take us a little bit off here. There is SEO, which is search engine optimization, right? So, search engine, generative engine, can you tell me, with search engine, we’re talking about keywords, right? Keywords, and just, you know, like, I go in and I search for red, and it’s gonna return a bunch of red stuff to me, right? 

Alexis Gunn: 03:11 Right.

Georgette Suggs: 03:11 So, Tell me, what’s the difference between that and GEO? 

Alexis Gunn: 03:16 Yeah, so think of search engine as being, you know, named as a result on a search engine. On Google, on being, you know, whenever you, yeah, type in air fryer, and what comes up whenever you type that in on Google, that’s SEO at play. The GEO, on the other hand, is whenever you type in that same thing, or a query into, you know, an AI platform, like OpenAI, and getting named there, that’s GEO. So, very similar, it’s just about being named in different places.

Georgette Suggs: 03:49 So, GEO is about where you’re searching. So, if I’m searching on Google, I’m not getting GEO responses? 

Alexis Gunn: 04:00 I mean, you will with Google AI Overview, but overall, in how people traditionally use Google, that’s SEO, and not so much GEO.

Georgette Suggs: 04:09 So if I go, hey, Google, and ask it a question, it’s gonna give me an SEO response.

Alexis Gunn: 04:14 for the most part, we’re still discovering how, you know, Google AI plays into that, but yeah, if you’re just doing traditional searches, you’re looking for links and such, that’s SEO at play.

Georgette Suggs: 04:25 Okay. Okay, and Siri, I don’t want to ignore Siri and all the other guys out there, yes. Yes, they’re all out there. Okay, so GEO is a specific area of search. I have to use AI, so whenever I go into whichever solution I’m using, if I say yes, give me AI assistance, because now they’re all asking, right, do you want to use AI for this? If I say yes, then GEO matters. 

Alexis Gunn: 04:57 Yes, CEO is now at play to be named.

Georgette Suggs: 04:59 Okay, so why does it matter? 

Alexis Gunn: 05:02 Yeah, so we are seeing a shift in how people are searching. We know right now that, how many of it? Let’s see, let me go back and look at my notes here, but there are some major findings. We know that 64% of shoppers, they’re already using AI tools. like ChatGPT or Amazon Rufus, and highest among those are Gen Z at 79%, and Millennials at 77%. 

So, people are adopting this, and we anticipate that this number’s only gonna go up, that people are gonna continue to use AI rather than traditional search, just because it takes, you know, the guesswork out of it for you. You don’t have to do the research. AI is going to do the research. The research for you, you know, to say, I want a razor, and I have very sensitive skin. Rather than me scrolling through, you know, link after link to see what people are saying, and, you know, what does the company say about it? AI’s just doing it for me. And so if you’re not being named in there, then you have, you know, that means being excluded from even the shopper of what they’re considering.

Georgette Suggs: 06:12 Yeah, I feel like whenever I do searches now, and I guess I must be using Google AI, because now I get this condensed version of responses. I get more of a story than where I used to just get these rows and rows and rows and rows of stuff. now I’m getting a story that I can read whenever I search on something, so that’s kind of cool. I heard you say something… Well, I’m gonna come back to that here in just a minute. 

I’ve got a question, but I’m gonna hold it for a minute, I still want to go back just a tiny bit to SEO and say, Is GEO going to replace SEO, or do we still have SEO and GEO? I mean, what’s the…how are those functioning? Are they functioning together or not?

Alexis Gunn: 07:05 They function in tandem with each other. Without one, you will lose the other. You know, GEO, if you really wanted to, like, bring it to its bare bones, it’s really good SEO. It brings SEO to another level. But it does not, by any means, replace it. 

If you, you know. spend all your time on GEO and nothing on SEO, odds are you’d probably lose your market share, because there’s still people traditionally searching, and like I said, SEO feeds into GEO. 

There’s a pretty cool diagram that we have where it shows, you know, what is SEO, what is GEO, and where they overlap. And where they overlap is where that magic happens of, you know, people are still searching in the same way, and at the end of the day, if you’re looking for a pen, and you tell, you know, AI, I want a great black pen. Well, if your product doesn’t say pen anywhere, it doesn’t know that that’s what, you know, that’s what this is to recommend it. So, SEO still plays, still plays a key role here, and it’s by no means replacing GEO. You need to now learn how to do both.

Georgette Suggs: 08:13 So, we gotta do both. And then I’m gonna go to the question that I had earlier, because you said to be named by GEO. be named by GEO, and we’ve got this next slide, where I asked you about this. I’m like, is this some kind of industry term, right? This getting named by AI? What is this? Is this an industry term, or is this just a way that you talk about it? Tell me about getting named by AI. 

Alexis Gunn: 08:43 So this is the way that I talk about it. People talk about it many, many different ways, but, you know, basically, whenever you go into AI, and you say, you know, I need a pen, I’m signing a bunch of documents, and I’m left-handed, and I need it to not smudge. AI will say, okay, you know, here are 3 recommendations that I would make based off of what you’ve said. And we’ll get into how, you know, how they determine that. But they’ll say, here’s 3 pens. That we say that you should buy. And so, those 3 pens, they can be all by the same company, or they can be different, but it’s getting named for AI to say, yeah, I’m gonna recommend this pen by this company. And if you’re not showing up there, if you’re not in those 3 recommendations, or maybe you asked for 5 recommendations, whatever it is, well then as a shopper, you’re not even on their radar. So if you’re not showing up, then it’s like, well, I’m not even considering you, because I already have these 3 great options in front of me, and they told me why they’re great options, so why would I continue to look elsewhere? 

Georgette Suggs: 09:40 How do I get there, though? Right? I’m looking at this list of bullets you have here, and I’m seeing authority, and I’m assuming authority has something to do with me, my company, getting named by AI whenever somebody is searching for a pin for a left-handed person. What makes AI go to Pull my data. My content. 

Alexis Gunn: 10:01 Yeah, so all these factors, I would say, feed into authority, but authority being your top one, and that means that AI, you know, it has access to the web, and it’s seeing what are people saying? So, reviews feeds into authority. Are people saying, this is a great pen, it lasts me, you know, if you’re a student, it lasts me all semester, I don’t have hand fatigue, whatever that is, you know, whatever the qualifier is that you’re looking for, are reviews echoing that? And then, not only are the reviews echoing it, but if AI decides, well, I’m gonna go on Amazon and Walmart and see what their PDPs have to say, are your PDPs also echoing that and saying, you know, yeah, this is great for left-handed writers, and it’s not gonna smudge, it’s, you know, quick drying, which then you can associate with.

Georgette Suggs: 10:44 So that’s like my features, right? I’m writing in my features, AI is reading, like, my bullets as well as my titles, right? Yeah. 

Alexis Gunn: 10:53 description, it’s reading all the information to see, well, what are retailers saying about this product? What are reviews saying about this product? And then I’ll also look at, you know, what are different, maybe blogs, like, you know, Southern Living, top 25 things to buy for your stocking stuffer, or in this case, you know, what top 25 things should be on your school shopping list, your back-to-school list. And so it’s gonna look in all these different places, and if all those places are echoing the same thing, they’re all saying, this is great for left-handed riders, it’s no smudge, it’s quick drawing, you know, whatever it is, those qualifiers that you’re after. That builds authority, because AI is seeing it in so many different places that it is like, well, this must be true if it’s showing up on five separate sites that, you know, aren’t related to each other. Then, you know, by deductive reasoning. I’m gonna say it’s true, and so I’m gonna make this recommendation. 

Now, on the flip side, if the reviews are, this is not for left-handed riders, it’s terrible, it’s smudged on me, but your PDP says it’s great, and you’re not making these lists, or being, you know, a razor isn’t being recommended by a dermatologist, now you’re losing authority, because it’s like, well, These actually aren’t adding up, and so as it’s not adding up. I don’t actually know if that’s true, so I don’t think I’m gonna recommend it.

Georgette Suggs: 12:10 So, can I control or can a brand, can a manufacturer, control the sites that AI goes to? I don’t think, I don’t know, but I don’t think I, as a brand owner, have control over what, who, where Google AI goes to search, right? So, how do I try to? What’s the answer there? 

Alexis Gunn: 12:40 Yeah, so the first thing is your data clean? So, you know, in Salsify, do you have all the correct data in there? Are you feeding, you know, your retailers the correct information that it needs that AI is able to go surf? And the same thing with copy. Is your copy optimized? SEO plays into here as well. Is your copy, you know, search engine optimized? Is your copy echoing what reviews are saying? Is it true what you’re saying? You know, if you say that this is for left-handed people, but reviews are saying, no, it’s not. Well, let’s look again, and let’s see, are you communicating the right things to people on how this product is supposed to work?

Alexis Gunn: 13:21 I was gonna say, and the last thing with reviews, you know, making sure that you’re prompting people in the right way to ask those questions. You know, if you’re saying it’s for left-handed people, you know, a follow-up of, you know, can… tell me about this. Did it work for you? Are you a left-handed writer? Did it smudge for you? And there are other ways. For example, with Reddit, you could, as a brand, host an Ask Me Anything. or post-post inside of things. We saw this work really well, with Legos. Legos went into one of the Reddit subthreads that people have on Legos and said, hey. This new thing is, like, gonna pop off here soon, and it’s gonna, you know, be a sale, and, you know, check us out, or keep that in the back of your mind. And then someone from Reddit actually then went and wrote a blog to say, hey, they announced this thing on Reddit. It was announced nowhere else. it was, you know, done by their CEO or VP or whoever it was that posted it, and that gained traction. So then AI was able to say, oh, it’s in Reddit, oh, someone wrote a blog post about it, and then also see, like, the after effects once it went live. So there are different ways that… no, maybe you can’t, you know, tell someone exactly what to write in a review, but there are ways to influence it.

Georgette Suggs: 14:35 Yeah, boy, you gotta watch out with that one, though.

 Alexis Gunn: 14:38  yeah.

Georgette Suggs: 14:39 I’m gonna ask them a question about something, be ready for all the answers, right? 

Alexis Gunn: 14:44 Absolutely.

Georgette Suggs: 14:44 Yeah, so now I have heard somewhere, that, like, different, different, AIs, or LLMs, right, these are all different… LLMs, or whatever. They might have… specific places, like, when you said Reddit, I feel like I have heard somewhere that, you know, there is a… there is a specific AI search engine that likes to… that really is connected to Reddit, right? Yes. So, are there… is there ways that manufacturers or brand owners can, like. they know, okay, this search engine really focuses, like, Reddit is one of its trusted sources, so I want to be posting on Reddit. Or, you know, this other search engine really looks at Amazon a bunch, you know, so I need to make sure I’ve got Amazons on… Amazons, reviews on Amazon’s, or whatever. Is there… Is there… is there logic in that? And also, is there any way to know which AIs which LLMs or AI search engines are looking at which sites. 

Alexis Gunn: 15:49 Yeah, so there’s a lot of research going in, I would say even from our side, to figure out, you know, what LLMs, you know, which ones are relying on what, what information. And happy to, you know, keep… keep looking into that. I think in the way of, you know, how do you prioritize it? I would ask you the same question of, well, how do you prioritize Amazon versus Walmart versus Target versus Kroger? Who is your top performer? Where are you seeing, you know, the most… bang for your buck, and that’s what I would say. You’re gonna use that same logic whenever it comes to where are you investing in… in terms of, you know, is it Reddit? Is it Quora? Is it other communities? Do you need to actually spend money to get dermatologists recommended? Like, what does that look like? And companies are gonna have to decide for themselves, you know, what’s the most important channel, in a sense, and, you know, treat it that way of. Do you really want to be named on OpenAI, or do you really want to be named on Perplexity? Now, of course you want to be named everywhere, but the reality is, you know, we can’t be everything to everyone, and so, you know, I am curious as to research to see, you know. what are consumers using the most? What’s, you know, the most consumer-friendly? Is it OpenAI? Is it Perplexity? Who? And then go from there of, well, okay, well, what do you want to optimize?

Georgette Suggs: 17:06 And we’re… and we train them, too, right? We train our AI agents, our agentic AI agents, right? We train them on what… where do we go… where do we go searching? Where do we go look at stuff? Where do we shop? So that… that kind of feeds into it a little bit too, right? You know, it’s gonna look where I want to go, and it’s just gonna feed my… my, prevalent, I guess, my pre… my preferences, right? Based on what I prefer. Absolutely. 

Alexis Gunn: 17:36 Yeah, and what, you know, what have you searched in the past? Like, I can say, you know, I have OpenAI, and I have it, you know, with our company, and then I have it personally. And I can ask both of them the exact same question, and my recommendations are gonna look very different, because my history on, you know, Sitation OpenAI is very different than all my personal, and so, you know, what it has access to really matters, especially as you look at, like, different partnerships opening up, like Etsy and OpenAI, or Walmart and OpenAI.

Georgette Suggs: 18:03 Oh my goodness. 

Alexis Gunn: 18:04 We’re not, you know, totally sure how they’re gonna be sharing information with each other, but, you know, will OpenAI know that I bought certain pens on Walmart, and so is it going to continue to recommend that. We’re keeping a close eye on that, but know that, you know, there are some.

Georgette Suggs: 18:25 -Oh. My screen just stopped. Alexis stopped. Okay, good. Thank you for letting me know that. Alexis just stopped. That’s okay, we’re in good shape, I think.

 I am going to look and see if we have any other questions. And in the meantime, I will let you know. Alexis teaches about GEO too. She has, like, this multiple training sessions all about GEO that she teaches to manufacturers and brand owners, and so there’s a lot more to learn about GEO, and also SEO, all the AI stuff that’s out there, and we hope to have her come back on again at a later date to talk more about optimizing for GEO. Really, you know, some things to consider for that optimization for GEO is, you know. well, she was talking about, you know, this is a pen… this pen is great for left-handed writers, it’s smudge-proof, etc. Well, how do I know to say that, right? And where do I put that information? I don’t know if you all have seen, but I have seen some titles that are like paragraphs, right? And it’s like, I can’t even read it, because it’s just a title of something, and it’s really confusing. But, you know, is that where GEO is looking? Is that where the large language model is looking? The AI is looking to get that answer? Or can we put some stuff in the title, and some stuff in the feature benefits, and some stuff is just data? Will it pick all of that up and bring us back… bring our products back to the people who are doing the searching? So, So, there it is.

Alexis just posted a blog today, and the blog is, Is GEO > SEO? and Why Executive Focus Must Shift. That is posted on Sitation.com. And so, oh, look, and there, Aishia has posted a link to that blog here in this webinar. Keep track of Sitation.com. We will continue to post information as we learn. As you heard, Alexis is watching the research and doing research on her own to try and find out more and more about how the GEO is working, how all these large language models are changing up and using more and more content. There is lots of great information out there, and there’s lots of things we can do to feed that, or to encourage these AI agents to come to our content. One of the things that Alexis had on her list of to-dos was making sure that your content is in agreement.

 Hi, Alexis! Welcome back!

Alexis Gunn: 21:34 Hi, I’m so sorry!

Georgette Suggs: 21:39 That’s okay. I introduced everybody to your blog today, but I was also transitioning a little bit to that concept of making your content match, right? Whenever you have data. Whenever you say something is red. Make sure that it doesn’t say it’s blue. 

Alexis Gunn: 21:56 In the future benefits.

Georgette Suggs: 21:57 Right? You know, make sure that the content matches. And you need both of those, right? You were saying it earlier, you know, you’ve got the search engine, and you’ve got the generative AI searching, but you need them both, and you need them both to match. What happens if they don’t match, Alexis? 

Alexis Gunn: 22:14 So that’s where your authority falls, and that’s where you risk AI not naming you, because if it’s saying, well, your specs in Walmart say this is blue, but your description in Walmart and Amazon both say it’s red. I’m not totally sure what’s true here, so if someone’s, you know, specifically seeking a red pen, maybe I’m not gonna recommend it. Or maybe they’re seeking a blue pen, but I’m not sure if this is blue or not, so also not recommending it.

Georgette Suggs: 22:41 And the same thing with, like, weights, you know, sizes of things. 

Alexis Gunn: 22:45 Totally.

Georgette Suggs: 22:45 They drive me nuts. And everybody has seen, everybody has seen the examples of, you thought you bought this size, but when you got it, it was this size, you know? But having those sizes in more than one place, right? 

Alexis Gunn: 22:58 Yes, so making sure it’s showing up correctly across the board, and in every, every way. Your specs that you’re submitting to your different retailers that you have on your sites, and then in the copy itself. If it’s even mismatched a little bit, I mean, you’re, again, risking that authority that’s like, well, I don’t know if that’s true, so I’m not gonna recommend it.

Georgette Suggs: 23:18 So… I get this question from clients all the time, right? Retailers want all this data. They want all this very specific data. They want certifications. They want, you know, all your weights and dimensions. They want your colors. They want your ingredients, they want every… all the details, and they want them all in individual properties, in individual fields that you’re sending to them, right? But I have a lot of clients, they’re just like. 

Can I just write a good description, and good feature benefits and throw a bunch of images in there, and is that going to be okay? And then just leave all that… the details to themselves, and not send all that data to the retailer. Why is the retailer asking me for all this data? I don’t need it. What do you say to that, Alexis? And I really don’t have any idea what her answer is going to be 

Alexis Gunn: 24:05 You need it! You need it! Whenever you look at, let’s say, OpenAI, for example, you know, they’re opening up a channel-like thing with Salsify, they’re gonna ask you for all this information, and it’s because AI does value it. It wants to see what is all the information, like, what is everything to know about this product, because the reality is, all the specs. you know, you’re not going to necessarily fit every single thing into the description, and we know that, because there’s only so many characters, there’s only so much you could say. 

The specs really do matter, because now it’s things that you’re… you can communicate, you know, more about this product and more information. And so, I would say, just at looking at, you know, what OpenAI asks for their spec feeds. If they saying it’s important. then it’s important for AI, which means you also need to do it for your retailers, and if for nothing else, so AI knows all this different information, and gives it that much more information to recommend you. Because if I’m asking, well, what’s the weight, and maybe you wrote, you know, the dimensions in… in the description, but you didn’t write the weight. Well, now it’s like, well, it’s not really fitting what you’re asking, so I’m not gonna name it. So, it matters. Write your specs in full, in wherever you’re syndicating from.

Georgette Suggs: 25:23 Get them all there, get them all there, yeah, that’s cool. So, we, you know, we know we want to bring you back, Alexis, to talk more about AI. But this is the first webinar. This is maybe the first time anybody’s seen or heard you talk about, generative AI, or just AI in general, whenever it comes to the syndication shuffle. So, what’s the one most important thing that if somebody, like. From this conversation we’ve had. That you think is the most important thing for people to remember from today. And then, what else is there to talk about? What can you come back and tell us more about in the future? 

Alexis Gunn: 26:03 Make sure everything matches. There’s absolutely nothing that exists in a silo anymore, so what’s on Amazon, what’s on Walmart, what’s on your Facebook, what’s on your Twitter, what’s on your .com? It all needs to be unified. If it exists in a silo, even kind of, you risk not being named by AI for whatever it is that it consumers.

Georgette Suggs: 26:28 Now, that doesn’t mean… that doesn’t mean that all the, like, the statements… it doesn’t mean that I have to say the exact same thing. It just means that the specs have to match, right? So I do use a different voice, I can use a different voice for Walmart and Amazon, but just make sure the data, the details that are in that are the same, right? 

Alexis Gunn: 26:46 Absolutely, like, if you’re gonna campaign back to school, then you need to campaign across the board for those… whatever products you’re choosing. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be everything, but every single, you know, if I’m doing a pencil, and the pencil, wherever that exists, needs to have, you know, not the same exact wording, but the same messaging. This is built for your back-to-school list, and it needs to exist across all of the ways that you communicate with customers. Retailers.com, different campaigns, all of it.

Georgette Suggs: 27:14 Interesting. Okay. And what else are you going to come back and talk to us about in the future? 

Alexis Gunn: 27:19 We’ve developed a copy life cycle, so a way to, like, put this into action, and what this means, you know, not just overall, but even whenever we think about micro-seasons. So, I know the holidays are a big one, but what about things like Father’s Day, Father’s Day, Summer. What are different ways, you know, that you can utilize your copy to feed into some of those queries, especially that we see in AI, those super niche things, and how, you know, how to do that at scale?

Georgette Suggs: 27:46 Cool. Well, we’ll try to get you back in January to tell us more about that, so that people can get ready for next year, right? 

Alexis Gunn: 27:53 Absolutely.

Georgette Suggs: 27:54 It’ll be a little late this year, but we’ll get everybody ready for next year. So, thank you so much for joining us. This has been great. It was really quick, and hey, the little glitch, but you came back, and you’re just doing great. 

Alexis Gunn: 28:06 Thank you. Thank you for having me. Excited to hopefully come back in the future.

Georgette Suggs: 28:10. This webinar is recorded. It will also be available on Sitation.com, as are all of our previous webinars. So, we know that there is, for some reason, like Wednesday at at noon, it’s like webinar heaven right now. There are so many going on. So, you can always go back and find this webinar or other webinars and rewatch them. And, there you go, and there’s the link to it, the Sitation.com slash webinars. And we look forward to talking to you again. 

Also, if you have ideas about what you would like for us to talk about, who you would like to bring in, and what kind of conversations you would like to have us to have with them, let us know. We are very happy to. We’ve got a bunch of people here with really great knowledge, and we know a lot of people with really great knowledge, and we’d be happy to bring them in and have some conversations with them. 

So, thank you for your time, and we will see you next time. Have a good one!