Why We’re Starting Our AI Journey with Generative Engine Optimization

I didn’t start thinking seriously about Generative Engine Optimization because it sounded trendy. I started thinking about it because, sometime in late 2025, our website traffic stopped behaving the way it always had — and none of the usual explanations fully made sense.

We quickly went through the list: we hadn’t stopped investing in SEO, our content hadn’t dropped in quality, paid spend was steady. And yet, fewer people were arriving on our site, even though demand clearly hadn’t disappeared.

If you’re a retailer, there’s a good chance you noticed something similar.

At AI Festival Asia 2026 (AIFA), during a panel on inventory intelligence and shopper insights, it finally clicked for me: the problem wasn’t that people had stopped searching. It was that search had stopped sending people anywhere. 

 From Left to Right: Moderator Mr Edmund Vong, Senior Lecturer, School of Business and Services, ITE, Panelist: - Mr Xavier Lee, CEO of Jumpstart Commerce, Mr Alan Ho, CEO of Good Bards, Mr Lance Ng, CEO of Searix.

Search Didn’t Die — Clicking Did

Throughout 2025, Google quietly crossed a line. AI Overviews went from being an experiment to emerging as the default experience for a huge range of commercial and informational queries.

Customers still typed questions, and they just got answers without leaving Google's search result page.

That shift sounds subtle, but it’s seismic if your business depends on being discovered online. When AI summarizes “best running shoes for flat feet” and names three brands, everyone else effectively disappears — even if they technically “rank.” 

For big marketplaces, this is annoying but manageable. For local and mid-sized retailers already operating on thin margins, it’s existential. 

That’s when I stopped thinking of SEO as a growth lever and started thinking of it as table stakes. 

Why SEO Alone Isn’t Enough Anymore

Traditional SEO assumes one thing: that visibility leads to clicks.

Generative AI breaks that assumption.

Today, the real question isn’t:

“Can we rank?”

It’s:

“Will an AI engine understand us well enough to recommend us at all?”

That’s where Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) comes in.

GEO isn’t about gaming algorithms. It’s about speaking to the algorithm in a language it understands, making GEO the intermediary between you and your customer.

If AI is the new front door, GEO is how you make sure you’re not locked out.

Mr Alan Ho, CEO & Co-founder of Good Bards

How I Explain GEO to My Team

Here’s the simplest way I’ve found to describe it internally:

• SEO helps people find you

• GEO helps AI trust you

• AEO helps assistants answer with you

If an AI engine can’t clearly extract:

• what you sell

• who it’s for

• why it’s credible

• whether it’s available

then you don’t exist in its universe,  no matter how good your product is.

That realization was uncomfortable, but clarifying.

What We Changed First (And Why)

We didn’t start by chasing shiny tools or rewriting everything. We started by asking a boring but necessary question:

If an AI tried to explain our business in one paragraph, would it get it right?

In many cases, the honest answer was: probably not.

So we focused on fundamentals that AI actually depends on:

1. Structure before creativity

Clear product data. Consistent descriptions. Proper schema. Not exciting,  but essential.

2. Fewer opinions, more answers

AI doesn’t reward clever copy. It rewards clarity. We rewrote content to explicitly answer real customer questions instead of dancing around them.

3. Measuring the right thing

Rankings matter less than mentions. If AI engines were citing competitors and not us, we treated that as a loss — even if traffic hadn’t dropped yet.

Why GEO Can’t Live in a Silo

One thing the AIFA panel got absolutely right: GEO only works if it’s integrated.

• SEO still pays the bills today

• GEO protects you from disappearing tomorrow

• AEO captures high-intent moments when people ask for something right now

If you ignore any one of these, you create blind spots in the customer journey — and blind spots are expensive.

As a founder, I don’t care about frameworks for their own sake. I care about not being dependent on a single discovery channel I can't control.

Tools Matter — But Judgment Matters More

Yes, platforms help. Automation helps. Dashboards help. We use tools to generate schema, track AI visibility, and spot gaps faster than a human team could.

But no tool replaces judgment. Someone still has to decide:

• what not to optimize

• where diminishing returns kick in

• when clarity beats cleverness

That’s leadership work, not technical work.

What This Means for Retailer Right Now

AI-powered search isn’t coming. It’s already here.

Your customers are already asking AI what to buy.Your competitors are already being cited.And the cost of inaction compounds quietly.

Starting with GEO isn’t about chasing the next buzzword. It’s about acknowledging a simple reality: If machines increasingly decide what gets recommended, retailers need to make sure their businesses are understandable to machines.

That’s not hype. That’s survival. 

And honestly? The retailers who win won’t be the loudest or the biggest. They’ll be the ones who adapted early, stayed practical, and treated AI not as magic — but as infrastructure.