SEO is Dead—GEO is Here and It's Changing Everything

Published on

March 7, 2025

SEO is Dead—GEO is Here and It's Changing Everything

BECOME A MEMBER TO KEEP READING

(It’s free)

Thank you for subscribing - keep scrolling to access your content.

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

Welcome back. Today, we’re talking about the seismic shift turning the internet on its head: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

For years, SEO was the game. Companies stuffed their sites with keywords, played the backlink lottery, and cranked out low-value blog posts just to game Google’s algorithm. And it worked—until it didn’t.

Now, AI-powered search engines—Perplexity, Gemini, Grok—don’t give a damn about your keyword density. They care about who’s actually worth listening to. If you’re peddling fluff, you're invisible.

Let’s break down why SEO is in hospice care and how this should impact your investing strategy.

The New Currency: Trust & Quality

The internet started out simple—if you were smart and credible, people listened. Then SEO hackers showed up and ruined the party with:

Keyword stuffing. (“Best running shoes 2024” copy-pasted a hundred times like an incantation to the Google gods.)
Clickbait garbage. (“You won’t believe what happens next!” Spoiler: nothing.)
Link farms and paid backlinks. (Congrats, you bought credibility. It’s useless now.)

Then AI search engines came along and torched all of it.

Let’s put this into serious perspective: in 2024, a whopping 112.6 million people in the U.S. were getting their AI fix.

That’s nearly one in three Americans plugged into the digital hype. As generative AI claims the crown for online searches, marketers need to stop dragging their feet and revamp their SEO and content strategies—unless they want to become relics in the content graveyard.

Adapt or get steamrolled.

Now, credibility matters more than backlinks, and AI understands why someone is searching, not just what they typed.

Translation? If your content isn’t useful, it’s toast.

The old SEO era was about tricking the system.

GEO is about deserving attention.

The SEO Industrial Complex is Collapsing (And It’s Hilarious)

"SEO is evolving to focus more on real value and less on hacks.”

For years, SEO-powered affiliate sites made bank by regurgitating low-effort, keyword-packed listicles and slapping affiliate links all over them.

Now? AI search is ripping them apart.

What companies are in freefall?

SEO tools like SEMrush & Ahrefs. Their whole business model just got kneecapped.
AdWords & affiliate-heavy businesses – AI search doesn’t serve ads or force people to click links—it just tells them the answer.
Google’s AdWords Empire. If Gemini can’t keep up with Perplexity, Google’s ad revenue train is running out of track.

This isn’t a tweak to SEO. It’s an extinction-level event.

Where the Smart Money is Going in the GEO Era

https://x.com/netconstructor/status/1897424849645265130

AI-Native or High-Trust Brands That Bypass Google – Businesses that build reputation through relevance and quality instead of relying on search rankings will win.

Celebrity-backed brands have a clear advantage with a built-in following that can rapidly establish trust and drive conversation.

Happy Products (Co-founded by Robert Downey Jr.)
And of course, GP’s own Nutcase, (Co-Founded by Ninja)

Curation Marketplaces – Trust-based ranking platforms - expert review hubs, niche industry aggregators - will skyrocket in value and entirely new business models will form.

Think next-gen Wirecutter or Trustpilot for AI search.

One example is Spate - helping companies lean into TikTok (social) data and AI predictions to stay relevant in AI search.

AI-Optimized Marketing Platforms – Keep an eye on companies that enable AI-driven content verification, experience personalization platforms, and trust analytics startups.

Bloomreach (big player) & Coframe (upstart) are tailoring content to maximize experiences and relevance for users - a big plus for GEO.