10/29/2026
More than a few clients have asked me some version of the same question lately: “Someone told me I’m missing out on GEO (or AIO). Do I need to spend money to fix that?” 😟
Short answer: probably not. 🙂
I’ve been doing SEO since 1998. In my view, good SEO already covers 90%+ of what’s being sold as GEO, AIO, or whatever this month’s acronym is. Two respected voices in our industry recently published pieces that back that up.
📊 Marie Haynes looked at 100 Google Analytics properties and more than 145 million sessions. All AI chatbots combined sent less than 1% of the traffic Google organic did, and Google still drove about 96.5% of the conversions. Her take is that GEO is a distraction from the AI search that actually sends people to businesses, which is Google.
🛒 Ann Smarty, writing in Practical Ecommerce, says to put SEO first. Google’s AI features pull from Google’s index, so ranking well is the most predictable way to show up in AI answers. She also hasn’t seen a single site that ranks well on Google but is invisible in ChatGPT.
A few points that stuck out for me:
✅ The fundamentals haven’t changed: helpful content, a fast and clean site, and a consistent reputation across the web.
✅ What works for Google is also what makes your site easy for AI to read and trust.
✅ AI visitors convert well, but there are still very few of them. It’s not a reason to move your budget around.
✅ Track the conversions that matter to your business (calls, form fills, sales), not “AI visibility scores.”
So if someone is pressuring you to buy a GEO package, take a breath. 😌 Ask them what they’ll do that good SEO doesn’t already cover. The honest answer is usually “not much.”
If you’d like a second opinion on where your site stands, I’m happy to take a look. 👋
Links to both articles are in the comments. 👇
