Search has changed, and brands need to catch up fast, according to IBM’s Alexis Zamkow (global lead of Marketing Transformation solutions) and Sandhya Ranganathan Iyer (associate partner – AI), speaking yesterday at Adobe Summit.

AI tools don’t just help people search. They answer questions, compare products, and recommend brands. In many cases, users never even visit a website.

That means if your brand isn’t part of the AI-generated answer, you may not be part of the decision.

To keep up, brands need more than new tactics. They need a system — a GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) playbook. Here’s a recap of their presentation, Adapt or Disappear: How Brands Win with AI-Powered Search.

The AI shift: You’re marketing to machines

AI agents now sit between you and your customer.

They take a complex market and simplify it. They decide what information to show. And they often speak on your behalf.

• “These machines are disintermediating the brand experience,” Zamkow said.

At the same time:

• Consumers are using AI for research and decisions
• Businesses are adopting it even faster
• Many searches now end without a click

Zamkow said an estimated 75% of search visibility could shift to AI agents in the next two years.

That’s why visibility today depends on being part of the answer itself.

The GEO playbook: 12 components every brand needs

To respond, the speakers outlined a 12-part playbook. It spans content, technology, and operations.

1. Strategic content foundations

Your content must tell one clear story — everywhere.

That includes your website, PR, social, and third-party mentions. If each channel says something different, AI won’t trust your brand.

For example, if your site highlights premium quality, but reviews focus on low price, that mixed message weakens your authority.

Consistency builds trust for people and machines.

2. Retrieval-grade passage standards

AI doesn’t rank webpages. It extracts answers. So your content must be easy to extract.

Good content looks like:

• Clear questions and answers.
• Short, focused sections.
• Direct language.

For example, instead of a long paragraph, write:

• Question: What are the best running shoes for beginners?
• Answer: A short, clear response

This makes it easier for AI to reuse your content in answers.

3. Technical foundations

Even great content won’t work if AI can’t read it.

Machines rely on:

• Clean HTML (not just visual design)
• Structured data (schema, metadata)
• Pages that load content directly

One example from the session: a beautiful website appeared to AI as “a headline and a blank page.”

If your content isn’t readable, it won’t be used.

4. On-site search + genAI search alignment

Start with your own site.

If your internal search — especially AI-powered search — works well, you’re already ahead.

Think of it this way: If your own system can’t find answers on your site, external AI tools won’t either

Strong internal search helps train your content for external visibility.

5. AI search citation qualification model

In GEO, the goal isn’t just to be mentioned. It’s to be cited.

• Mentions mean you show up.
• Citations mean AI trusts you.

AI looks for signals like:

• Clear expertise.
• Consistent messaging.
• Agreement across sources.

Zamkow called citations the “holy grail” of visibility.

6. Extraction optimization

AI tools pull content from many places and combine it.

To be included, your content must be:

• Easy to extract.
• Clearly structured.
• Rich in context.

If your content is hard to break apart, AI will skip it and use something else.

7. Real estate: third-party strategy

Your website is no longer your main source of visibility.

• 85% of mentions come from external domains.
• Third-party content drives most citations.

That includes:

• Reddit
• Social media
• Reviews and forums
• Media coverage

This means your PR and social teams are now critical to search success.

Your brand lives across the internet — not just on your site.

8. Measurement, KPIs, and reporting

Old metrics don’t tell the full story anymore.

Instead of just tracking clicks, you need to track:

• How often AI mentions your brand.
• Where you’re cited.
• Which platforms show your content.

The key question changes from “Did we get traffic?” to “Did AI recommend us?”

9. SOPs (standard operating procedures)

Consistency doesn’t happen by accident. Teams need clear rules for:

• How content is written.
• How it is structured.
• How it is published.

Without SOPs, different teams will create different formats. That confuses AI and weakens your visibility.

10. Prompting best practices

Search is now conversational.

While people still type keywords, they are increasingly describing their needs using more conversational language. For example:

• Old search: “running shoes”
• New search: “I’m training for a marathon. What shoes should I buy?”

Your content needs to match these types of questions.

That means thinking like the user — and writing like the answer.

11. Change management

This shift affects the whole organization.

Marketing, IT, PR, and product teams all play a role.

That means:

• Training teams on new workflows.
• Aligning goals and KPIs.
• Breaking down silos.

This is bigger than just a marketing update. It’s a company-wide change.

12. Governance + versioning

GEO is never finished.

AI systems change constantly. Competitors update content. Rankings shift fast.

To keep up, brands need:

• Ongoing monitoring.
• Regular content updates.
• Clear ownership of changes.

If your content becomes outdated, you can quickly lose your position in AI answers.

From SEO tactics to GEO systems

The GEO playbook reflects a larger change in how marketing works:

• From keywords to prompts.
• From links to citations.
• From websites to ecosystems.
• From traffic to answer eligibility.
• From campaigns to continuous content.

The focus has shifted to building a system that consistently feeds AI the right information.

This is now a leadership issue

This shift is already reaching the top of the organization.

In one example, a product leader asked why their brand didn’t show up in an AI recommendation. The issue quickly escalated beyond marketing.

• “This is not a problem for your SEO team,” Zamkow said. “This is at the CEO level.”

As AI becomes the front door to discovery, every leader will care about visibility.

Adapt or disappear

AI is already shaping how people discover and choose brands.

Consumers trust it. Businesses are using it. And it’s growing fast.

Brands that build and follow a clear GEO playbook — across all 12 components — will stay visible.

Everyone else risks being left out of the answer.

Watch this video on YouTube

Rand Fishkin didn’t get into SEO because he saw the future.

He got into it because he had no choice.

In the early 2000s, Fishkin helped run a small web business with his mom in Seattle. They hired another company to do SEO until they couldn’t afford to pay them anymore.

That moment pushed him into search marketing. More than 20 years later, Fishkin has become one of the best-known voices in SEO — and one of Google’s biggest critics.

In this interview, he looks back at how search has changed, what went wrong, and what may happen next.

Early SEO was wild

SEO today can feel messy. But in the early days, it was even more chaotic.

“There was no social media,” is how Fishkin described that era, where forums like WebmasterWorld and Search Engine Watch were the center of the industry.

People shared tactics openly. Many of those tactics were risky. Buying links was common — and effective.

Fishkin did it, too. Then Google’s Matt Cutts called him out in public.

That moment changed how he approached SEO. He spent years focusing on “white hat” practices and following Google’s guidelines.

Looking back, though, Fishkin now questions whether that shift went too far. He believes Google’s own behavior over time has made those guidelines harder to trust.

The early industry wasn’t just chaotic — it was also full of strange and memorable moments. Fishkin recalled massive conference parties with huge budgets and over-the-top ideas, including a staged “retirement” of the Ask Jeeves mascot.

But what stood out most to him wasn’t the tactics or the parties.

“My favorite thing… is people,” he said, pointing to the relationships and friendships built over decades in search.

When Google stopped sending traffic

Many people think AI is the big turning point in search.

Fishkin says the shift started much earlier — around 2011.

That’s when the idea of “zero-click search” first appeared. Google began answering more queries directly on the results page instead of sending users to websites.

At first, it was small features like weather boxes and calculators.

Then it grew:

• Around 2016–2017: nearly half of searches ended without a click
• By 2018: more than half
• Today: more than two-thirds

Fishkin emphasized that this trend didn’t start with AI — it has been building for more than a decade.

Publishers had a chance — and missed it

Fishkin believes publishers could have taken action early — but didn’t.

• “The time to fight back… was 15 or 20 years ago,” he said.

In his view, large media companies should have worked together to push back against Google’s growing control. They could have demanded payment for content or limited how Google used it.

Instead, they allowed Google to crawl and use their content freely.

At the same time, Google expanded its influence through lobbying and policy.

• “Publishers just missed that opportunity,” Fishkin said.

Now, he argues, the focus has to shift to adapting:

• Build subscription businesses
• Monetize attention, not just traffic
• Learn how to operate within platform ecosystems

Some companies have already made that shift. Fishkin pointed to The New York Times as an example of a business evolving beyond traditional news consumption.

Did Google change?

Fishkin does not believe Google has become worse for users.

• “If it was easier or better to search on Bing… people would go to those places,” he said.

But he does believe Google has become much harder for publishers and creators.

The change, he said, was gradual. As Google grew, went public, and aligned with investor expectations, its priorities shifted toward growth and revenue.

• “They became the people that they spent time with,” Fishkin said.

The biggest AI mistake people make

Fishkin says most people misunderstand how AI works.

They treat AI answers like search results — consistent and reliable.

But they aren’t.

If you ask the same question multiple times, the answers can vary widely.

• “You will get completely different answers. And if you do that 10 times, you will get 10 incredibly unique different answers,” he said.

His advice is simple: don’t rely on a single response. Ask multiple times and look for patterns. If the same answer shows up consistently, it’s more likely to be trustworthy.

This matters most for important decisions, like health or finance, where relying on one answer could be risky.

What he misses about the early days of SEO

Fishkin doesn’t miss a specific tactic or tool.

He misses the level of opportunity that existed in the early web.

Back then, smaller creators and independent sites had a better chance to succeed. Traffic was more evenly distributed.

• “The world of clicks and traffic… was so… flat compared to… today,” he said.

What’s next?

Fishkin believes the future of media and search may look more like the past.

He expects a smaller number of powerful platforms to control most of the flow of information.

At the same time, individual creators will still produce much of the content — but within those systems.

Still, he hopes the web can evolve again.

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Traffic from AI sources increased 393% year-over-year in Q1 and 269% in March. But the real surprise? AI traffic is converting better than last year.

• AI-driven visits converted 42% better than non-AI traffic in March. A year ago, AI traffic was 38% less likely to result in a purchase.

By the numbers. Traffic from AI sources increased engagement by 12%, time on site by 48%, and pages per visit by 13%. Adobe also surveyed consumers and found that:

• 39% have used AI for shopping. Of those, 85% said it improved the experience.
• 66% believe AI tools provide accurate results.

What they’re saying. According to Vivek Pandya, director of Adobe Digital Insights:

• “Notably, AI traffic continues to convert better (visits that result in purchases) than non-AI traffic, which covers channels such as paid search and email marketing.”

Yes, but. While consumer adoption is up, and traffic, engagement, and conversions are growing, many retail sites still aren’t fully optimized for AI visibility, especially on product pages, according to Adobe.

Why we care. Until now, reports have been mixed on whether AI traffic is better, equal to, or worse than organic search traffic (see our Dig deeper resources below). That may be changing, as we expected it would. Like generative AI, AI shopping today is as bad as it will ever be, meaning this channel’s value will only increase.

About the data. Adobe’s findings are based on direct transaction data from more than 1 trillion visits to U.S. retail websites. The company also surveyed more than 5,000 U.S. consumers to understand how they use AI to shop.

The report. Adobe report: U.S. retailers see surge in AI traffic, but many websites are not entirely readable by machines.

Dig deeper.

• ChatGPT, LLM referrals convert worse than Google Search: Study
• AI search clicks aren’t always better traffic: Study
• ChatGPT ecommerce traffic converts 31% higher than non-branded organic search
• Airbnb says traffic from AI chatbots converts better than Google
• Why every AI search study tells a different story
• ChatGPT traffic rivals organic search engagement: Data