BRANDS WE'VE HELPED
GEO agency for leading brands
Get discovered in AI search
What is GEO?
Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) is the process of optimising your brand, content, and website so AI-powered search engines can easily find, understand, and cite your information. The objective is to make sure your brand name, data, or explanation is included directly inside the AI’s answer.
Why is GEO important?
Tools like ChatGPT & Gemini now provide a better experience than Google search for many 'discovery' topics. AI platforms work by combining data from different sources, providing a tailored answer to a user's question, regardless of how specific it is. Now, more people are searching than ever before, giving brands more chances to be discovered. Traffic from AI search can convert at a much higher rate than Google - it's not unusual for our client's AI search traffic to convert at 6-8% (GA4 data).
Speak to a GEO Expert
Will Tombs is the Founder of Buried. He’s an award-winning growth marketing specialist and expert in SEO and GEO, with over 12 years’ experience in the industry. Will has led digital strategy for startups that have gone on to be acquired, international enterprise retailers, and his own e-commerce businesses.
How AI search affecting businesses
The changing sales funnel
How is AI search affecting businesses in 2026?
AI search is the most significant shift in consumer behaviour since the invention of the iPhone and the rise of mobile web in 2007. In the past, to discover information, users would use Google to find websites and discover information. Now, AI is being used to discover information and consider brands before a website is even visited. This is why the conversion rate from AI search traffic is higher than Google, because users are further into the sales funnel when they visit a website.
How AI and websites impact the sales funnel: Past, Present, Future
How will AI search affect businesses in the future?
Over the next decade, AI search will continue to influence behaviour further down the funnel. ChatGPT has already launched Instant Checkout, enabling users to purchase from Shopify stores without ever visiting a website. Over time, we will see websites receive less traffic as AI allows users to purchase, book or enquire without ever visiting a website. The brands that win over the next decade will be the ones prepared for this change, ensuring brand, content and website are optimised for AI search. This requires a GEO strategy.
GEO Audit
We analyse how your brand currently performs across generative engines, auditing entity visibility, citations, content inclusion, schema coverage and authority signals to identify gaps, risks and immediate GEO opportunities.
GEO Strategy
Using audit insights and commercial priorities, we build a tailored GEO roadmap that aligns content, technical, authority and PR activity with how large language models surface, evaluate and recommend brands.
GEO Content
Develop authoritative, relevant content that directly answers user questions, aligns with natural language queries, and positions your brand as a go-to resource for generative search results.
GEO Services
Integrated SEO & GEO
GEO, similar to SEO is built on three pillars: Technical, content and authority. Together, these elements ensure your brand is surfaced, cited, and trusted in the places that matter most. At Buried, we offer a range of GEO services that support these pillars:
GEO Reporting
You receive clear, commercial-focused reporting that shows how your GEO visibility is changing over time, what’s driving inclusion, and where further optimisation will deliver impact.
GEO Training
We educate internal teams on how generative search works, how GEO differs from SEO, and how content, PR, technical and brand activity must align for sustained AI visibility.
Technical Optimisation
Ensure your site is well-structured, fast-loading, and fully accessible so AI systems and search engines can easily crawl, interpret, and index your content for optimal visibility
Schema & Structured Data
We implement and maintain advanced schema, entity markup and structured data frameworks that help AI models clearly understand your brand, products, relationships and topical authority.
Digital PR & Linkbuilding
We secure authoritative coverage, citations and editorial links from trusted publications to strengthen the off-site signals that generative engines rely on to validate credibility.
GEO/LLM Tracking & Analytics
We monitor how your brand appears across AI platforms, tracking prompt visibility, citations, sentiment and competitive share so performance can be measured beyond traditional search.
Our GEO agency optimisation process
5 steps to AI search success
Our GEO audit assesses 5 core areas of your website:
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Speed – Measures load times and performance across regions.
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Render Analysis – How well can LLMs read your content.
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Structured Data – Reviews current use of schema and other structured data.
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Content – Evaluates content quality and breadth.
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Links – Analyses backlink quality and distribution.
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Our competitor analysis benchmarks your site against leading performers in your market and region. We assess visibility, prompt coverage, and content positioning to identify where competitors are gaining traction — revealing the gaps and opportunities that will drive your GEO strategy forward.
Prompt research identifies how users interact with generative engines when searching for information related to your brand. We analyse the language, intent, and structure of prompts through our prompt identification frame before setting up prompt tracking to allow us to report success over time.
Our GEO reporting framework consists of prompt tracking against visibility (when your brand is mentioned) and citations (when your website content is cited). We group prompts by tag to allow data to be easily filtered and analysed.
Your GEO reporting dashboard sits alongside your SEO, total traffic and conversion dashboards - analysis is conducted across our suite of reporting dashboards to deliver combined performance insights.Through our reporting framework, we identify both GEO and SEO recommendations. In some cases, these overlap, with data pointing to the same action from both perspectives. Other times, a tactic will be specific to either GEO or SEO, ensuring targeted and relevant optimisations.
GEO & SEO in one workstream
GEO and SEO success are built on the same foundations: high-quality content, technical excellence, and strong website authority. Our approach to GEO follows our SEO methodology — beginning with a comprehensive audit and analysis, followed by prompt and keyword research to inform tracking setup.
While GEO shares many of the same outcomes and tactics as organic search, the difference lies in how we track and understand performance, benchmark competitors, and measure success. The key to effective GEO is in the initial setup — ensuring the right data is captured and actionable insights are available. With this in place, integrating GEO activity into your broader organic strategy becomes seamless, typically a matter of prioritisation rather than radical new tactics.
Why hire a Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) agency?
AI-driven search is growing at an exponential rate. Millions of users now discover brands through tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and AI Overviews, often without ever visiting a traditional search results page. This creates a huge opportunity for brands to become the default recommendation in their category. But it also introduces serious risk. Unlike Google, AI engines don’t simply rank pages, they recall, interpret and recommend based on training data, live web signals, authority and entity understanding. If your brand isn’t being recognised, cited or trusted by these systems, you can be invisible at the exact moment customers are ready to buy. Working with a top GEO agency like Buried helps you to capitalise on the opportunities and navigate these risks. It ensures your brand is discoverable, credible and accurately represented across the AI search ecosystem — protecting future demand while unlocking a powerful new growth channel that most competitors are still ignoring.
GEO strategies that
Drive conversion
Founded by award-winning performance marketers, we turn every click, impression, and visitor into measurable results. Everything we do is focused on conversion, so you get more leads, more sales, and more profit — without relying on expensive platforms taking their cut.
GEO Knowledge Base
The Buried GEO Knowledge Base is a group of resources covering everything you need to know about Generative Engine Optimisation, from fundamentals to the topics shaping AI search.
SEO
Build the foundation for sustainable search performance and long-term traffic growth through content and technical SEO strategies.
Digital PR
Digital PR campaigns that build real authority, earn trusted coverage and accelerate organic growth across search and AI platforms.
Link Building
Strategic link building services designed to build authority, improve rankings and drive long-term organic growth.
Analytics
Identify and understand where your biggest opportunities lie, helping you to make confident, informed decisions that drive measurable growth.
OTHER SERVICES
Similarities & differences between GEO & SEO
Compared across 10 key areas
GEO and SEO success are built on the same foundations: high-quality content, technical excellence, and strong website authority. Our approach to GEO follows our SEO methodology — beginning with a comprehensive audit and analysis, followed by prompt and keyword research to inform tracking setup.
Area | GEO | SEO |
|---|---|---|
1) Which search engine is most important? | Google & Bing - Open AI (ChatGPT) has direct integration with Microsoft (Bing) | Google - dominates search engine global market share with approximately 90% |
2) What code structure is preferred? | HTML is critical; LLMs cannot execute JavaScript code | HTML is prioritised over JavaScript for crawlability and indexing |
3) How important is site speed? | Generative engines are more likely to cite or mention fast, accessible, top-performing sites | Speed is a direct ranking factor (Core Web Vitals); slower sites perform less favourably |
4) How important is structured data | Schema (FAQ, HowTo, Product, Organization, Author) drives AI citations | Structured data increases the chance of rich snippets which increase CTR |
5) What URL structures are optimal? | Semantic, localised URLs like /flat-tungsten-wedding-rings-for-men | Rationalised URLs like /flat-tungsten-rings are preferred |
6) What meta description structure is optimal? | Optimise for information - should aim to summarise the content | Optimised for CTR - should aim to entice click |
7) What content has best chance of ranking? | Comparative listicles, blogs, Top X articles — often with regional relevance | Service pages, comparative listicles, blogs, Top X articles |
8) How important is content recency? | Recency bias applies; fresher content is preferred | Recency bias applies; newer content often ranks better |
9) What type of links are most powerful? | Brand citations, high-authority sources, Reddit & Wikipedia references | High-authority, relevant publications and .edu, .gov, or industry leaders |
10) What type of links are undesirable? | Low-visibility niche blogs or content behind paywalls | Spammy, low-quality, paid, or manipulative links are avoided |
WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY
We worked with the Buried team on a full website migration and were really impressed with both the process and the level of care they brought to it. They started with a thoughtful analysis of our existing content, competitors, technical health, GEO signals, and domain authority to understand what was performing well and where there were opportunities to improve. Once we had a plan, they built a clear migration checklist and provided structured recommendations that made what could have been a stressful process feel very manageable. Website migrations can be risky for SEO, but Buried handled it with real expertise and attention to detail to minimize risk as much as possible. Can't recommend them enough if you're looking for a strategic and reliable SEO partner!
ELIZABETH GALLOWAY, SVP BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT & OPERATIONS, PEHR
We've been really impressed by the standard of Buried's SEO and GEO work so far. Will is great at understanding a client's business and providing practical guidance without the fluff you get with some agencies in this space. Would recommend.
DAVE CRICHTON, CREATIVE DIRECTOR, IE
Buried completed a thorough SEO audit of my site, helping me validate work to date and to give me direction for moving forward. Work was delivered on time and to a standard that has enabled me to move quickly to implementing recommendations. Thanks Buried team!
JONATHAN MCELHATTON, CEO, BLACK PIANO
Incredible agency. Helped scale my business via SEO and pointed out things that I had totally missed. The team is amazing, highly recommend!
JAMES MILARAS, FOUNDER, JOKER & THE THIEF
Will has been instrumental in driving performance and growth marketing success for us over the past five years. He led our acquisition team at Buymie and continued to play a key role following our acquisition by Dunnes Stores in 2023. Will’s expertise helped us build and scale an in-house team at Dunnes Stores establishing strong foundations across performance, growth and organic search.
DEVAN HUGHES, CDO, Dunnes Stores
Buried is our organic search partner at DMajor. We bring them in to plan and deliver SEO strategies that support our web build projects and ongoing client work. One project that stands out was a website migration and SEO strategy for a men’s fashion eCommerce brand, which led to substantial post-live gains in organic traffic and revenue for the client. Their work is detailed, considered, and focused on outcomes.
Duncan MacDonald, Founder, DMajor
GEO AGENCY FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
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GEO AGENCY FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO)?
GEO is the process of optimising brands, content and entities so they are accurately represented, cited and recommended by AI search engines like ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Perplexity, not just ranked in Google.
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How is GEO different from SEO?
SEO optimises for rankings in search results. GEO optimises for inclusion, citation and recommendation inside AI-generated answers, where there are no traditional rankings or clicks. Find out more about GEO vs SEO here.
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Do I still need SEO if I invest in GEO?
Yes. SEO remains critical for crawlability, authority and content discovery. GEO builds on strong SEO but requires separate reporting to enable you to track prompts. Using this data you can create strategies that maximise visibility in both traditional and AI-driven search.
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How do AI engines decide which brands to mention?
They rely on a mix of training data, live web retrieval, structured data, entity understanding, authority signals and trusted citations.
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Can GEO guarantee brand mentions or citations?
No ethical GEO agency can guarantee inclusion. What can be engineered is maximum eligibility through structured knowledge, authority building and prompt-led optimisation.
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How long does GEO take to show results?
Early visibility shifts can appear within 4–8 weeks, but meaningful competitive advantage typically builds over 3–6 months, depending on authority and market competition.
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How do you measure GEO performance?
We track the following metrics using a combination of Peec AI, Athena & Google Analytics 4:
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Brand mentions across LLMs
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Citation frequency
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Prompt-level visibility
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Source types used
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Sentiment and accuracy
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Competitive share of voice in AI answers
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Traffic from AI search
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Website conversion (sales and leads) from AI traffic
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Which platforms does GEO apply to?
GEO covers all major answer engines including:
ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot, Claude and future AI search interfaces.
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Does paid media influence GEO or AI visibility?
Not directly. AI engines prioritise trusted sources, entities and editorial authority, not ad spend. Brand awareness though can have indirect effects.
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What types of businesses benefit most from GEO?
GEO is most impactful for:
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SaaS & B2B
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E-commerce & retail
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Finance & legal
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Health & wellness
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Enterprise brands