Conference session · Sep 25, 2025

# Ranking on AI Search, Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) @ eCommerce Expo London

London, UK

[Book this talk](https://www.alexmelen.com/contact/)[Slides (PDF)](https://www.alexmelen.com/assets/slides/ranking-on-ai-search-generative-engine-optimization-geo-alex-melen-ecommerce-expo-london.pdf)

Video: [Watch the talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI)

In brief In this eCommerce Expo London talk, Alex Melen, co-founder of SmartSites, argues that ranking in AI search (GEO, generative engine optimization) is driven by the same core signals as SEO, and that brands should keep investing in traditional search rather than abandoning it. He opens with market-share data: AI search is growing fast from a base of zero two years ago and is projected to reach about 14% of search in three years, but Google searches are also rising, and a recent study found 99.7% of AI users still use traditional search. He walks through the four core Google ranking signals from the Darren Shaw expert survey (Google Business Profile, on-page content, reviews, links) and explains which carry over to AI, then lists the GEO-specific adjustments: write for prompts rather than keywords, use question-based headers and direct answers, define who you are, and build topical authority through hubs and relevant links. He reports that SmartSites' own FAQ-schema test across 1,000 sites showed no significant lift in AI citations, that SmartSites was one of the most-cited brands in a Search Engine Land study, and that it now gets roughly 2,000 monthly visitors from AI citations.

Key points
- AI search is growing quickly from zero two years ago and is projected to reach roughly 14% of search activity within three years, far short of the 'Google will be gone by 2028' narrative.
- Google search volume is still rising alongside AI search, and a recent study found 99.7% of people who use AI also use traditional search, so abandoning SEO for an AI-only strategy is a mistake.
- Alex agrees with Danny Sullivan's WordCamp line that good SEO is good GEO: content creation, topical authority and link building matter for both, even if SEO and GEO are not identical.
- Of the ways to learn what Google weighs, Alex dismisses the Yandex leak (years behind Google) and the Google API leak (1,900 variables with unknown weighting) in favor of the Darren Shaw expert survey.
- The four core Google ranking signals are Google Business Profile, on-page content quantity and quality, review signals, and link signals; content and links are the ones that also drive AI citations.
- For GEO, write with promptability in mind: prompts are longer than search queries, so use clear question-based headers and direct answers, and define clearly who you are and what you do.
- A SmartSites test comparing FAQ schema on 500 websites against none on 500 others showed no statistically significant difference in AI citations.
- Only about one in ten people click an AI citation, so SmartSites' roughly 2,000 monthly visitors from AI implies about 20,000 AI recommendations per month.
- SmartSites does not sell GEO as a standalone service; a paid-search-only agency does not need to offer GEO, and SEO agencies should treat GEO as an extension of SEO hours.

> “I don't think SEO necessarily is identical to GEO, but the core parts of SEO and what's important to rank in search in general is what's important to rank in AI.” [10:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=610s) · Alex Melen

> “It's like having a very, very complex soup recipe with 1,900 ingredients. You know the ingredients, but you don't know the quantity of the ingredients. You don't know what order to put them in. You don't know how to make the soup.” [13:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=793s) · Alex Melen

> “Most people no longer go to Google and type Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry. They're going to go, help me compare the safety features of Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry. You have to think about the prompt that's creating the content.” [19:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1140s) · Alex Melen

Chapters
- [0:00 Intro and Alex's background](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=0s)
- [4:15 AI search share versus Google](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=255s)
- [7:16 GEO: the winning acronym](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=436s)
- [11:37 How we know Google's signals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=697s)
- [14:37 The core four ranking signals](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=877s)
- [19:00 GEO adjustments and SmartSites results](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1140s)
- [23:20 Paid ads inside AI Overviews](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1400s)
- [26:10 Closing thoughts: the year of mobile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1570s)
- [29:01 Q&A: GEO services and AI analytics](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1741s)

Questions this talk answers

**What is GEO and how is it different from SEO?**

GEO stands for generative engine optimization, the practice of getting cited in AI answers; answer engine optimization is the runner-up term. Alex says the core SEO signals, especially unique content, topical authority and relevant authoritative links, are what AI engines also reward. The GEO-specific adjustments are writing for longer prompts, using question-based headers with direct answers, clearly defining who you are, and building topical hubs.

**Is SEO dead now that people use ChatGPT and AI search?**

No. Alex points to data showing AI search is growing from zero two years ago to a projected 14% of search in three years, while Google search volume is also still rising. A recent study found 99.7% of AI users also use traditional search. He warns against companies abandoning SEO for an AI-only strategy and says to watch trends while keeping the big picture in view.

**Does FAQ schema help you get cited in AI results?**

Alex's team tested it directly: FAQ schema on 500 websites versus no schema on 500 others produced no statistically significant difference in AI citations. He says it may still be worth doing, but it is not as important as many people claim. The bigger lever is writing content as direct answers to the questions people actually prompt.

** Full transcript 6,821 words · auto-generated captions, lightly edited for readability · timestamps link to the video **

[0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=0s)Good to start. Perfect. Hello everyone. Everyone's in. Perfect. Everyone's in. We got a full room which is great to see towards the end of the conference. Today we're going to be talking about ranking and AI search. We're going to be talking about ads and AI results. So, obviously a very hot topic as I could see by the by the attendance here. Here I'll begin. I know we don't have a lot of time here. I think we have like 20 25 minutes. So, I'll go through this quick and I also tend to talk quick as it is. So, if you miss anything, feel free to reach out to me after. I think the conference records this. I also have the slides I could send and I love talking about this stuffs and I'm here the rest of the night. So, if you miss something, grab me after. I'll send you the slides. We could talk about it. Because it's going to be rapid fire with a lot of a lot of information. I'll give you a little bit about me just so who this guy is talking on stage and whether you should listen to me or not. We're gonna talk about rise of generative AI, something I've been speaking about at conferences all over the world for feels like forever, but it's only been two years. We're going to talk be talking about ranking and AI search, which is, one of the hottest topics now. I've personally spoken at probably over a 100 conferences about SEO.

[1:26](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=86s)And all of a sudden all those conferences are now reaching out and they're "We don't want you to talk about SEO. We want you to come talk about GEO." So GEO is the new thing. We're going to talk about that a little bit. We're going to talk about paid ads and AI results, something that my company is actually beta testing in the US. And we'll have some time for Q&A. Perfect. Rapid fire. A little bit about myself. That's me actually in 1991. I was originally born in Kiev, Ukraine. My family immigrated to the US in 1990 1999. I've been fortunate enough to be exposed to computers and technology my entire life. I started my first company T35 hosting in 1997. For those familiar with the tech space, it was one of the first web hosting companies. So that's when you have a website. I had the physical servers and technology to host it. I came up with the original patents for the web hosting industry that has since exploded. For those that were involved in this space back in those years these were the GEO cities Hypermart tripod I don't know if those names ring any bells anyone involved with the website space in the late '9s those would be familiar obviously most of those companies all those companies don't exist anymore T35 hosting that I started in 1997 is actually still exists and still operates as a

[2:46](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=166s)Hosting company in 2011 I co-founded SmartSites with my younger brother you have still co-founding picture there. Feels like a couple years ago, but this has been a 14 years ago at this point. Sorry, we'll stay on there for a little bit. So I've worked in the digital space for a really long time. And my we'll do a company slide. We'll do a little bit more about me and then we'll do a company slide. I personally do a lot of stuff on automotive, but not to say that it's the stuff we do is not industry specific. My company's not industry specific. I have a best-selling book on automotive search marketing. Applies to every industry. If anyone wants a copy after, it's hard to bring books into from the US into the UK. So, I couldn't bring the books, but if anyone wants a copy after, just let me know. I'll get you a copy. SmartSites is a company we run u run in the in the US. So we're one of the biggest, fastest growing, best rated, best everything. Bragging a little bit but one of the biggest if not biggest private digital marketing companies in the US and I'm not here to brag or sell you guys anything. I'm just giving you my background. So the stuff we're going to be going through are the things we're doing for our clients, things that we're doing for ourselves and just my day-to-day learning this stuff. As it's all very cutting edge. I know there's always a lot of experts and then AI you see all these experts like tenure experts and stuff. All this stuff is

[4:15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=255s)Very fast moving. I'm just trying to learn it and keep up with it the best I can for our company. So, SmartSites, if you look it up, we're over 400 employees and rated pretty well everywhere, but you guys could look it up later just if you're curious. And again, just my background and where I'm coming from with this. All right. So today we're going to be talking about first just AI generally, then we're going to be talking about GEO, which is the new SEO, and then we're going to be talking about the AI and paid ads a little bit. So search trends. So I'm sure you guys see all the headlines, especially for me, all my LinkedIn headlines are all about AI, SEO is dead. I've been hearing SEO is dead since, as you saw, since the '9s. I think since before SEO started, I've been hearing SEO is dead. All I see is SEO is dead. There's no more SEO. Organic traffic is zero. The zero clicks. How many times have you guys raise your hand? Zero clicks. Does that you see zero clicks everywhere? Couple of hands. I know it's later in the afternoon. This is where we actually are in actuality in terms of market share. So, this is where we are in terms of what percent of search activity is happening on AI. Couple ways to look at it. First of all, it is a huge number considering we came from zero, Two years ago, we were on zero. So, this is why it's so important and why there's all that's all you see on your LinkedIn feed. At least that's what I see on my LinkedIn feed. It's projected to grow by a couple percent next year and keep growing, In 3 years, we'll be at 14%. So,

[5:50](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=350s)A lot of information I see online would make you think that we'd be like at 100% by 2028, Google will be gone. Everyone's going to be using AI. Obviously, it's not the case. Obviously, these are forecasts, but I feel very confident about this specific forecast. Same data set, same study that was done for all of this. This is zooming out, So, we were just zoomed in on AI search. The percent is growing. This is actually how the big picture looks. And again, this is this is just Google. This obviously doesn't include the other search engines, So, just looking at Google versus AI chat. When we actually zoom out, what's interesting is that yes, it's going up, And we're at 2025 now. This is billions of searches per day. Yes, AI searches are going up, but interestingly, so are Google searches. So, it's not like Google searches fell off. It's not like people are not using traditional search. I unfortunately submitted these slides, I think two or three weeks ago. I have a newer slide, and again, this is one of those things. Please message me. I'll send you the newest slide. There's a newer slide. There's a study that they just concluded figuring out the overlap between generative AI and traditional tra traditional search. And what they found is 99.7% of the people who use AI are also using traditional search. So I'm sure you could think about yourself if you're in everyone in the audience here. I'm sure you guys have used AI,

[7:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=436s)You've used ChatGPT. I'm sure you're still using traditional search as well. Trying to slice it out of the people who are using now AI but not using traditional search it comes out to like fractions of a percent. So just something to think about in the in the big picture. AI I think will continue to be super important. I think we'll continue to dominate conversations, but we just want to be cognizant of that we're focusing on the white thing and you can't it's I see a lot of companies like Olson abandoning their SEO strategy organic search is over. Google is going away. We're only going to do strategy. We're focused. Just important to keep an eye on the big picture. Obviously trends are important to watch but you want to keep an eye on the big picture. All right. Ranking and AI search. So, this is the big one. I didn't even want to put the word on here because I submitted these a couple weeks ago and all this is so quickly moving, but the big word for it is GEO. There's a couple competing acronyms. Show of hands for people who are familiar with the word GEO to you. So, that I think that is the winning word. The second runner up is answer engine optimization. That's the second most popular word after GEO, but it seems like I don't even put the acronyms in my slides anymore because This conference wasn't bad, but I have a couple that I submitted like nine months ahead of time. Like I'm going to submit GEO and I show up and no one's calling it GEO anymore. But for now, GO is the winning

[8:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=524s)Acronym. Generative engine optimization. Let's dive into next. Doesn't want to go. It's just blinking. I don't have too many slides. If you if you want to click it for me, perfect. Thank you. Technical difficulties. I actually posted this on LinkedIn. Everyone pushes go as its own thing. And I'll go through the actual data for you guys, but this is probably the best illustrative way I could explain go to you guys. So this was at I don't I guess we're in the UK now, so probably not many of you attended camp in Portland, Oregon last month. So on stage, this is an actual presentation that they rebroadcast so I could I actually grabbed the screenshot with him on there as proof. So on stage for those that don't know is Danny Sullivan. Danny Sullivan was the Google Search Liaison. So he was a Google

[10:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=610s)Employee whose job was to communicate Google's updates to the mass public almost like a PR role. So you got to take it a little bit with a grain of salt. But this was his presentation at WordCamp. For those that attend WordCamp is like a WordPressbased event. For those that attend them, I'm actually speaking at the next one in u in Canada next month. But this is literally his slide where he comes out and says good SEO is good GE. So there's a lot to digest in that sentence, I don't think SEO necessarily is identical to GEO, but the core parts of SEO and what's important to rank in search in general is what's important to rank in AI. And I'll go through the Google ranking signals and we'll deep dive into a little bit in the 14 minutes we have left together. But things like creating content, b building topical authority, link building although link building everyone's link building is dead right things like that are important to SEO is important to go right if you are not creating content unique content as Google would say made for humans content they Google is very careful with AI created stuff the way they the way they mandated as long as you're creating good content that content will actually be what gets picked up by ChatGPT and other engines [Music] all right. So,

[11:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=697s)Before we go into the GEO specific stuff because that's the G GEO stuff is more of a mystery box, So, for SEO, we've been doing this for a long time and most people know what you need to do for SEO, The SEO experts out there are pretty good at it. There's a couple companies that sell mystery boxes and snake oil and like pay us some money and you'll get something, but the real SEO experts know what they're doing and they're able to generate results. So, let's take a deep dive into what's important for SEO because we know that really well and then we'll go through a little bit of what you need to change to do that to continue ranking not only on organic but also on AI results. So before we dive in how do we know what's important to Google right for ChatGPT right now we completely don't know anything right we could we could there's a lot of guessing and people doing their own case studies A/B testing but we don't know anything with Google we surprisingly know a lot because this has been around for a long time u a couple of ways you could tell of what's important to Google and I'll start from the your top left and move like a clock this way top left so the Yandex search index was search algorithm was fully leaked. I'm sure it's something you guys are aware of. I think this was a couple years ago. Completely leaked to a point where it tells you not only what ranking factors Yandex uses, but also the waiting of those factors. So literally everything is leaked. Exactly how to rank in Yandex. Negative with that is obviously Yandex is not Google, Yandex is always four or five years behind Google. Now with the

[13:13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=793s)Sanctions and everything probably is going to be six to seven years behind Google. So that's not a way that I personally like to determine what's important to Google. The other way is Google's API leaked. Everything's leaking these days, by the way. And it's only getting going to get worse with AI helping like everyone's now a hacker with AI. So all this stuff is going to this is only going to get worse. Google's algorithm leaked. This was huge news. I can't see the year anymore, but it was recent last year. I think beginning of last year, so about 18 months ago. Huge news. Made huge headlines. There was a lot of clickbait around it. At the end of the day, I don't think it's useful. So for those that don't know what leaked is via API, someone was able to figure out all the variables that Google uses to rank websites. Problem with that is there were 1,900 variables. About 500 of them we assume are active based on all the research and everything everyone did, but no one knows the waiting of those variables. So it's like having a very complex soup recipe with 1900 ingredients and now the ingredients but you don't know the quantity of the ingredients. You don't know what order to put them in. You don't know how to make the soup. So yes there's a little bit of value but that's not what I would use to determine what's important for people. On the right side is what I use. So Darren Shaw it was someone else before Darren Shaw for the last 10 years or so does an intern internal SEO expert study. So all the top SEO experts, so not executives of companies, not people who are like running companies or

[14:37](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=877s)Managing people like the true SEO experts who are there in the field or putting in 10 hours a day of SEO work do this survey internally and report to each other what they see working for on Google, what they're seeing works for their clients. These are the people on it for the 2023 one. It's going to be updated soon in progress, but it's the items and I'm not going to present the I have the historical overview of it that I could send to you guys also, but trust me, that hasn't changed over the last 13 years. Things that are important to Google change a little bit, but the fundamentals are the same. So, taking that study and summarizing into one nice little pie chart, and this is a good one to take a picture of. And I have this in my book, too. This is these I would consider are the core four signals Google uses to determine how to rank your website and I'll go through them in the not so much time that we have. I'll do rapid fire through them. Left side is the local pack. So for the non SEO experts, that's Google Maps. So on Google Maps, obviously the most important is your Google business profile. I still call it GMB / GBP. Now it's GMB / GBP. Obviously if you don't have a Google business profile, you're not going to rank on Google Maps. But also having it all filled in, all the information in there. Google keeps adding new categories, things like that. Over time, this has become more important and at the expense of citations. Citations are like Yelp and third party

[16:03](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=963s)Directories. That's become less important to rank on Google Maps. As Google has pushed their Google business profile, the that should be like the core. Next is onpage signals. I'll touch upon that a little bit more on the right side. On page is the quantity and quality of your content. So, that one's important for Google. That one's important for ChatGPT, If you don't create the content, you won't rank for it. My auto example I like to use, if you create a page comparing the Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry, that page has an opportunity to show up in search results. If you never created that, if you're just a regular dealership and someone searches that, your dealership website will never come up for it because it's you need the content to have the opportunity to come up in search results. And same for AI. Review signals is an interesting one. I won't touch upon that too much because we don't have a lot of time. But the quantity quality of your reviews matter. The content of your review reviews matter. That's always a popular one when I talk at SEO conferences. So the content of your reviews get gets used by Google and not as relevant for AI. But for Google, so for example, if you're a coffee shop and everyone's putting in, oh, I really like their Brazilian coffee. When someone searches Brazilian coffee, your coffee shop's more likely to come up. So literally the content of your of the reviews Google uses in their algorithm. The responses to the reviews while important are not used in the algorithm. Link signals as link building which everyone keeps saying is dead. And then the other ones are smaller obviously behavioral how they use your website. Citations are third

[17:28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1048s)Party directories the Yelp and third party directories of the world. Personalization is harder control. That's if Spanish user a Spanish keyboard comes to your websites in Spanish it's more likely rank. The right side is where it can actually influence a lot more for both for both SEO and GEO. That's literally the pages that come up in Google. That's on Google Maps. It's the local results that come up in Google. So taking it from the top on page, there's some technical SEO that goes into that goes into on page, but for most people, your biggest bang for your buck is the quantity and quality of your content. And again, this is what matters for AI. If you don't have the content, AI has nothing to pick up. They're not going to rank your website that has one page, It'll never be cited in AI. Link signals, it's gone down a tiny bit over the years, but having authoritative websites linked to you is still super important. It's become very important for AI. AI looks for websites that are topical authorities, and I'll touch on that a little bit later. The only way it knows your topical authority is to have relevant authoritative websites linked. And then the other ones we touched upon. So this is SEO. This is this is there's no like I have it in my book. Everyone's always "Oh, SEO agencies never tell me what they're doing." This is SEO. Everyone can do it. The reason I'm able to sell SEO as a service is because we have the efficiency to do it better than most people can do in house. But there's no secret to it. In my book, I literally do

[19:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1140s)Like three pages explaining each one of them. This is this is SEO. Here's for GEO. So, it's very similar. So, you take what we just looked at. A couple things that you want to modify from that. I'll go I'll go through this from top to bottom. You want to write with promptability in mind. That one's obvious, but I'm I always am surprised to see agencies trying to increase AI citations that don't think about that. AI will use content that is based on the question. So it has to be in most cases your comp has to be answering question. If you just have Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry, most people no longer go to Google and type Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry. They're going to go help me compare the safety features of Honda Accord versus Toyota Camry, You have to think about the prompt that's creating the content. People's prompts are going to be a lot longer than typical search queries. Use clear question-based headers and direct answers. FAQ style is popular. We've been testing FAQ schema. So you could use schema on your website that structures at FAQ for bots to crawl differently. Our recent test that we just finished showed no difference in AI citations from FAQ schema. So a lot of people still claim it helps. We've I literally did FAQ schema for 500 websites and no schema for 500 and there was no

[20:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1223s)Statistical significant difference. So still maybe something worth doing but not as important as some people are saying. Clearly define who you are, what you do, You want to build topical authority. You want to create consistent information. You want AI and similar for Google to know you as the topical authority for that content. If you're not, if you're more general website, you have to create topical hubs, within your website, you have to create category pages that deep d that have different levels of topics. And you want to be known even if you have a general domain that's not specific to an industry, you want AI and Google to pick you up as a topical authority, which also involves the link building that we just looked at. Yeah, link building at the end. I didn't even see that point, but it said it naturally. You want authoritative you want relevant authoritative websites to link to. So, this is the end result of it. So we do SEO for us for our brand SmartSites like we do any other client. I can't even say we do a lot of it. We do the average amount of SEO. This was a recent study. I have it in the slides. You could Google. You could look it up. This is this was the biggest study they've ever done for AI citations. So search engine land and this is a very recent study. They did the study trying to figure out what brands are coming up in AI results and why they're coming up. And this is was by the way to my surprise. This was someone a past employee messaged me and they're like you were in this study. So our brand SmartSites came up as one of the highest cited brands again based on all the stuff we do that I just showed you

[21:53](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1313s)Guys. We came up against ahead of Four Seasons ahead of like Subaru like literally ahead of like Fortune 500 companies because we're actually doing the things that we just covered in the last couple slides. And the only reason I point that out is it's like proof of concept, "Oh, this guy showed me all these signals I should be doing. Should I really be doing them?" No one could tell you whether they're going to they, It's it could have been working last year, won't work in the future, but all I could tell you is that's what we're doing for ourselves, and it seems to be working very well. I don't know if I have a slide. I took out the slide here, but we're actually right now getting over I think we're up to 2,000 users a month from AI citations. And the recent studies show that only one in 10 people click the citation. So if some if AI recommends your business 10 times, someone will click the citation once. So if we're getting 2,000 visitors a day from AI citations, we're literally being recommended 20,000 times per month. So all this stuff is very powerful. Again, AI is very small part of overall search as we saw in the beginning. I'm going to do don't have a ton of time, but I think I'm the last session of the day, so luckily they'll give us some flex some flexibility. I have two more slides and then and then he has the mic. He's the He's the QA guy. Then we'll do QA. Paid ads and AI overview. So, this is new. I'm not even sure if I'm supposed to be sharing this stuff. I guess take a picture at this point. I'll get in trouble anyway. This is something Google's only

[23:20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1400s)Google is doing ads and AI overviews. No one is surprised by this. They need to make money, They're not going to kill Google as a company makes like 99% of their money from Google ads and Google search, Google ads is 99%. All this other stuff they do like they make cell phones. Some of you might have a Google Pixel. They lose money on it, All their money is from ads. They're not going to get rid of the ads product. A lot of people have been wondering how this play into results. So we're already testing it. Again, this is just in the US for now. I think it's rolling out worldwide Q1 of next year but the first application is actually super applicable to you guys. It's first application of this will be in e-commerce. So you'll be able to feed in your feed and run a campaign in a specific way that will allow Google to recommend your product on a paid basis. You're going to pay for that click, but when someone searches in this example, how do you search for a mattress or whatever? They're going to literally recommend your mattress as a paid ad within the AI results. I think I have one more slide of this. This is also interesting. This is uses Google AI to forecast the need. So it's not necessarily like I need a mattress. Here's a mattress. This is how Google Shopping works. You guys know this. AI is going to be a little bit more complex. Someone searches how to bring a

[24:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1488s)Small dog on flights. With within this search after responding with AI results there's going to be ads for small dog small bags to bring your small dog on a flight this is all already being tested a lot of times it says sponsored right now a lot of times it won't there's a lot of there's a lot of things we're helping Google test so it's not some of it I would even say is a little sneaky I think people are not realizing that's a sponsored result they won't always say how it's going to plan and how Google will do it after I'm not sure. But just know that this is coming. This is going to be huge. This is going to be a separate product. It's going to live within Google Ads, but it's a separate type of campaign from any campaigns exist right now. Closing thoughts. Just summary of the slide. I actually had I don't know if you could tell, but I had ChatGPT say I told ChatGPT summarize my slides. This is a ChatGPT presentation on AI without using AI, The other slides I made myself. The other ones old-fashioned way PowerPoint. I drag things. There's a lot AI tools that make slides for actually the other ones I made myself. This one the text was used by ChatGPT, but it's a summary of the presentation. Be prepared for the rise of large language models while still focusing traditional search.

[26:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1570s)Focus on the important Google AI ranking signals that we went through. I think that's going to continue to be the core of search and AI. Partner with agencies who understand AI. I we have a lot of clients who we help with certain things but not other things and I'm seeing a lot of agencies just ignore it because they just don't understand it. I wouldn't ignore it, The opportunity is there. We saw we started growing. Build your brand for success with SEO and AI. You any brand you're building today or trying to grow today, I think you have to be cognizant of all the stuff we covered today. And I think early movers in tech and tactics will win big like in any tech revolution. I think this is this is going to be like one of those that we're going to talk about it talk about and then wake up and it's all this right and quick story and then we'll do Q&A. Before starting my company I worked at Publicis. I was head of digital for Samsung and then for Walmart a couple years while I was there, this was 2009, 2010 and a piece of 2011. Every year I was there, it was the year of mobile. We would come into work. This is the year of mobile. We would measure the amount of apps people had. It was like this year people have five apps. That's it. This is going to be the year of mobile. And the transition just happened overnight. I don't remember when it happened, how it happened, but all of a sudden marketing became mobile first. Websites became mobile first. We just woke up one day and now

[27:35](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1655s)If you go home and your pipe's leaking in your in your basement, you're going to pull out your cell phone and you're going to look up a plumber. You're not going to go on a computer, So, I think AI will be a similar transition. I think it'll be like it's coming, it's coming, it's coming and then we're going to wake up and a lot of things are going to be AI powered and you just want to be prepared for it. That's all I have. That's my email address on your left. My LinkedIn you could scan with your phone will connect with you on my link on my right. I'm available after. Ask me for my book. I'll send it to you. The slides. Anything you want. I love all this stuff. I talk about it all day. Ready for questions if we have time for it. I think there's no one after, so we could do questions. I know that was very quick. Rapid fire. Questions. Questions. Questions. Slides were so good. There are no questions. Left them speechless. Questions going once. Question in the back. It's going to be a long walk for you though. All the way in the back for those with no questions and leaving. Thank you for coming. Again, if you want the slides or any information, feel free to reach out to me. And I think we have a question. Hey, thank you for your presentation. As a Google Ads agency, what do you recommend I do with the services do you think

[29:01](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1741s)To start recommending or start offering go as a service? So if you're doing if you're doing paid search, I don't think you need like if you're not doing SEO, I don't think you need to do GEO, I think if you're just doing paid search, stay within paid search. You'll be a you'll be eventually managing ads within AI, so you don't need to do GEO to do that part of it. If you are doing SEO it's one of those things that we don't offer GEO right now as a standalone service. Our mentality is the things we do for SEO help for GEO as you saw for our own company. If a client really wants to do GEO, we could allocate some of our hours towards it, but we personally don't sell GEO as a standalone service. I think there's agencies that do, but I think they're chasing things that are a little bit too far in front of them. I don't know if that answer your question. Thank you. Questions? I don't Sorry. Everything good for SEO is good for GEO. Is there anything whatsoever within GEO that's covered by SEO at all? Man, good question. Is there anything in GEO that's not covered by SEO? I don't think so. I think the only caveat to that and my general answer is no. But the caveat to that is

[30:23](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1823s)GEO Generative AI really likes certain established websites and it's almost hardcoded into the way works. So Reddit is a good example. It really loves Reddit. As a typical SEO strategy, I would not recommend let's create content on Reddit. But for GEO, you could actually create conversations on Reddit about your company that will be referenced in Generative AI. So, it's like a workaround. Dangerous game because people on Reddit are a little crazy and if they see you're self-promoting or whatever, it could do more harm than good. But, there's small things like that they could exploit. You could focus. Every industry has red is a general one but every industry has websites that go on a hard-coded basis prefers for answers. In the B2B space G2 and Clutch is one of them for example. How do you exploit that? G2 and clutch are paid directories. You pay to be on them and then you're mentioned in ChatGPT. So it's that would be that would be the only thing. Hi, Alex. I'm interested whether you think there's a possible application for AI when you're doing data analytics with clients and, link question, what would you say is the proportion of

[31:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1908s)Pure data analysis versus gut instinct versus experience when you're analyzing a situation? Very bit of an open-ended question. Very loaded question. That's like I hope everyone's comfortable. It's like a 2-hour response. What can I say? AI is super powerful for summarizing data. I think nothing in nothing at this point should be everything should be data driven. It shouldn't be gut feel. And I'll give you a quick example in Google ads back in the day for people who were doing this 10 years ago. A lot of people would adjust time of day bidding. Anyone in the room, show of hands, time of day bidding back in the day, maybe day of the week. So, people would go in, they would analyze data from the last three months, or a lot of it would be gut feel. By the way, all my like doctors, dentists, whatever, they're "Oh man, I feel we really do well at 400 p.m. Let's bit 30% more." And that went away because it was false. It was really false. And we did so much analysis on it. It wasn't. They were wrong like 80% of the time doing gut feel like I feel like 4 p.m.'s a time to do it. So I think AI helps with all that because it could

[33:14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=1994s)Analyze huge data sets. Most SEO SEM tools now connect to it like a now connects to ChatGPT and you could say give me a summary of my traffic for the last 30 days and the keywords I'm ran. You no longer need to sit there and do that. I think in general and very long-winded answer, but in general, I think AI is going to get rid of a lot of the bottom level like not even data entry but very lowlevel analysis that's being done now. I think that's all going to go away. I think you still need a highlevel strategy type of analysis to interpret the data because AI is going to say oh everything's terrible your numbers are terrible like well in my business now I have seasonality and I know it's terrible because ABC or this other competitor just went out of business that's why I'm doing better. You need that thing. Like AI won't know that. I'm out of time. Okay. Sorry. I try to talk quick but not quick enough. Thank you. Okay. Said no one's presenting after. So if anyone has any questions I could I could feel them here. I just have to turn this off so we don't have public conversations with the whole conference. It was a little bit techy so I didn't want to lose the audience. The num=100 search parameter that's huge. Yeah.

[34:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSrfy3Ec8FI&t=2082s)Your agency had done any research or any data. So, that's going to be a huge thing for us this month because clients who watch their impressions are going to see a huge drop. It was September 10th, wasn't it? And everybody just woke up. I was reading Twitter that morning and then and explaining to like my dentist doctor clients that your traffic's not actually down. You're just getting less bots. That's going to open a whole can of worms. But aside from that, it doesn't really impact anything. Oh, nice. Google trying to give up Sarah

As AI-powered search engines and LLMs reshape how consumers discover products, the old SEO and paid media playbooks are becoming obsolete. Brands that fail to adapt risk losing visibility, traffic, and market share to competitors who understand how to influence AI-driven results. In this forward-looking session, Alex will break down the fast-emerging rules for ranking in AI search, where answers replace lists, and context outranks keywords. We’ll also explore the new era of advertising inside LLM environments, from sponsored responses to conversational commerce.

Date

Sep 25, 2025

Location

London, UK

Format

Conference session

Speaker

[Alex Melen](https://www.alexmelen.com/about/)

Slides

[Download the deck ↓](https://www.alexmelen.com/assets/slides/ranking-on-ai-search-generative-engine-optimization-geo-alex-melen-ecommerce-expo-london.pdf)
PDF · 21 slides · 2.3 MB

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Apr 15, 2026 · Lisbon, Portugal

## Bring Alex to your next event.

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