As a marketer, brand manager, SEO (Search Engines Optimization) expert, you are interested in whether search engine optimization is relevant or not in the months to come. Many of our businesses rely heavily on search engines and now that we heard about LLMs, we are wondering, is our business doomed?This guide for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) should help you understand the new AI frontier, and give you advice on how to evolve your current SEO efforts to upcoming GEO efforts.

A major shift is underway in the way consumers discover, research and purchase products online — and it’s being driven by artificial intelligence. OpenAI is rolling out new features and exploring integrations with platforms like Shopify that could allow users to shop directly through ChatGPT. This means customers could search for and buy products from Shopify merchants without ever leaving a chat interface.

The dream of search engines as they were originally conceived was that you’d get the perfect answer to your query. The reality became something different, with searchers inundated with ads and results rendered unhelpful or irrelevant because of SEO’s commercial intent. 

We can’t judge. We play the game, too. The balance of informing people and motivating them to buy something is…tricky. Always has been, but now more than ever, AI-driven search is changing the way people are searching and finding information, often with fewer clicks onto sites, which is worrying retailers. 

For businesses, this shift means that showing up in AI-generated results is now as important as ranking on classic search pages. AthenaHQ is at the forefront of this transformation, helping brands adapt and thrive with advanced AI SEO tools built for the new era of generative search.

The Rise of Generative AI in Search

Why AI Search Engine Optimization Tools Matter Now

AI-driven search engines don’t just list links—they generate answers, summarize content, and mention brands in context. This new model, called generative engine optimization (GEO), requires a different approach than traditional SEO. Instead of focusing only on keywords and backlinks, businesses need to ensure their brand is mentioned accurately and favorably in AI-generated responses.

Instead of surfacing website links, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, Perplexity and others now deliver direct answers — often without the user ever clicking a link that leads to a website. That transformation has big implications, experts said. The traditional SEO model, built around keywords, backlinks, and content density, is losing effectiveness as AI-driven tools dominate the discovery phase.

Starting July 10, 2025, Google will begin indexing Instagram content. Yes, you read that right, Instagram posts, reels, and carousels are about to become part of the indexable web. This shift marks a significant evolution in Google’s understanding of what constitutes “relevant content.”

While the social media giants like Instagram and TikTok have long been seen as separate worlds from traditional search engines, Google is now signaling that multimodal SEO is no longer a niche and it’s now a central part of the web experience it want to give to its users. 

For most of its history, SEO has been a reactive discipline, being asked to “make it rank” once a site is built, with little input into the process. Even crazier, most SEO professionals are assigned a set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for which they are accountable, metrics tied to visibility, engagement, and revenue.

Still, they have no real control over the underlying systems that affect them. These metrics often rely on the performance of disconnected teams, including content, engineering, brand, and product, which don’t always share the same objectives.

In Silicon Valley, “vibe coding” – letting AI handle coding at lightning speed – is being hailed as the dominant new way to build software. Now a parallel shift is emerging in the search marketing world: vibe SEO. This approach combines human intuition (“vibes”) with powerful AI automation, enabling one savvy marketer to accomplish what once took an entire team – and do it faster than ever. In this piece, we introduce the concept of vibe SEO, explore why it’s rising now, and outline how SEO professionals can harness AI without losing the human touch.