Back in June 2025, when I wrote about When No One Visits Your Website and building content for the AI first era, while most were still focusing over traditional SEO metrics.

I saw the writing on the wall: the relationship between content and discovery was about to change forever. Relevance would soon matter more than clicks.

Now, just months later, “GEO” (Generative Engine Optimisation) is everywhere.

Optimizely announces the first “GEO-ready CMS.”

CTRs plummet by 30% when AI Overviews appear.

Content creators scramble to “optimise” for AI patterns.

For me, it’s déjà vu. I saw this shift months ago. The validation isn’t just satisfying – it’s instructive.

Why I Felt SEO Was Headed for Disruption

By early 2025, three signals were starting to become trends:

• Zero-click searches were exploding – Nearly 60% of queries already ended without a click, and AI would only accelerate that.
• Creators were optimising for the wrong audience – They wrote for Google’s algorithm instead of training the AI systems that would replace it.
• User behavior was shifting – People wanted instant, authoritative answers – not ten blue links.

This wasn’t an SEO tweak. It was a business model transformation. The industry treated AI search as incremental, when it was actually a paradigm shift.

Early Adopters Got Ahead

The first movers who embraced GEO aren’t just ranking – they’re reshaping roles:

• GEO specialists
• AI content orchestrators
• Prompt engineers

These jobs didn’t exist when I first wrote about this. Today, they’re career paths with measurable value.

Content Strategy’s Business Model Flip

The big mistake? Thinking traffic was the value.

The real value is authority signals machines recognise.

That means:

• AI citations > clicks
• Cross-platform mentions > keyword rankings
• Domain expertise + AI mastery = competitive advantage

The “60% Problem” was never just about traffic – it was about survival in an AI-first discovery system.

Eight months later, the market has caught up to what I was seeing (not that I realised then):

• Train AI systems, not just search engines.
• Serve humans and machines.
• Measure authority, not traffic.

Those who embraced this early now hold the advantage. Those who didn’t are scrambling.

The GEO revolution doesn’t reward clicks – it rewards credibility.

We’re already seeing:

• Real-time personalisation via RAG
• Voice + visual search optimisation
• Dynamic, AI-driven content adaptation

The creators who master that shift will win the next decade of discovery.