Looking back over the past two decades of the internet, we clearly see the evolution of entry points: in the PC era, the gateway was search engines; in the mobile era, it was apps; in the short video era, it was recommendation feeds. Now, a fundamental shift is underway: entry points are transforming into “AI dialog boxes.”
When entry points are simplified to “a single sentence,” the rules of the traffic game are completely rewritten. Traffic no longer belongs solely to those skilled at dominating search rankings (SEOers), but to those who can consistently deliver credible answers and reliable brand names (GEOers).
The rise of GEO does not signal the end of SEO, but rather a powerful message: the era of purely chasing traffic is receding, and a new era centered on building brand recognition has arrived.
The Fundamental Shift in User Behavior: From “Searching for Information” to “Demanding Answers”
In the past, when you wanted to learn how to make “braised spare ribs,” your process was: open Baidu → enter keywords → click through several webpages → manually filter and compare steps.
Now, all you need to do is tell AI: “Teach me how to make home-style braised spare ribs.” Within two seconds, a complete set of steps, key cooking temperatures, and important notes will be clearly presented.
This contrast reveals an unfolding reality: user behavior has shifted from actively “searching for information” to directly “demanding answers.” The final form of this “answer” is no longer a list of links, but one or more explicit names—company names, product names, personal names, or organizational names. These clearly identifiable and summonable entities, which I collectively term “brands,” are precisely what Google SEO terminology refers to as “entities.”
At its core, a brand is an “AI-recognizable entity.” This entity can be a company (like Huawei), a product (like iPhone), a person (like Musk), or an organization.
The AI’s “Naming” Logic: Directly Providing the Brands That Best Match the Answer
Here are two examples illustrating the AI’s decision-making logic:
When you ask: “Which brand of home air conditioners is more durable?”
The AI’s response is likely to be: Gree, Midea, Daikin.
The reason is: AI can only recommend established brands that are widely discussed in public domains, have consistent quality records, and are traceable and verifiable. It cannot endorse an “anonymous” or “supposedly decent” vague entity.
When you ask: “Who proposed the concept of long-termism?”
AI will clearly identify: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Oxford philosopher William MacAskill.
The reason is: As long as an “individual” possesses a stable name and distinct contributions within a field, they become a significant cognitive entity within AI’s knowledge graph—equivalent to a corporate brand.
This marks an essential leap from the SEO era to the GEO era:
SEO Era: Competition centered on whose content best aligned with search engine crawlers and ranking algorithms.
GEO Era: Competition centers on whose “name” most closely resembles the standard answer when AI is tasked with answering a question.
The Core Strategy of the GEO Era: Making Your Brand a “Named Entity”
For users, brands mean saving the cost of screening and judgment; for AI, invoking authoritative brands means reducing the risk of generating erroneous or low-quality answers. Therefore, in the GEO era, no brand means no “interface invoked by AI.”
How to build this interface? Different industries have different approaches. Here are three examples:
1. For industrial goods and manufacturing: Deeply bind the “company name” with “specific capabilities”
Common pitfall: Official websites cluttered with specs, devoid of human connection—resembling online product manuals. GEO recommendation: Strongly associate your company or brand name with a specialized capability solving a specific problem. For example, establish the consensus in the battery industry that “CATL = New Energy Battery Solutions Expert.” The goal is for AI to naturally generate responses like: “Notable players in this field include A, B, and C.”
2. For Professional Services: Build Dual Trust Entities of “Individual + Institution”
Common Pitfall: Describing services as comprehensive yet abstract, lacking specific representatives and differentiated positioning. GEO Recommendation: Services must establish a dual-engine approach of “personal brand + institutional brand.” Examples: “XX Law Firm + a renowned lawyer,” “XX Consulting Firm + a founder-expert.” In AI evaluations, the combination of “individual name + organization name” carries stronger credibility and specificity than an isolated institutional name alone.
3. For E-commerce and Consumer Goods: Transform “Product Names” into Long-Term Assets
Common Pitfall: Arbitrary product naming, chasing short-term hits, lacking sustainable series naming.
GEO Recommendation: Treat each core product name as a “sub-entity” requiring long-term cultivation. Establish consistent naming conventions (e.g., Xiaomi SU7, AITO M9), maintain stable product line iterations (next-gen Xiaomi SU7), and continuously accumulate user reviews, media mentions, and cross-industry comparisons. The goal is for your product name to be directly referenced as a “common choice” when AI responds to queries like “Recommendations in the XX price range.”
From Traffic Is King to “Named Entities Are King”
Future competition will be directly reflected in this question: When AI needs to describe or answer questions in a specific domain, are you an indispensable part of its knowledge graph?
If we fail to become that “named entity,” we face not only the loss of traffic but, more critically, the loss of voice and invisibility in mainstream cognitive scenarios.
GEO signifies far more than a new technical term. It heralds a profound cognitive shift:
From “seizing traffic gateways” to “building solid entities”;
From “chasing clicks and exposure” to “earning named recommendations.”
As AI becomes the world’s “narrator,” every organization and individual aspiring to be seen must answer this ultimate question: How do we become the name AI cannot bypass when understanding the world?
This marks the dawn of a new era for branding in the AI landscape.