The rise of the GEO Engineer: The hottest role in marketing you haven’t heard of (yet)

For two decades, SEO specialists have been the guardians of online visibility - making sure brands surface on the first page of Google. But search is changing. Generative AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity are becoming the go-to interfaces for information. Instead of scanning links, people now ask a question and get a direct, synthesized answer.

This shift is creating a new role in marketing teams: the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) Engineer or Specialist. Just as SEO became indispensable when search engines took over the web, GEO will define visibility in the age of AI.

From SEO to GEO: Why the Role Exists

Traditional SEO focused on ranking pages in search results. GEO, by contrast, focuses on how generative models pull, interpret, and present information. Instead of optimizing for crawlers and SERPs, GEO specialists optimize for citations inside AI-generated answers.

Research from Stanford and Penn has already shown that structured content and semantic clarity can increase brand inclusion in generative outputs by up to 40%. Agencies and enterprises are beginning to hire for GEO explicitly because whoever controls AI visibility will control audience perception.

What Does a GEO Engineer Do?

A GEO Engineer’s day won’t look identical to that of an SEO manager. Their responsibilities include:

• Auditing content for AI readability – ensuring it’s semantically rich, well-structured, and aligned with entities that models recognize.
  
  

• Prompt & query mapping – simulating user questions and testing how brands appear in AI responses.
  
  

• Citation optimization – experimenting with formats, topics, and angles most likely to be pulled into generative answers.
  
  

• Monitoring & analysis – tracking which sources LLMs cite and how competitors are positioned. Tools like GetMentioned already allow marketers to see their visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity, and identify which domains influence AI responses.
  
  

• Cross-functional integration – collaborating with SEO and content teams to align AI-focused and search-focused strategies.
  
  

In short: GEO Engineers blend technical optimization with a new layer of prompt-driven visibility testing.

Key Skills for the GEO Specialist

The GEO role is still young, but some skills are already becoming clear:

• Technical & analytical: understanding how LLMs source and synthesize content, familiarity with structured data (Schema.org, JSON-LD), and comfort with visibility analytics tools.
  
  

• SEO fundamentals: site architecture, speed, indexability, and content strategy still matter—they form the foundation for AI to trust your content.
  
  

• Content craftsmanship: ability to produce content that is authoritative, semantically rich, and directly answers likely user queries.
  
  

• Curiosity & experimentation: GEO is a moving target, and the best specialists will test, learn, and adapt constantly.
  
  

Unlike data scientists, GEO engineers won’t need to build models—but they must deeply understand how generative systems consume content.

Challenges & Risks in GEO

Like SEO in its early days, GEO comes with uncertainty. The biggest hurdles for specialists will include:

• Constant model updates – generative engines frequently change their retrieval methods and training data, which can shift brand visibility overnight.
  
  

• Black-box behavior – LLMs don’t reveal why they cite one source over another, making optimization partly experimental.
  
  

• Content freshness – models may prefer older, authoritative content or pull from outdated sources, creating misalignments with your latest positioning.
  
  

• Competitive intensity – as more brands adopt GEO, the fight for inclusion in answers will mirror the SEO arms race of the past decade.
  
  

• Ethical boundaries – pushing too hard risks “gaming” the models, which could backfire if engines adapt or penalize manipulative practices.
  
  

In other words: GEO is high-reward but requires constant adaptation, creativity, and a commitment to responsible practices.

Why This Role Will Grow

Several trends make the GEO Engineer inevitable:

• Generative search adoption is exploding – Google AI Overviews alone now reach hundreds of millions of users.
  
  

• Brands can’t afford invisibility – if you’re absent in AI answers, a growing portion of your audience won’t see you at all.
  
  

• Early movers are gaining an edge – companies investing in GEO now are learning how to shape AI narratives while competitors are still catching up.
  
  

In the next three years, expect GEO to join SEO, paid media, and content as a core pillar of digital marketing. Agencies are already offering GEO services, and internal marketing teams are beginning to carve out specialist roles.

Getting Started with GEO

For organizations: start small by simulating prompts in your industry and measuring how often you appear. Tools like GetMentioned can give you a visibility baseline across major AI platforms.

For individuals: build on your SEO skills but add an AI-first lens. Learn how generative systems cite sources, experiment with structured data, and stay updated with GEO research.

Conclusion: The Future Is Generative

The role of the SEO wasn’t obvious in 2002 but two decades later, no brand can imagine marketing without it. Today we’re at a similar inflection point.

The GEO Engineer will be the professional ensuring your brand is visible, credible, and influential in the answers AI delivers. If you’re not preparing for it now, you risk being invisible in the very engines shaping the future of discovery.