{"id":121897,"date":"2026-04-08T13:55:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/geo-was-invented-on-sand-hill-road\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T13:56:23","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T13:56:23","slug":"geo-was-invented-on-sand-hill-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mailinvest.blog\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/geo-was-invented-on-sand-hill-road\/","title":{"rendered":"GEO Was Invented On Sand Hill Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I\u2019ve been placing this one off.<\/p>\n

Not as a result of the argument is tough to make \u2013 it isn\u2019t \u2013 however as a result of the habits it\u2019s about has been a fixture of the website positioning trade for so long as I\u2019ve labored in it. The shiny new object arrives, the FOMO kicks in, the convention decks replace, and a whole skilled class reshuffles its vocabulary to match no matter acronym landed that quarter. I wrote not too long ago about how AI content scaling is just content spinning with better grammar<\/a> \u2013 the instruments change, the qualitative wall doesn\u2019t. The acronym cycle runs on the identical engine.<\/p>\n

However this time, the shiny object didn\u2019t emerge from practitioners observing a real shift and attempting to call it. It was manufactured upstream \u2013 by enterprise capital, amplified by engagement farming, and adopted by professionals whose major motivation isn\u2019t \u201cthat is actual\u201d however \u201cI can\u2019t afford to seem like I\u2019m not maintaining.\u201d<\/p>\n

So right here we’re.<\/p>\n

The Funding Thesis<\/h2>\n

In Could 2025, Andreessen Horowitz printed a weblog submit titled \u201cHow Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search<\/a>.\u201d It appeared of their enterprise publication, written by two a16z companions, Zach Cohen and Seema Amble. Public, on their web site, obtainable to anybody with a browser.<\/p>\n

The submit declared that the \u201c$80 billion+ website positioning market simply cracked\u201d and that \u201ca brand new paradigm is rising.\u201d It name-dropped three GEO instruments \u2013 Profound, Goodie, and Daydream \u2013 as platforms enabling manufacturers to trace how they seem in AI-generated responses. It described a future the place GEO corporations would \u201cfine-tune their very own fashions\u201d and \u201cpersonal the loop\u201d between perception and iteration. a16z promoted it throughout their social channels, together with a submit from the agency\u2019s official account: \u201cwebsite positioning is slowly shedding its dominance. Welcome to GEO.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Screenshot from X<\/a>, April 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Additionally: a16z is an investor<\/a> in Profound.<\/p>\n

The weblog submit creates demand for the class. The class creates demand for the instruments. The instruments are of their portfolio. A gross sales funnel with a byline.<\/p>\n

Marc Andreessen\u2019s \u201cSoftware program is consuming the world\u201d wasn\u2019t simply an essay \u2013 it was a prospectus wearing editorial clothes. The GEO submit follows the identical logic: establish the wave, place your bets because the inevitable response, publish the narrative that makes each really feel like settled reality. Even sympathetic protection observed. The Alts.co write-up<\/a> famous plainly that \u201ca16z is drawing consideration to GEO as a result of it\u2019s an opportunity to hawk\/pump their very own investments.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Occurs When No one Checks The Supply<\/h2>\n

Ten months later, in March 2026, someone on X described<\/a> the weblog submit as \u201ca 34-page inside memo\u201d that a16z had \u201cquietly printed\u201d and which had acquired solely \u201c200 views.\u201d It cited a selected statistic: portfolio corporations rating No.1 on Google noticed \u201ca 34% drop in natural site visitors in 12 months.\u201d I\u2019m not within the particular person. This submit is one in every of lots of following the identical sample, and the sample is what issues.<\/p>\n

None of that is actual.<\/p>\n

The weblog submit isn\u2019t 34 pages. It isn\u2019t inside. It wasn\u2019t quietly printed. The particular opening line and the 34% stat don\u2019t seem within the precise piece. You possibly can confirm this your self proper now.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a16z\u2019s doing. An engagement farmer discovered an outdated weblog submit and repackaged it with fictional scaffolding as a result of that format performs higher on social media. A \u201cleaked inside memo\u201d is sexier than a publication. \u201c200 views\u201d creates shortage. Invented statistics create authority.<\/p>\n

And it labored. Folks shared it, constructed threads round it, didn\u2019t verify whether or not the memo existed. Why would they? The narrative was too good.<\/p>\n

Two unbiased forces \u2013 a VC agency doing commonplace narrative-building, and an engagement farmer doing commonplace engagement farming \u2013 converge on the identical consequence. The VC seeds the class. The farmer, months later, independently amplifies a distorted model. Professionals take up the distortion as a result of no person goes again to verify the first supply.<\/p>\n

Not coordination. Convergence. And a class turns into \u201cactual\u201d with out anyone establishing that it’s.<\/p>\n

The Keen Contributors<\/h2>\n

VCs and engagement farmers can\u2019t take all of the credit score. website positioning professionals are essentially the most culpable hyperlink within the chain.<\/p>\n

One widely-shared submit on X captures the mentality \u2013 and I\u2019m citing the habits, not the particular person, as a result of this place is in all places within the trade proper now. The argument: Purchasers don\u2019t need to hear that GEO is \u201csimply website positioning repackaged.\u201d Neither does your govt staff. Inform them \u201cit\u2019s simply website positioning,\u201d and also you\u2019ll be \u201cperceived as a legacy outdated thinker.\u201d You would possibly even be \u201cchanged by a GEO company.\u201d The conclusion: \u201cwhether or not you prefer it or not\u2026 it\u2019s in your greatest curiosity to get aboard the AI practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Picture Credit score: Pedro Dias<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The argument isn’t that GEO works. Not that it measures something significant. Not that it produces higher outcomes for purchasers. The argument is that when you don\u2019t undertake the label, you’ll lose your job.<\/p>\n

Ambulance chasing dressed as profession recommendation.<\/p>\n

And right here\u2019s what makes website positioning professionals extra culpable than the VCs or the engagement farmers: they don\u2019t simply take up the worry. They promote it. They repackage the anxiousness about their very own relevance and promote it downstream to purchasers and executives who’re even much less outfitted to guage the claims. The VC creates the narrative. The engagement farmer amplifies it. The website positioning skilled walks right into a consumer assembly and says, \u201cYou want a GEO technique, otherwise you\u2019ll be invisible to AI,\u201d figuring out full effectively they’ll\u2019t outline what meaning in phrases the consumer might confirm.<\/p>\n

That is how website positioning professionals undermine their very own credibility. Not by being mistaken concerning the technical shift, however by promoting certainty they don\u2019t have a couple of class they didn\u2019t trouble to confirm, utilizing another person\u2019s terminology to paper over their very own lack of expertise.<\/p>\n

No one held a gun to anybody\u2019s head and mentioned, \u201cPut GEO in your LinkedIn headline.\u201d website positioning professionals are selecting to undertake terminology they haven\u2019t evaluated, from sources they haven\u2019t verified, for instruments they’ll\u2019t validate; after which browsing that very same worry issue into consumer budgets. If the one approach you possibly can promote your experience is by rebranding it each eighteen months, the issue isn\u2019t the label. It\u2019s the boldness.<\/p>\n

The folks most able to evaluating whether or not GEO is an actual self-discipline are the identical folks adopting it quickest. Each hour they spend chasing the vocabulary is an hour not spent constructing the understanding that might make them inconceivable to interchange. I\u2019ve written about how AI is hollowing out the junior pipeline<\/a>: the apprenticeship layer the place practitioners really study judgment. The acronym treadmill accelerates that. It replaces depth with breadth, understanding with terminology, {and professional} growth with skilled efficiency.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s Truly Beneath<\/h2>\n

Strip away the a16z framing, the fabricated memos, and the skilled anxiousness, and ask the boring query: what would you really do otherwise when you took GEO significantly?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve argued earlier than that grounding is just retrieval<\/a>: When an AI system cites a supply, it\u2019s working a search job, not exercising editorial judgment. Indexing, vector search, relevance scoring. The identical ideas we\u2019ve been working with for twenty years, with a generative interface on high. GEO isn\u2019t a second self-discipline standing alongside website positioning. It\u2019s outdated retrieval visibility in a trench coat pretending to be two disciplines. And your knowledge interpretation abilities \u2013 perched comfortably atop Mount Dunning-Kruger \u2013 don\u2019t trump the clear, demonstrable logic of how a retrieval engine works. When you can\u2019t clarify why a consequence appeared, you haven’t any enterprise promoting a service that claims to optimize for it.<\/p>\n

The a16z submit itself confirms this, maybe by chance. The recommendation it provides manufacturers pursuing GEO is a biggest hits of website positioning greatest practices: structured content material, authoritative backlinks (rebranded as \u201cearned media\u201d), schema markup, topical authority. It even recommends \u201cbrief, dense, citation-worthy paragraphs\u201d and \u201cparticular claims with verifiable numbers\u201d \u2013 which is, and I can’t stress this sufficient, simply competent writing.<\/p>\n

David McSweeney has been doing website positioning since earlier than a few of these GEO startups\u2019 founders graduated. He\u2019s spent years writing about the identical techniques now being repackaged beneath the GEO label (content material freshness, digital PR, neighborhood participation, hyperlink constructing) and has the publication dates to prove it<\/a>. His abstract of the GEO pitch: make the most of the truth that companies don\u2019t perceive AI programs depend on conventional search, and extract extra money from them.<\/p>\n

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Screenshot from X<\/a>, April 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He referred to as it the grift. I feel that\u2019s beneficiant. A grift implies particular person con artists. That is structural: a class manufactured on the high, distorted within the center, and adopted on the backside. Not as a result of it describes something new, however as a result of the skilled price of ignoring it feels larger than the skilled price of pretending it\u2019s actual.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re Not In The Driver\u2019s Seat<\/h2>\n

Your job as a reliable skilled is to know what these abbreviations really imply, the place they arrive from, and what \u2013 if something \u2013 they alter about your work.<\/p>\n

When you can clarify to your purchasers and your management what AI programs really do, how they retrieve info, what\u2019s genuinely measurable, and what isn\u2019t \u2013 you’ll by no means be in a reactive place. You’ll by no means be the particular person scrambling so as to add \u201cGEO\u201d to a slide deck as a result of somebody on X instructed you it was the longer term.<\/p>\n

If as an alternative you let your self be dragged round by no matter narrative enterprise capitalists want you to imagine this quarter, you’ll all the time be reacting. One weblog submit away from a technique pivot. Shopping for instruments offered by individuals who profit out of your insecurity. That\u2019s a alternative. Not a destiny.<\/p>\n

The underlying mechanics of how content material will get found \u2013 search engine crawler<\/a>, LLM grounding system, RAG pipeline \u2013 haven\u2019t undergone a paradigm shift. The interface has shifted. Customers get solutions synthesized from sources fairly than a listing of hyperlinks.<\/p>\n

However \u201cthe interface modified\u201d doesn\u2019t promote software program. \u201cEvery part is out of date and also you want our dashboard\u201d does.<\/p>\n

Observe The Cash<\/h2>\n

a16z advantages as a result of the GEO narrative creates demand for his or her portfolio corporations. The instrument startups profit as a result of the narrative creates their market. The engagement farmers profit as a result of fabricated memos drive impressions. The companies that rebrand as \u201cGEO specialists\u201d profit as a result of they’ll cost extra for a similar providers with a shinier label.<\/p>\n

Who doesn\u2019t profit? The practitioners doing strong, foundational work. These folks don\u2019t want a brand new acronym. They want the trade to cease mistaking advertising and marketing for methodology.<\/p>\n

And the purchasers. The purchasers are the place the worry chain terminates, and the invoices start. A brand new line merchandise for work that ought to have been occurring already beneath the website positioning retainer, or that may\u2019t be reliably measured within the first place. The VC manufactures the class. The website positioning skilled absorbs it and marks it up. The consumer pays for it. A sport of phone the place the invoice lands on the final particular person within the room who doesn\u2019t converse the language.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written individually concerning the measurement downside with these instruments \u2013 the non-determinism, the hole between parametric and retrieved information, the dashboards constructed on methodological sand. The instruments a16z promotes in that weblog submit have the identical structural limitations. The dashboards look great. The numbers move.<\/a> Whether or not the numbers imply something is a query no person promoting the dashboard has an incentive to reply.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, the precise disaster will get no airtime. Natural search site visitors throughout main U.S. publishers dropped 42% after AI Overviews expanded. Rankings didn\u2019t change. Site visitors did. That\u2019s the actual downside. Not which three-letter acronym to place in your slide deck, however the truth that the economic model underpinning content production<\/a> on the open internet is breaking. GEO doesn\u2019t handle that. It doesn\u2019t even faux to. It simply provides everybody one thing to be busy with while the floor drops out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cycle time is getting shorter. We went from \u201cAEO\u201d to \u201cGEO\u201d in about eighteen months. Give it one other 12 months, and there\u2019ll be one other acronym, one other VC weblog submit, one other fabricated memo, and one other spherical of execs attempting to determine whether or not the most recent three letters are price placing on their LinkedIn headline.<\/p>\n

Or you might simply do good work and perceive what you\u2019re doing effectively sufficient to elucidate it with out borrowed terminology. However I suppose that doesn\u2019t have the identical ring to it on a pitch deck.<\/p>\n

Extra Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

This submit was initially printed on The Inference<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

Featured Picture: Summit Artwork Creations\/Shutterstock<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n