AI Search Optimization: How to Rank Your Brand in the Age of GEO | Chirag Kulkarni

AI Search Optimization: How to Rank Your Brand in the Age of GEO | Chirag Kulkarni

Traditional SEO is changing. In the AI-driven search era, users aren't just clicking blue links anymore—they're asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude for direct answers. If your brand isn't showing up when AI recommends "the best" in your category, you're missing out on the fastest-growing channel in digital discovery. Chirag Kulkarni, founder of Taco.co, breaks down exactly how brands can turn AI search into a real revenue engine. ✅ Win AI visibility — try Semrush free for 14 days https://semrush.sjv.io/dyDJGk In this episode of The GEO Blueprint Podcast, we sit down with Chirag Kulkarni, founder of Taco.co, to unpack how AI decides which brands deserve authority, why "content made for agents" is mostly a trap, and how one healthcare client grew from $10-15K to $240K a month in search revenue. Chirag also opens up about landing his first SEO client from Neil Patel at 16 years old, and why the future of marketing belongs to humans who can direct AI, not replace themselves with it. Key Topics Covered: The "Most Popular Kid in School" Test: Why one person saying your brand is great doesn't move the needle with AI — and what actually signals authority to an LLM. Forward Deployed Marketing: The Palantir-inspired model Chirag is betting on, where marketers bring AI expertise directly into a company rather than selling generic agency work that AI is already commoditizing. Reverse-Engineering Prompts from Search Intent: Since there's no keyword volume data for prompts yet, Chirag's playbook for figuring out what to target anyway — and the H1/H2 fix any brand can make this week. Content for Agents Doesn't Work (Yet): Why microsites and content built purely to be scraped by bots tend to cannibalize your real site and quietly tank Google/Bing performance. The Expedia and Healthcare Case Studies: How search compounds like an investment — including a healthcare client's 20x revenue jump in under two years. Are We in an AI Bubble? Chirag's take, plus the story of a European coffee company whose sales are spiking because people are too scared of being replaced by AI to leave the office. Connect with Chirag: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chiragkulkarni/ Website: https://taco.co/ The GEO Blueprint Podcast explores how brands can win visibility in the age of generative AI, LLM-powered search, and shifting digital ecosystems. Subscribe to Substack: https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/ 00:00 - Intro01:04 - Who is Chirag and the Taco.co story03:36 - GEO vs SEO — fundamentally the same or different?06:00 - The "most popular kid in school" analogy for AI visibility07:59 - How will AI change marketing over the next 3 years?09:46 - What is uniquely valuable about humans that AI can't replace?11:46 - Agents and forward deployed marketing — what's changing15:05 - What signals does AI use to decide who is an authority?16:45 - Will there be one dominant LLM or many?18:19 - Who wins in AI search — big brands or smaller specialists?20:19 - How do you attribute revenue to AI search?23:49 - Is prompt tracking even reliable, or just hype?27:28 - What's your take on ads in AI?31:04 - Are we in an AI bubble?34:33 - Coffee sales are up because people fear AI will replace them36:48 - Most successful client results — Expedia and 20x healthcare growth39:06 - The one thing every brand can fix this week for AI visibility41:29 - Content made for agents — does it actually exist?47:35 - What does work even look like in the future with AI doing more?49:51 - Middle of funnel content — where LLMs actually shine51:52 - How he got his first SEO retainer from Neil Patel at 1653:18 - Being 21 in a room full of executives twice his age57:31 - Reinventing yourself — adaptability over raw skill58:50 - What is the one thing AI cannot replace in marketing?59:41 - Is AI making us lazy?1:00:37 - Outro #GEO #AISearch #SEO #GenerativeEngineOptimization #Taco #AIVisibility #LLM #DigitalMarketing #ForwardDeployedMarketing #B2BMarketing #ArtificialIntelligence

The AI Search Strategy Every CMO Is Missing | Noah Greenberg

Traditional SEO is changing. In the AI-driven search era, users aren't just clicking blue links anymore—they're asking conversational engines like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini for direct answers. If your brand isn’t showing up in third-party citations across authoritative news sites, your business is effectively missing out on the future of digital discovery. Noah Greenberg has the exact distribution playbook to help you reverse-engineer Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and dramatically scale your brand's AI visibility. ✅ Win AI visibility — try Semrush free for 14 days https://semrush.sjv.io/X4rGk3 In this episode of The GEO Blueprint Podcast, we sit down with Noah Greenberg, CEO of Stacker, to look inside how LLMs scrape the web, choose which brands to reference, and process authority. Noah breaks down why earned media is the single biggest driver for AI visibility, how to turn your brand's owned insights into unmissable original data, and how bootstrapped founders can dominate distribution in a saturated market. * The Blueprint of Modern Syndication: How brands can transition from self-promotional lists into genuine newsroom-grade content that thousands of authoritative publishers want to run for free. * Decoding the 239% AI Citation Spike: What it practically means to map your content across a massive digital surface area to drastically shift the probabilities of an LLM recommending your business. * The Wild West of AI Search: Why the lack of direct guidelines from OpenAI leaves the field wide open for independent research, experimentation, and major visibility wins. * The CMO's Order of Priority: A strategic, realistic advice guide for marketing leaders on establishing a baseline, playing the long game, and testing earned media vectors. * What AI Cites (And What It Ignores): Why standard "common knowledge" content gets zero credit from conversational models, and how original data or custom surveys unlock automated citations. * The Saturated Business Trap: Why modern AI tools like vibe coding have made launching a startup effortlessly easy—but scaling distribution harder than ever before. * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahg/ * Website: https://stacker.com/ 00:00 - Intro 01:03 - How Stacker works — publishers get content free, brands pay 04:29 - 239% more AI citations — what that actually means for GEO 10:36 - Bigger news sites = more likely AI cites you 11:46 - CMO advice — GEO priority list in order 15:13 - How Stacker directly helps brands with AI visibility 16:57 - Why Noah posts on LinkedIn every day 18:52 - Should founders create content on LinkedIn? 20:36 - Fulfilling demand vs creating demand — the YouTube lesson 22:09 - Think of your LinkedIn as a mini media company 23:28 - Make money in 6 months or it's over — what that forced 26:54 - BuzzFeed and Vice — what they did wrong 28:44 - How Noah started and built Stacker over 9 years 30:49 - What content AI actually cites — and what it never cites 34:23 - Original content is the thread across everything in AI search 35:59 - Has AI made it easier or harder to start a business? 38:24 - How founders can win distribution in this new age 41:46 - Should every company hire journalists and economists? 43:39 - Why Noah hired a full-time head of insights 44:00 - PESO model — owned, earned, paid, shared explained 46:01 - Biggest content mistake Noah has made 47:18 - People hate AI for what they're passionate about 49:32 - What's your LLM of choice? 51:03 - Will there be one AI winner or will it stay scattered? 52:12 - What's your take on ads in AI? 53:57 - What I should have asked you — top of mind on GEO 56:07 - Outro #GEO #AISearch #SEO #GenerativeEngineOptimization #Stacker #AIVisibility #LLM #DigitalMarketing #ContentDistribution #EarnedMedia #B2BMarketing #ArtificialIntelligence #SearchMarketing #GEOBlueprint #Entrepreneurship

How to Reverse-Engineer AI Search: The GEO Playbook with a Former Microsoft Copilot Engineer | Alp Aysan

Traditional SEO is changing. In the AI-driven search era, users aren't just clicking links anymore—they're asking conversational engines for synthesized answers. If your brand isn’t showing up directly in LLM citations, your business is effectively invisible. Mehmet Alp Aysan has the playbook to reverse-engineer generative engine optimization (GEO) and win the future of digital discovery. ✅ Win AI visibility — try Semrush free for 14 days: https://semrush.sjv.io/QY0DvY [https://semrush.sjv.io/QY0DvY] In this episode, George Vlasyev sits down with Mehmet Alp Aysan, Co-Founder of Cognizo and former Search Reliability Engineer for Microsoft Copilot. Alp breaks down how to track your brand's presence across language models, why the probabilistic nature of LLMs is a massive opportunity for smaller specialists, and how to build a cohesive narrative that AI agents actually trust. Key Topics Covered: * Inside Microsoft Copilot: What working on tech giant infrastructure teaches you about the hidden, ever-changing business metrics driving AI search algorithms. * The Failure of Programmatic Spam: Why flooding your website with thousands of low-quality AI blogs is unsustainable and will ultimately get your brand penalized. * Demystifying LLM "Temperature": A simple, clear breakdown of the probabilistic math behind why AI models roll the dice to pick different words and links. * Scaling AI Visibility 30x: The step-by-step methodology behind how Opel successfully dominated niche topics day-over-day using highly authoritative, original content. * Marketing to Agents, Not Humans: Preparing for a zero-click world where conversational assistants make the ultimate buying decisions for consumers. * Results as a Service (RaaS): Why the entire digital ecosystem is shifting away from traditional SaaS apps and into automated outcome delivery. Connect with Mehmet Alp Aysan: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alp-aysan/ [https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.linkedin.com/in/mehmet-alp-aysan/&authuser=1] Website: https://www.cognizo.ai/ [https://www.google.com/search?q=https://www.cognito.ai/&authuser=1] Subscribe to Substack: https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/ [https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/] The GEO Blueprint Podcast explores how brands can win visibility in the age of generative AI, LLM-powered search, and shifting digital ecosystems. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:10 - GEO vs SEO — what's the difference and where do they overlap? 02:51 - 5.5 years building AI search at Microsoft — what that taught him 05:51 - The biggest myths about AI visibility he keeps hearing on LinkedIn 07:03 - What is original content in the age of AI? 10:14 - Opel grew AI visibility 30x — here's exactly what they did 11:54 - How does Cognizo actually track AI visibility? 18:09 - The biggest opportunity in marketing most companies are completely missing 19:54 - Can a small company compete against HubSpot in AI search? 23:04 - How will AI fundamentally change marketing in the next 3 years? 26:53 - SaaS is becoming RaaS — results as a service 31:14 - Brand has zero AI visibility — what's the very first step? 32:49 - 73% of LinkedIn citations come from long-form articles — not posts 34:13 - Why narrative and community are the foundation of AI visibility 35:37 - What actually happens when you type a question into AI search? 37:57 - How do you deal with the probabilistic nature of AI when tracking visibility? 40:18 - AI intimacy and what it means for brand marketing 42:38 - What does AI search look like in 2 years? 43:53 - What does "building a narrative" actually mean in practice? 45:09 - First party vs third party — what's the right ratio? 47:08 - Which AI engine are you betting on in 2026? 48:48 - Will there be one AI winner or will it stay scattered? 54:46 - How do you use AI in your own work? 56:37 - What is the one thing AI cannot do for a marketing team? 58:32 - Is AI making us lazier? 1:00:37 - What is uniquely human that AI will never replicate? 1:01:11 - Outro #GEO #AISearch #SEO #GenerativeEngineOptimization #Cognizo #AIFirst #LLM #DigitalMarketing #B2BSaaS #ArtificialIntelligence #SearchMarketing #GEOBlueprint #Entrepreneurship

AI Search 101: How to Train LLMs to Recommend Your Business | Vadi Efe

Ranking #1 on Google used to be the ultimate SEO milestone. In the AI-driven search era, users aren't even visiting traditional websites anymore—they're asking Gemini and Claude for the answers. ✅ Win AI visibility — try Semrush free for 14 days: https://semrush.sjv.io/QY0DvYIn this episode, George Vlasyev sits down with Vadi Efe, Founder of Busylike, an AI-first marketing agency brand activation company helping brands create digital media strategies, content production, and campaign execution. Vadi breaks down how to run systematic prompt tracking across language models, why "utility marketing" is the future of monetization inside ChatGPT, and how smaller specialist brands can outcompete massive budgets by capturing targeted niches.Key Topics Covered:Reverse-Engineering LLM Rankings: How to programmatically track hundreds of user prompts across models to figure out exactly when and where your brand is cited.The Architecture of Model Memory: The operational roadmap to establishing your brand as a foundational authority so AI models intuitively recommend you across millions of independent user conversations.The Death of the Traditional Keyword: Why the shift from four-word queries to 23-word natural conversations requires hyper-specific, in-depth content layers to capture high-converting intent.Winning with Limited Budgets: How smaller specialists can exploit hidden gaps in authority ecosystems to dominate niches before multi-million dollar corporate ad spending takes over.The Reality of Generative Content: Why regurgitating standard information fails over the long term, and how to orchestrate AI tools using proprietary expert data to scale unique output safely.The Dawn of Utility Marketing: Why future ad placements inside conversational AI interfaces must deliver active, precise utility to the user to maintain system trust and drive high ROI.Dominating High-Authority Domains: Maximizing visibility on core LLM training vectors like Reddit and YouTube through genuine human-to-human interaction, transcription alignment, and video optimization.The Ultimate Human Edge: The distinct creative elements, emotional dynamics, and real-world experiences that software architectures will never genuinely replicate.---Connect with Vadi Efe:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vadiefe/Website: https://www.busylike.com/Subscribe to Substack: https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/The GEO Blueprint Podcast explores how brands can win visibility in the age of generative AI, LLM-powered search, and shifting digital ecosystems.Timestamps:00:00 - Intro01:04 - What does Busylike do?02:06 - How AI visibility, media strategy and creative production are connected?04:16 - Are AI visibility tools reliable or Fugazi?06:25 - How GEO changes brand discovery vs traditional SEO and paid media?10:16 - How can brands use AI insights to improve messaging and positioning?12:03 - Your brand isn't mentioned in AI at all — what do you do?14:11 - Big brands vs small specialists — who wins in AI search?16:21 - Is AI-generated content a viable long-term strategy?19:10 - Model memory — how to build AI authority in your niche20:46 - Will ads inside AI conversations be sustainable?24:52 - Reddit as an AI visibility strategy26:41 - What can AI never replace in creative production?27:40 - YouTube content strategy for brands in the AI age31:14 - Built and sold two companies — biggest lessons from exits33:13 - How will AI change humanity?36:40 - How will AI change education for our children?39:10 - Replace yourself with AI before someone else does40:00 - Best advice for a founder building an AI company right now41:33 - Agents — use cases and how they change how businesses run43:04 - Will there be one AI winner or will it stay scattered?44:37 - Local language AI — the Turkish token problem47:41 - What's your LLM of choice?49:48 - Voice search and ubiquitous computing53:01 - Outro#GEO #AISearch #SEO

How to Rank #1 on AI Search Engines: The Future of SEO | Arjun Mahadevan

Ranking #1 on Google used to be the ultimate SEO milestone. In the AI-driven search era, users aren't even visiting traditional websites anymore—they're asking Gemini and Claude for the answers. If your brand isn’t showing up directly in LLM citations, your business is effectively invisible. Arjun Mahadevan has the playbook to reverse engineer AI search engine optimization and win the future of digital discovery. ✅ Win AI visibility — try Semrush free for 14 days: https://semrush.sjv.io/E0R5rQ In this episode, George Vlasyev sits down with Arjun Mahadevan, Founder & CEO of Doola, a platform helping global founders form US companies, handle taxes, and manage bookkeeping. Arjun breaks down how Doola became the #1 recommended LLC platform on Google Gemini, the mechanics of Claude’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), and why marketing leaders need to prepare for a world where their primary customers are AI agents, not humans. * Reverse-Engineering LLM Rankings: How to track AI search citations across models to figure out exactly what content (Reddit, blogs, YouTube) is driving AI recommendations. * The Massive AI Attribution Disconnect: Why traditional tracking fails to capture the 25%+ of users who discover brands via LLMs before navigating via a direct, branded search. * Dominating a Hyper-Specific Niche: Why building a structural moat in a specialized category like "LLC for non-US residents" outperforms chasing broad, commoditized keywords. * The Model Context Protocol (MCP) Revolution: How universal plug-ins are turning websites from onboarding funnels into pure social proof surfaces as transactions move directly inside chat interfaces. * The Rise of Agentic Commerce: Preparing your business operations for a future where autonomously prompting AI agents buy software and execute business services instead of human users. * The "Google Maps" Cognitive Effect: The alarming research showing how outsourcing critical thinking to automated platforms shrinks human brain activity. * The "Write-Your-Take-First" Protocol: A tactical framework of writing down your thesis before prompting an AI to prevent models from simply mirroring back predictable pattern guesses. * Steven Bartlett’s Creative Moat: Why creative writing and swimming against the lazy AI tide will become the ultimate differentiator for future business leaders. * Earning the Right to Play: Overcoming the "dull, dreary grind" of early-stage operations and using strategic hiring to transition your daily work from a chore into a game. * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahadevanarjun/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahadevanarjun/] * Website: https://www.doola.com/ [https://www.doola.com/] Subscribe to Substack: https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/ [https://georgevlasyev.substack.com/] The Geo Blueprint Podcast explores how brands can win visibility in the age of generative AI, LLM-powered search, and shifting digital ecosystems. 00:00 - Intro 01:03 - Who is Arjun and how did he get his first customer via Twitter DM? 03:16 - Doola was #1 on Gemini this morning — how do you reverse engineer that? 07:48 - Why LLC for non-US residents instead of the broader LLC market? 09:41 - Should my friend from Netherlands even get a US LLC? 12:16 - Doola's MCP with Claude — where is the internet heading? 16:26 - Will your future customer be a human or an AI agent? 20:24 - What will be uniquely valuable about humans in the AI age? 24:18 - Be the one who replaces yourself with AI 26:11 - Write your take before you prompt 27:00 - Steven Bartlett on why creative writing becomes more important 29:40 - What should every new founder know before the fun parts? 32:25 - When work feels like play, you win 33:52 - Outro #GEO #AISearch #SEO #GenerativeEngineOptimization #Doola #ClaudeMCP #LLM #DigitalMarketing #B2BSaaS #ArtificialIntelligence #SearchMarketing #GEOBlueprint #Entrepreneurship