Beyond the Search Bar

By Paolo Galloni

For years, SEO has been the reliable old engine powering digital visibility. It may not have been glamorous, but it did its job, ranking pages, driving clicks, and guiding curious wine lovers to your brand. 

Today, that world is rapidly dissolving. Search engines are no longer the sole gatekeepers of discovery. The new tastemakers are generative AI engines, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, and they don’t show lists of links. They simply speak.

Welcome to the era of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), where the question is no longer “How do I rank?” but rather “How do I become the answer?”

The Algorithm That Learned to Talk

The shift from traditional search to conversational AI has quietly ushered in a post-SEO age. Large Language Models don’t organize information into SERPs. They don’t paginate. They don’t entice users to click around. They just serve up a response, immediate, confident, and often definitive.

That means visibility now depends on whether the AI recognizes your brand as authoritative. Instead of chasing keyword rankings, you’re aiming to be cited within the AI’s answer itself. Mentions become more powerful than clicks. If a traveller planning a tasting tour asks an AI which vineyards to visit and your estate is named in the response, you’ve secured a valuable piece of digital mindshare, regardless of whether a single click is sent your way.

To make this happen, marketers are embracing three related disciplines: LLMO, which fine-tunes content so AI can read and quote it more easily; AEO, which clarifies your brand as a credible entity; and GEO, a broader strategy that shapes your digital ecosystem into something a machine will trust.

Behind the Curtain

While AI engines feel omniscient, they rely on retrievers, search systems working quietly backstage. ChatGPT and Copilot lean heavily on Bing. Google’s AI products draw on Google’s own index. Perplexity blends its own retrieval with citation-first logic. If your content isn’t indexed properly, especially in Bing, it may never enter the AI’s field of vision.

You could publish the finest guide to Bordeaux varietals, polished like a well-aged Merlot, but if Bing can’t find it, neither can ChatGPT. In the era of GEO, technical accessibility becomes just as important as the message itself.

Writing for Machines That Don’t “Read” the Way Humans Do

The old SEO playbook rewarded long intros, keyword density, and sprawling blog posts designed to catch Google’s eye. AI engines, however, don’t read top to bottom. They skim, searching for tightly packed segments of clear, verifiable information.

Content now needs to serve its answers on the first line. If you’re explaining what wine pairs with Stilton, say it immediately and succinctly: “Bold reds such as Port or Barolo complement Stilton’s creamy, salty intensity.” This kind of precision, short, factual, and unambiguous, makes content irresistible to AI.

One of the more surprising insights of the GEO shift is that AI engines don’t always rely on your meticulously crafted website. They favour platforms that are consistent, structured, or socially validated. 

Wikipedia often comes first. Reddit and Quora, messy as they may seem, offer authentic, real-world insight. Trusted review sites and industry publications carry even more weight.

This means your brand’s off-site reputation matters more than ever. Being mentioned in an industry journal, discussed in a Reddit thread, or reviewed by an impartial platform may carry more influence than your own blog post.

Clearing Up the Technical Myths

There has been chatter about llms.txt, a proposed file designed as a guide for AI crawlers. In practice, it’s a dead end. AI engines don’t rely on it, and major search providers don’t support it. The tools that truly matter are the ones we’ve known for years: a clean robots.txt file, crawlable site architecture, and content that isn’t hidden behind complex JavaScript.

We’re entering an era where AI doesn’t just tell people about your wine, it may soon book the tasting, make the reservation, or purchase the bottles directly. To become part of this new workflow, your content needs to be explicit, structured, and agent-friendly. Think practical guidance, step-by-step clarity, and unambiguous information. If the AI can easily “use” your content, it’s far more likely to recommend your brand.

For busy wine and hospitality teams, GEO can seem like a maze. But the core of the work is simple: ensure your content can be found, understood, and trusted. That means being indexed thoroughly, updating your content structure, tightening your messaging into clear informational chunks, and strengthening your presence beyond your own website. The more credible and accessible your brand appears across the web, the more confidently AI will include you in its answers.

The Future Isn’t Ranked, it’s Generated

Generative engines have changed the rules of discovery. GEO isn’t a trend; it’s the new foundation of digital visibility. Wine brands that adapt will not only be seen, but they’ll also be remembered, recommended, and built directly into the knowledge vocabulary of tomorrow’s technology.

So when you hear someone proclaim that SEO is dead, feel free to smile. The real opportunity is much bigger. It’s not about being on page one anymore. It’s about being inside the very answer itself.