Search is shifting under our feet. AI-generated summaries now appear above the classic list of links, and that changes how people discover brands. A large study this year found that when an AI summary appears, people click a traditional result in only 8% of visits, compared with 15% when no summary shows. That is a big drop in organic demand and a clear signal to rethink content for answer engines, not just web pages.
From results to answers
Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO, is the practice of helping AI systems surface, cite and summarise your information accurately. It blends strong evidence, tidy structure and clear language so answer engines can quote you with confidence. The timing matters. Google expanded AI Overviews to more than 200 countries and territories, in over 40 languages, through 2025. This is no fringe experiment. It is the default experience for a massive share of searches worldwide.
Australia’s reality check
Australia has had AI Overviews in market since October 2024. Coverage over the past few months shows how much the layout has shifted, and local reports now mark the one-year milestone with warnings about audience declines for news sites. Whether you run an online shop or a professional service, the first touchpoint for many queries is now an AI summary rather than a list of links.
Google’s local messaging paints a more optimistic picture, arguing that people now ask longer, more complex questions, which increases overall search activity. Even if that holds, the visibility game has changed. You must be eligible for inclusion in the summary and for citation. Ranking alone is not a safety net.
What a GEO partner actually does
A good GEO program runs on five tracks that reinforce each other.
- Source mapping and citation readiness. Models prefer clean, verifiable claims. Map your proof. Align key facts across your site, PDFs, profiles and trusted third parties. Make those claims explicit near citations so an answer engine can lift them without confusion.
- Answer-first content design. Lead with the plain-English answer to the question customers ask, then unpack context, examples and limits. Use headings that read like questions. Keep one idea per paragraph. Where helpful, include a compact table or checklist that an AI can quote.
- Structured data and crawl clarity. Mark up people, products, locations and FAQs. Keep internal links logical. Prioritise speed and stable rendering so crawlers and retrievers can extract reliably.
- Entity and reputation building. Your brand, people and products should be defined consistently across the web. Secure corroboration on credible sites that answer engines already cite in your category.
- Measurement that fits the new journey. Do not rely on a single metric. Track presence in AI Overviews for target topics, share of citations, assistive traffic from chat interfaces and branded demand movements. As AI summaries scale, traditional referral patterns soften, so leaders broaden how they read performance.
Signs your content is GEO-ready
If your best answers are buried halfway down the page, you are feeding skimmers, not engines. If your pricing or specs differ across pages, you are inviting the model to hedge. If you have expert pages with no author profiles, you are asking for trust without a signature. A GEO-ready asset states the claim up top, cites proof nearby, names the expert where relevant and uses consistent entities across your site and profiles.
A practical way to start this quarter
Pick five questions your best customers ask before they call or buy. Publish answer-first pages for each. Put the main claim in the first paragraph. Add two citations that support it, one on your site and one on a credible third party. Mark up key entities. Secure a relevant mention on a trusted domain that already appears in summaries for your space. Then monitor whether your brand shows inside AI Overviews for those questions, whether the summary quotes you and whether branded enquiries hold up even when page clicks are softer. Studies this year make it plain that summaries suppress classic click-through, so the right response is to meet the format on its own terms.
The takeaway
Answer engines now set the tone for discovery. Brands that organise facts for these systems keep earning trust even when the click comes later, or not at all. The shift is already playing out in Australia, so move early.
Contact Myoho Marketing to book a short GEO audit; we’ll check your priority topics for AI Overview inclusion, find citation gaps and map a 90-day action plan. If you’re ready to grow visibility where decisions begin, get in touch at myohomarketing.com.au.
