SEO in the age of AI

SEO: to be found. GEO: to be understood. GDO: to be present.

Three generations of the same problem. Each adds to the previous one, none replaces it. The first two work on your site. The third works everywhere else, where AIs look when the question does not name you.

Your site alone only answers the direct question. GDO adds the sources that the AI consults when the question does not name you.

SEO

to be found

Search Engine Optimization · on your website

What it does

Optimize to be found in search engines: keywords, links, structure.

Its limit

An AI response is not a search engine results page. On ChatGPT, only 8% of cited pages are in Google's top 10 for the same query; on Google's side, Moz reports that 88% of citations from its AI mode do not correspond to the top 10 organic results.

Ahrefs, August 2025 · Moz, announcement of a study of approximately 40,000 queries from February 2026

Does ranking well on Google help to be cited by ChatGPT?

GEO

to be understood

Generative Engine Optimization · on your website

What it does

Optimize your own content for its use by generative engines: clear answers, dated facts, detailed text.

Its limit

This only acts on your website, so only when you are named. On a market question that does not name you, AIs mainly choose third-party sources: being understood is only useful if you are read.

FaireDuBruit measurements, September 2026

Is my website enough to be visible in AIs?

GDO

to be present

Generative Distribution Optimization · everywhere else

What it does

Distribute a company's information across a network of relevant third-party sources to increase its presence surface in AI searches.

What it changes

We no longer count pages on your website, we count the independent sources that name you. An AI most often cites only one page per website in a response: each source is one more door.

FaireDuBruit measurement, September 2026: share of responses citing only one page per domain — Claude 95%, Gemini 92%, ChatGPT 79%, across three corpora and 166 responses

Why doesn't ChatGPT cite my company?

What sets GDO apart

In practice, GDO is written elsewhere than on your site.

It is written in the vocabulary of the question

Not in that of your brand. The page answers the question as the customer asks it, using the words the AI uses in its own searches.

It is cumulative

Each source that names you makes the next one more likely: an AI looks for names it has already read.

It asks nothing of you

Your facts, your limits, ten minutes. The network and writing are our job.

SEO made you visible on Google. GDO makes you present in the response.

What this looks like in practice

A listing for your company and one listing per product on each selected thematic site, then 15 question-pages per site, written in the vocabulary of the question, in French and English, with a link to your product. Up to 5 sites: as many independent sources naming you.

View our offer View the presentation

A single AI is no longer enough. In August 2026, ChatGPT accounted for 55.5% of global web traffic to generative AI sites, Gemini 25.6%, and Claude 9.3% (Similarweb monthly report from September 7, 2026). And the three do not read the same web: across our five combined corpora, only 1.8% of the cited domains were cited by all three at the same time. Is being cited by ChatGPT enough?

GDO in detail: what is GDO?, the difference between GEO and GDO, is GEO enough?

Where this term comes from

The term "GDO", for Generative Distribution Optimization, was coined by FaireDuBruit on September 19, 2026, to name a practice that existing acronyms did not describe: SEO and GEO work on your website, GDO works on the third-party sources that AIs consult.

Verification of September 20, 2026: to our knowledge, no prior use of this acronym in the field of search engine optimization. The exact phrase only returns unrelated machine learning work (Generative Distributionally Robust Optimization, Generative Distribution Prediction), and industry acronym inventories list SEO, GEO, AEO, AIO, LLMO, AI SEO, SXO, and AXO, never GDO. A search does not prove an absence: if you know of a prior use, write to us, this page will be corrected.

Our measurements, question by question: the AI Visibility section, including the difference between GEO and SEO.