“Cease making an attempt to make GEO occur. It’s not going to occur.”
With apologies to Gretchen Wieners and the writers of “Imply Women,” the road seems like the one strategy to begin this dialog a few buzzword making the rounds: GEO (which is now, allegedly, purported to imply Generative Engine Optimization).
This text grew out of a LinkedIn publish/open plea I wrote lately about this furore, which unexpectedly took off – approaching 10,000 impressions, 4 dozen feedback, and loads of laughter at dangerous acronym concepts. Clearly, this struck a nerve with the search engine marketing and advertising neighborhood.
On the floor, to be honest, the idea is sensible. We’re in a brand new period the place AI-driven serps are shaping how content material is retrieved, summarized, and delivered. Adapting search engine marketing methods for that actuality is vital; nevertheless…
No one Will Say “G-E-O”
Acronyms survive in the event that they’re pronounceable. In the event that they aren’t straightforward to say aloud, and in addition occur to spell an precise phrase, folks will say it like a phrase.
To my level, nobody goes to spell out “G-E-O” when speaking about Generative Engine Optimization. It merely doesn’t roll off the tongue properly. Inevitably, it turns into the phrase “geo” – and that’s the place the difficulty begins.
The phrase geo is historical. It comes from the Greek phrase gē (γη), that means earth or floor. It’s the foundation of a whole bunch of phrases we already use daily: geography, geology, geothermal, geopolitics, geospatial, geotracking, geotagging, geomapping. In expertise, it’s baked into ideas like geo-targeting and geo-fencing, and in all instances, geo explicitly means “the earth” in some kind or one other.
The linguistic baggage right here is simply too heavy. There isn’t any quantity of wishful considering that may make “gee-ee-oh” imply one thing not associated to the earth.
The Branding Downside: Phrases Have Which means
Phrases and acronyms aren’t clean slates. They carry cultural, historic, and linguistic connotations and reminiscences that may’t be erased by decree.
Attempt to rebrand “GEO” and folks’s brains will nonetheless immediately (or a minimum of initially) learn it as “geography.” They could pause and have a look at the context, after which determine “Oh, this should be G-E-O which implies generative engine optimization, which is like S-E-O however for AI.” That’s loads of work we’re asking the general public to do for 3 little letters.
It’s the identical purpose I might by no means (not that I might ever) persuade our advertising group to rebrand our search engine marketing plugin as an “FBI” plugin. Irrespective of how onerous we attempt to make FBI imply For Higher Indexing, we’re not going to have the ability to overcome the many years of heavy utilization that claims FBI means Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On this case, GEO doesn’t have many years of historic utilization; it has actually millennia of that means that IS NOT THIS. Hijacking an acronym with a number of centuries of utilization isn’t innovation; it’s confusion.
The search engine marketing Downside: Competing With Entrenched Which means
Let’s set branding apart and have a look at this purely from an search engine marketing perspective.
Engines like google reward authority, longevity, and relevance. The phrase geo has many years of backlinks, established search quantity, and deeply entrenched utilization. Each authoritative sign in Google’s system factors to geo = geography/geographical/earth-related or adjoining.
Generative Engine Optimization might be competing in opposition to that established that means eternally. It gained’t matter what number of weblog posts declare that “GEO is the brand new search engine marketing” – the search outcomes for “geo” will belong to geography, not generative optimization.
Then we will look past Google’s index – the coaching knowledge behind massive language fashions (LLMs) already “is aware of” that geo refers to Earth and geography, as a result of that’s what the phrase has meant in each corpus of textual content for 1000’s of years. The concept that we will overwrite that that means in a number of quarters of (AI-generated) weblog posts and convention talks is, frankly, wishful considering.
Acronym Soup: Why Hijacking Fails
This isn’t the primary time folks have tried to coin a buzzword by hijacking an acronym. It by no means works. Acronyms solely stick when they’re:
- Distinctive (no heavy pre-existing baggage).
- Clear (folks know, or can simply surmise, what they stand for).
- Pronounceable (folks can simply say them in dialog).
After they aren’t, they dissolve into acronym soup. Everybody will get confused, no one adopts the time period persistently, and the concept dies.
Humor Break: Acronyms We Can Safely Reject Now
Since I’m certain there might be a scramble to give you one thing “higher” than GEO, let me prevent the difficulty and pre-remove a number of tempting, however alas already in use, choices from the record.
- FBI – For Higher Indexing (all of your queries are below surveillance).
- PDF – Immediate-Pushed Framework (optimized for shoppers who by no means open them).
- BIO – Bot Interplay Optimization (as a result of the LLMs have to “like” you).
- CEO – Crawl Effectivity Orchestration (handle your bots like a boss).
- URL – Unified Retrieval Layer (rating begins on the root).
- GPS – Generative Immediate Sequencing (your AI nonetheless wants instructions).
- API – Automated Immediate Injection (although to be honest, my mind at all times defaults to “armor piercing incendiaries” however that’s in all probability only a me downside).
- HTML – Human-Tuned Mannequin Language (educate the bots to “converse search”).
- INFO – Clever Neural Findability Optimization (make your content material “discoverable” to AI).
- PRO – Immediate Response Optimization (win the reply field in AI).
- EV – Enhanced Visibility (as a result of apparently that’s the entire level).
- search engine marketing – Artificial Engine Optimization (sure, we’ve come full circle).
They’re humorous, however none of them ought to occur for all the causes outlined above.
What Really Works When Naming Ideas
So, if GEO is a misplaced trigger, what ought to we be doing as an alternative?
1. Begin Distinctive
- Don’t hijack a phrase or acronym already in heavy use.
- The cleanest acronyms are invented, not repurposed.
2. Make It Pronounceable
- search engine marketing works as a result of folks can say it.
- SaaS (Software program as a Service) works as a result of it’s brief and phonetically straightforward (“sass” in case you didn’t know).
3. Anchor It In Authority
- Google’s personal acronyms, like E-E-A-T (Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness), caught as a result of Google itself enforced them.
- A neighborhood can rally round a time period, however provided that it feels backed by authority or usefulness.
4. Verify The SERPs First
- Earlier than you attempt to coin an acronym, search it.
- If the primary three pages of outcomes are about one thing else solely, you could be sunk earlier than you start.
The Backside Line: Cease Making an attempt To Make GEO Occur
Generative Engine Optimization as a idea is sensible, however GEO as an acronym is doomed.
It fails linguistically (no one will say “G-E-O”), traditionally (the phrase is historical and already claimed), and strategically (serps and LLMs already affiliate “geo” with geography, not generative search).
If you would like a brand new time period to catch on, begin with one which isn’t already taken. In any other case, you’re not innovating language – you’re simply creating acronym soup … and sabotaging your individual visibility from day one.
So please, cease making an attempt to make GEO occur. It’s not going to occur.
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Featured Picture: CHIEW/Shutterstock
