GEO Is the New SEO — Why AI Agents Are Changing How People Find Tools

The Discovery Paradigm Is Shifting

If you build developer tools, you have spent the last decade optimizing for Google. Keywords, backlinks, page speed, schema markup — the playbook is well-established. But a fundamental shift is underway, and the data suggests it is happening faster than most people realize.

AI search traffic surged 527% year-over-year. That is not a rounding error. That is a category being born.

Welcome to the era of GEO: Generative Engine Optimization — the practice of making your content discoverable and citable by AI systems like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews.

The Numbers That Should Change Your Strategy

A joint study from Princeton and Georgia Tech found that GEO techniques can boost visibility in AI-generated responses by up to 40%. That alone should get your attention. But the surrounding data paints an even more dramatic picture:

• 90% of sources cited by ChatGPT rank position 21 or lower in Google. Read that again. The content AI chooses to reference is almost entirely invisible in traditional search. Your SEO rank may be irrelevant to your AI visibility.
• 93% of AI search sessions end without a click. Users get their answer directly from the AI response. If you are not cited in that response, you do not exist in that interaction.
• But being cited in AI responses increases click-through rate by 35%. The paradox: fewer people click, but those who do click on AI-cited sources are far more likely to follow through. Quality over quantity.
• 25% of traditional search queries will disappear by the end of 2026. They are not going away — they are migrating to AI-native interfaces where the user never types a search query at all.

The economic implications are massive. The GEO market was valued at $848 million in 2025 and is projected to reach $33.7 billion by 2034 — a compound annual growth rate of 50.5%. An entirely new industry is forming around making content legible to AI.

Why This Matters for Tool Builders

If you maintain an MCP server, a Claude skill, a GPT action, or any AI agent tool, your discovery funnel is changing underneath you. Consider how a developer finds tools today:

The old way: Google "best MCP server for database" → click through 5 results → compare features → choose one.

The new way: Ask Claude/ChatGPT "I need an MCP server that can query my Postgres database safely" → get a direct recommendation with reasoning → install it.

In the new flow, the AI is the curator. And the AI's recommendation is shaped by the content it has been trained on and can retrieve. If your tool's documentation is clear, structured, and factually dense, you are far more likely to be the recommendation. If your README is sparse and your docs are outdated, you are invisible.

What Actually Works for GEO

Based on the research and what we have observed building the SkillsIndex directory, here are the tactics that move the needle:

1. Structure Your Content for Extraction

AI models do not "read" pages the way humans do. They extract structured information. This means:

• Use clear, descriptive headings that state what the section contains
• Lead paragraphs with the key fact, not with buildup
• Use lists and tables for comparative information
• Include specific numbers, versions, and dates — vague claims get ignored

2. Keep Content Fresh

This one is backed by hard data: content updated within the last 60 days receives 1.9x more AI citations than older content. AI systems prioritize recency because they have learned that stale technical content is unreliable. If your tool's documentation was last updated six months ago, you are already losing citations to competitors who update monthly.

3. Be the Authoritative Source of Facts

AI responses are built from factual claims. The more specific, verifiable facts your content contains, the more likely it is to be cited. Compare:

• Weak: "Our MCP server is fast and secure."
• Strong: "Handles 10,000 concurrent connections with read-only database access by default. Scores 4.2/5 on security in independent reviews. Last security audit: January 2026."

The second version gives the AI something concrete to cite. The first gives it nothing.

4. Optimize Your README and Package Description

For open-source tools, the README is your most important GEO asset. AI systems crawl GitHub extensively. Your README should contain:

• A one-sentence description of what the tool does (not what it is)
• Three to five specific use cases with concrete examples
• Installation instructions with copy-pasteable commands
• A comparison to alternatives (yes, mention your competitors — AI loves comparative data)
• Maintenance signals: last updated date, version number, test coverage

5. Build a Presence Across Multiple Sources

AI models triangulate information from multiple sources before citing it. A tool mentioned only in its own README is less likely to be recommended than one discussed across blog posts, documentation sites, package registries, and directories like SkillsIndex. Breadth of mention correlates with citation probability.

6. Use Schema Markup and Structured Data

While this is also an SEO best practice, it directly helps AI systems parse your pages. SoftwareApplication schema, FAQPage markup, and HowTo structured data all make your content more machine-readable. AI models trained on web data use these signals, even if they were originally designed for Google.

The Convergence of SEO and GEO

GEO does not replace SEO — it extends it. The good news is that many GEO best practices (structured content, factual density, freshness, authority) also improve traditional search rankings. The bad news is that GEO adds new requirements that pure SEO never demanded: your content must be extractable, not just findable.

For the 11,393 tools in our directory, we see this playing out in real time. Tools with rich, structured documentation consistently score higher on our utility dimension — and they are the tools that AI assistants recommend most often. The correlation is not subtle.

What to Do This Week

If you maintain a developer tool, here is a concrete action plan:

• Audit your README. Does it contain specific, verifiable facts? Can an AI extract a coherent one-paragraph summary from it?
• Update your documentation. Anything older than 60 days is losing you citations. Add a "Last updated" date to every page.
• List your tool in directories. Submit it to SkillsIndex and other relevant registries. Breadth of mention matters.
• Add structured data to your documentation site if you have one.
• Write a comparison page. "Tool X vs Tool Y" content is heavily cited by AI responses to comparison queries.

The developers who adapt to GEO now will compound their advantage over the next two years. The ones who wait will wonder why their excellent tool is invisible to the 527%-and-growing AI search audience.

Want to see how your tool scores on discoverability? Search the directory and check your listing.