Articles

Generative Engine Optimization Article

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dominik-angerer">Dominik Angerer</a> is the founder and CEO of Storyblok and a CMS Critic Contributor.<hr /> For decades, marketers have competed to secure a coveted page-one spot on the search results. But today that landscape has shifted. As AI-driven search experiences dominate, brand discovery is no longer about ranking for blue links; it’s about appearing in AI-generated answers.This shift is rewriting the rules of online strategy. Not too long ago, getting your website noticed revolved around a careful balance of keywords and backlinks. Now, to appear in AI-generated responses, brands need content that machines can interpret as easily as humans. The reality is that many are not prepared.The result? Traffic is declining. Zero-click answers are overshadowing genuine human expertise. Many brands are also finding outdated website content resurfacing inside AI-generated responses. The outcome is a loss of credibility and diminished ownership of their narrative long before a customer even reaches their site.This has led some experts to predict the so-called “death of the website,” envisioning an internet overrun by AI-generated content and bots, where quality information and genuine human interaction are all but extinct.The truth, however, isn’t nearly so grim. As we see it, AI isn’t killing websites; it’s exposing longstanding weaknesses in how organizations manage content. In this light, it should be seen not as an ending, but as a crucial turning point in terms of the way brands create and manage content online. <h3 id="relevance-before-rankings">Relevance before rankings</h3>Previously, brands could get away with a content ecosystem that was outdated and internally inconsistent. Take a look at any one site, and chances are you’re guaranteed to find some old news releases or dusty product specs. But while humans might overlook a stale blog post from 2018 or incorrect pricing buried three levels deep, AI systems do not. Algorithms now crawl and compare information at a scale and speed no person can match. They evaluate how current your content is, whether your messaging stays consistent across pages and channels, and how authoritative your knowledge base looks against competitors. In other words, AI is no longer just reading what you publish – it is judging whether your entire digital presence adds up.Generative Experience Optimization (GEO) is the roadmap for this new landscape. At its core, GEO is about ensuring that content is relevant, coherent, and authoritative so that AI can accurately interpret and surface it. For marketers, this translates into designing content that prioritizes clarity, consistency, and authority: clear language, cohesive messaging, and demonstrable expertise that generative AI can reliably recognize and elevate in its responses.Crucially, GEO also shifts the focus from individual pages to the overall logic of your digital estate. It asks whether every touchpoint, including product pages, help centres, blogs, and social media copy, tells the same story and uses the same definitions. When that ecosystem hangs together, AI systems can more easily map questions to your answers, quote you as a primary source, and elevate your brand in aggregated, AI-generated experiences.<h3 id="legacy-limitations--">Legacy limitations  </h3>This shift, in turn, is placing a sharpened focus on content governance. Across many organizations, individual channels still operate in isolation. Web teams publish one thing, marketing says another, or brand information is fragmented. AI interprets this inconsistency as a lack of authority and reduces trust accordingly. All of this is compounded by legacy CMS systems that were never designed for the dynamic, multi-channel, AI-driven environment we now inhabit, making timely updates slow and consistency nearly impossible.To remain visible and trusted in this new discovery environment, brands need content systems that are flexibly structured and built for speed. This makes the case for composable, API-driven architectures – technology stacks made from interchangeable, best-in-class components rather than rigid, all-in-one systems – even more compelling. This is because composable CMS platforms allow marketers to update information once and distribute it everywhere, ensuring that every channel, region, and touchpoint reflects the same up-to-date source of truth. They also encourage more thoughtful content modelling and governance, which is essential for maintaining accuracy and coherence across increasingly complex digital ecosystems. What’s great, too, is that a composable stack makes it easy to introduce new tools, such as personalization engines, automation layers, AI assistants, or creative workflows, without disrupting the entire system. This granular level of flexibility gives marketing teams the agility they need to operate confidently in an AI-first discovery landscape, where freshness, structure, and adaptability determine relevance.<h3 id="evolve-or-risk-extinction">Evolve or risk extinction</h3>Ultimately, the internet isn’t going anywhere. Take a closer look, and you’ll likely find that smartphones, apps, and social media platforms are doing better than ever. What is changing though is the way people access and interpret information, as the rise of AI causes brands to rethink how they structure, maintain, and distribute content. Those that adapt and seize the opportunity to reclaim control of the narrative will find that the web isn’t dying at all; it’s simply evolving into something more dynamic, more decentralized, and more dependent on the quality and consistency of the content that fuels it. Those that fail to evolve risk being defined by outdated information circulating through systems they can no longer influence. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:31.44%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/08/cms-kickoff-2026-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-kickoff-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">CMS Kickoff 2026</a></h4>January 13-14, 2026 – St. Petersburg, FLMeet industry leaders at our fourth annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global CMS event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">so secure your tickets today.</a>

AI didn't kill the website: it exposed how broken it was

dominik-angerer

<hr /> Well, it happened. I’ve been predicting a move like this for a while, although I thought it might be an up-and-comer like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.conductor.com/">Conductor</a> or even a niche startup like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://otterly.ai/">Otterly.ai</a> elsewhere in the stack.  But then again, it’s <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe</a>. And when they go, they go big.And that’s what they’re doing with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://news.adobe.com/news/2025/11/adobe-to-acquire-semrush">acquisition of Semrush,</a> a stalwart of modern martech and one of the “must-have” tools for search engine optimization over the last decade. Adobe just announced that it will purchase Semrush for the tidy sum of $1.9 billion in an all-cash transaction for $12 per share.The deal is said to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals. It should be “smoother” sailing, despite the pothole in the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/whats-under-the-fig-leaf-the-naked-truth-about-the-figma-ipo-and-the-markets-appetite-for-tech">rearview that is Figma</a>. Semrush is, comparatively, a tame acquisition that’s almost 20 times less breathtaking than that debacle. No doubt, Adobe is posturing to expand its leadership in the realm of marketing intelligence and the concentration on Generative Search Optimization (GEO) and Answer Engine Optimization (AEO). As competitors like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/optimizely">Optimizely</a> position themselves as <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/welcome-to-the-geo-ready-cms-optimizely-adds-new-features-to-enhance-ai-powered-search">“GEO-ready” platforms</a>, the race is on to give brands more comprehensive tools that address the shift towards AI search discovery.Despite this focus on marketing-centric tools that address the pressures of AI, Adobe lives beyond a single category like DXP or CMP, evolving its value to that of customer experience orchestration in the agentic AI era – and pointing its collective powers at the complete content supply chain, customer engagement, and brand visibility.It's doing all of this with its suite of industry-leading products like the ubiquitous <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/adobe-experience-manager">Adobe Experience Manager (AEM),</a> its unified <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/adobe-analytics.html">Adobe Analytics</a> suite, and the recently launched <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/products/brand-concierge.html">Adobe Brand Concierge</a> for creating interactive, AI-powered conversational journeys.Adding Semrush to this puzzle brings the picture into sharp relief, giving marketers a holistic view of how their brands appear across the new frontier of LLMs, as well as owned channels, legacy search, and the broader web. It also gives them more control over managing their visibility across the entire ecosystem. “Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI, and brands that don’t embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/achakravarthy/">Anil Chakravarthy,</a> president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business. “With Semrush, we’re unlocking GEO for marketers as a new growth channel alongside their SEO, driving more visibility, customer engagement and conversions across the ecosystem.”<h3 id="cmos-need-better-tools-to-master-ai-search">CMOs need better tools to master AI search</h3>The Chief Marketing Officer’s job has always been a little cursed. Often a revolving door of talent that lives and dies by the numbers, it has recently grown a bigger backbone when it comes to strategic performance. What's at stake? Pretty much everything. Enterprises are relying on marketing to deliver the goods at a breakneck pace. Meanwhile, CMOs are expected to make sense out of metric tons of data from a wide range of sources and tools – and make actionable decisions that drive growth. It's a tough racket, and forget the fact that a CMO's marketing team is also being challenged by cognitive overload. While brand equity and visibility are key, CMOs face a reckoning with results. According to a report from NIQ, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251118947080/en/CMOs-Face-a-Reputation-and-Results-Reckoning-According-to-NIQs-2026-Outlook">84% of CMOs now prioritize ROI</a> as their primary metric for budget allocation, signaling pressure to drive short-term conversion over long-term brand growth.And driving those conversions is search. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/google-cloud-platform">Google</a> still crushes AI answer engines like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, maintaining roughly 90% of the global search market share. Google’s traffic has continued to increase into 2025 due in part to its new <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://gemini.google/overview/">Gemini-powered AI Overviews</a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-mode/">AI Mode</a> features.But the landscape is starting to shift. ChatGPT’s adoption has been downright mindboggling, reaching 100 million users within two months of launch, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever. By late 2024, it was reportedly logging around 1 billion interactions per day. By one account, it could <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ttms.com/llm-powered-search-vs-traditional-search-2025-2030-forecast/">surpass Google by 2028,</a> and new data from <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://business.adobe.com/blog/adi-october-2025-holiday-shopping-actuals">Adobe Analytics</a> showed that traffic from generative AI sources to U.S. retail sites increased by 1,200% year-over-year in October.As consumers increasingly turn to answer engines for information, recommendations, and purchase decisions, CMOs need tools that address generative AI platforms so they can enhance their visibility across these new customer interfaces and drive conversions. Organizations that invest in GEO – alongside their SEO capabilities – are poised to keep their brands well-represented, more easily discovered, and trusted across owned and earned channels.<h3 id="a-legacy-of-seo-innovation-with-a-new-focus-on-geo">A legacy of SEO innovation with a new focus on GEO</h3>Semrush is the gold standard in SEO. It provides a deep cache of rich information, from competitive insights to keyword research to campaign planning. It’s also incredibly intuitive and accessible, with many third-party platforms surfacing Semrush data in their analytics dashboards. For more than ten years, Semrush has armed marketers with “traditional” search engine optimization capabilities. But its recent gains in the development of GEO capabilities – specifically with its <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.semrush.com/ai-seo/">AI Visibility Toolkit</a> – are helping brands enhance visibility, expand audience reach, and remain discoverable in AI search. The good news for marketers is that the core principles of SEO also apply to GEO. Translation: They work together, and you don’t need to abandon your SEO strategy to build your presence across the AI engines. AI assistants provide helpful and (hopefully) accurate information to users, and they pull that information from the same internet your SEO-focused content lives on. Generally speaking, the more your brand is associated with the topics you want to focus on, the more likely it is to be referenced in an AI-generated answer.The combination of Adobe and Semrush could be a catalyst for even greater insight across both the SEO and GEO channels. Marketers need both, and Adobe's consolidation will likely benefit both competencies. “Adobe is an industry leader in helping marketers create personalized customer experiences at scale. With the advent of LLMs and AI-driven search, brands need to understand where and how their customers are engaging in these new channels,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamrwagner/">Bill Wagner,</a> chief executive officer of Semrush. “This combination provides marketers more insights and capabilities to increase their discoverability across today’s evolving digital landscape.”From a performance standpoint, Semrush has been bringing the rain. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://increv.co/academy/semrush-users/">As of last year,</a> it boasted nearly 1.2 million users with annual revenue of over $300 million. In its most recent quarter, it drove 33% year-over-year ARR growth in its enterprise customer segment, earning the trust of industry leaders like Amazon, JPMorganChase, and TikTok.It’s worth noting that Semrush does have a large cohort of free-tier users (by one estimate, it represents as much as 90% of its base). This speaks to the company’s commitment to deliver value while building a strong SaaS pipeline to future paid users. Will Adobe maintain that? Only time will tell, but it’s a great example of a “Big Give” that works.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>GEO is becoming a crucial objective for brands and their marketing teams. This is a non-negotiable requirement of their modern tooling, and will inform the decision-making as they assess technologies to light these dark alleyways in their marketing intelligence.  Semrush and its peers might be innovating on the edge, but we’re still in catch-up mode. Every day could be another <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://greylock.com/greymatter/the-deepseek-moment/">DeepSeek moment</a> of change, threatening to send practitioners back into a well of shadows when it comes to LLM behaviors. As such, having the scale and skunkworks that Adobe provides could inject more value into the GEO roadmap, giving enterprises greater confidence around the futureproofing.This isn't “guesttimation” for me. I’ve personally relied on Semrush for years to analyze competitors, test longtail keywords, identify and root out toxic backlinks, and more. It’s a fantastic tool, and that’s why I think this is a smart move. Semrush is a solid, long-standing brand that’s built deep trust with its community, and that brand loyalty could benefit the transition to Adobe – a shift that hasn’t always been easy on cultures or communities.Is it worth the bucks? As far as the tendered deal is concerned, the math around multiples appears sound and reflects what we’re seeing elsewhere (early to say if it’s a steal or a deal). While the numbers aren’t as mammoth, 2025 has been a solid year for M&amp;A, tracking a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.reuters.com/business/global-ma-activity-up-10-first-nine-months-2025-study-shows-2025-10-28/">10% increase in overall activity</a> in the first nine months of the year. A lot of that has been led by tech and specifically AI-related acquisitions, but the martech realm has been active, starting with the <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/contentstack-just-acquired-lytics-a-real-time-customer-data-platform-heres-why-it-matters">purchase of the Lytics CDP</a> by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/contentstack">Contentstack</a> in January of this year.Competitive pressure is a clear driver. As players like Optimizely and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/sitecore">Sitecore</a> expand their agentic AI features and evolve what a complete martech stack looks like, GEO capabilities are becoming front and center. And as the research indicates, conversions are going to be the key metric for ROI – and AI search is becoming a bigger piece of the integrated pie. What’s next? A lot. With the introduction of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://openai.com/index/buy-it-in-chatgpt/">ChatGPT’s Agentic Commerce Protocol,</a> we’re now seeing the potential for more retail transactions shifting to LLMs – creating even greater urgency for brands to elevate their presence across these channels. As we look ahead to the agent-to-agent frontier powered by <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro">MCP,</a> it’s fair to predict that these buying motions will be faster and increasingly automated.Look, there’s more here than just broadening the scope of Adobe’s marketing intelligence. It’s a signal that the race is on to shape the customer experience within the generative AI horizon – and giving marketers the best tools to meet the moment.Enterprises want composable solutions that offer adjacent integrations but include purpose-built features to help them address the immediate challenges of the AI era. And they can’t wait for tomorrow – they have to act today. That’s what Adobe is delivering: the promise of speed and scale for an agentic world.Can you feel the rush? <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:29.67%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761136749603.png" /><h4 id="live-webinar:-can-we-ever-get-composable-without-complexity?"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Live Webinar: Can We Ever Get Composable Without Complexity?</a></h4>November 20, 2025 – 6 PM (CET) / 5 PM (GMT) / 12 PM (EST)Composable architecture promised to simplify digital experience creation by giving organizations the flexibility to combine the technologies that met their needs. But for many enterprises, it’s done the opposite, which has led to complex integrations, spiraling costs, and what some are now referring to as composable regret. In this live conversation, Umbraco CEO Mats Persson joins Matt Garrepy, Chief Content Officer at CMS Critic, for a candid exploration of what went wrong in the first wave of composable and what needs to change. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://umbraco.com/webinar-cmscritic">Register for the webinar.</a> <img style="width:29.08%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/10/image-1761594434824.png" /><h4 id="typo3-conference-2025"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">TYPO3 Conference 2025</a></h4>November 25–27, 2025 – Düsseldorf, GermanyT3CON is the premier annual event for web professionals, developers, marketers, and decision-makers. Much more than just a TYPO3-focused conference, T3CON spotlights the latest trends, innovations, and leaders shaping the future of content management, covering everything from grassroots initiatives to new technologies, strategies, and success stories. The event is designed to empower businesses and organizations with the knowledge and tools they need to thrive in the evolving digital landscape. The conference culminates in an awards ceremony celebrating the best TYPO3 projects across various industries. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://t3con.typo3.com/">Get your ticket.</a> <img style="width:31.44%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/08/cms-kickoff-2026-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-kickoff-2026"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">CMS Kickoff 2026</a></h4>January 13-14, 2026 – St. Petersburg, FLMeet industry leaders at our fourth annual CMS Kickoff – the industry's premier global CMS event. Similar to a traditional kickoff, we reflect on recent trends and share stories from the frontlines. Additionally, we will delve into the current happenings and shed light on the future. Prepare for an unparalleled in-person CMS conference experience that will equip you to move things forward. This is an exclusive event – space is limited, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmskickoff26">so secure your tickets today.</a>

Feel the GEO Rush: Adobe to Acquire Semrush for $1.9B to Enhance AI Search

matt-garrepy

<hr /> Traditional internet search, by many accounts, is circling the drain.Blame AI, they say.I can’t argue that SEO is getting pummeled. But not all metrics (depending on your vector) are bellicose. In fact, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/google-cloud-platform">Google’s </a>own figures – which are surely unbiased – indicate that search as we knew it is adapting and evolving, and the net impact of its own <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://search.google/ways-to-search/ai-overviews/">AI Overviews</a> has resulted in a higher volume of queries.The tech giant also <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-search-revenue-grows-14-in-q2-2024/522922/">reported a 14% increase</a> in its year-over-year revenue from search. For investors, that might soften some of the blow from its recent <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-prevails-landmark-antitrust-case-against-google">antitrust fallout </a>– a kerfuffle that should have us all questioning Google’s transparency and trustworthiness (stay tuned for an upcoming podcast on that subject).I wouldn't count Google out, but let’s face facts: <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/ai/generative-ai/">Generative AI engines</a> are stealing the search thunder, and they continue to eat a precipitous share of the Big G’s lunch. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-02-19-gartner-predicts-search-engine-volume-will-drop-25-percent-by-2026-due-to-ai-chatbots-and-other-virtual-agents">According to Gartner,</a> traditional search engine volume will drop 25% by next year, which is faster than previous prognostications.By the numbers, Google Search is still <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://searchengineland.com/google-search-bigger-chatgpt-search-453142">373 times bigger</a> than ChatGPT. But that margin is getting smaller and smaller. For marketers, this is creating a blind spot in the SERP soup, and SEO technologies are hustling to provide the needed visibility to address these gaps.I first wrote about products like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/as-ai-generated-search-grows-otterly-is-utterly-awesome-for-marketers-heres-why">Otterly.ai</a> at the beginning of this year, which offered a new breed of tool for the emerging field of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418">Generative and Answer Engine Optimization</a> (GEO and AEO, respectively, because we need more acronyms). Most recently, I spoke to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/conductor-ai-revs-up-brand-discoverability-in-generative-ai-answer-engines">Conductor</a> about its platform's evolution for brand discoverability across AI answer engines.The tools are getting better at this AI visibility stuff because they have to. As a larger share of search activity shifts to bots, marketers are adapting to the impact of zero-click searches. The big challenge now is ensuring your brand is discoverable and not invisible. So how do you enable your website – and its content – to be found by answer engines? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/products/optimizely">Optimizely</a> might just have the solution, and one that’s baked into its core <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.optimizely.com/products/content-management/">CMS</a>. The market-leading DXP just introduced some innovative features designed to help increase discovery in the AI era, positioning its powerhouse content management system as a “GEO-Ready” CMS. With these enhancements, users can effectively transform their websites from content warehouses into visibility engines built for AI discovery – and do it all in one place.Optimizely has been rolling out new AI capabilities across its product ecosystem for some time, and with pretty solid results. I just connected with <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/optimizely-opal-gets-supercharged-for-agentic-ai-powering-infinite-use-cases-for-marketers">CEO Alex Atzberger</a> for a first-hand demo of Optimizely’s new <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.optimizely.com/ai/">Opal AI</a> features, where he showed me how the product is empowering his internal teams and his own day-to-day work.“We’re transforming how marketing works,” he said during our chat. “That's the big part. That's what really matters." And now, they're expanding on that mission by addressing a compelling need for AEO and GEO features at the CMS level. <h3 id="from-invisibility-to-ai-visibility">From invisibility to AI visibility</h3>With all the motion towards generative engine search, websites owners must adapt their traditional SEO practices and embrace new strategies that serve AI bots and engines. This means structuring content so it can be surfaced, summarized, and selected by AI agents. “Your website isn’t broken – it’s just invisible,” said <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/shafqat/">Shafqat Islam,</a> President of Optimizely. “The entire business model of the web is being upended, and how marketers generate demand or sell products is being transformed. Marketers need to make sure their websites serve two audiences: humans who demand speed and clarity, and machines that extract and summarize the content."According to Optimizely, a website’s content must be trustworthy, machine-readable, and strategically structured to compete in this new model of answer engine mechanics. Optimizely’s CMS – combined with Opal – makes the journey from invisibility to AI visibility easier by providing the onboard tooling to make your content discoverable.“If your CMS isn’t structured for AI discoverability, your content won’t be found,” Islam continued. “With the combination of our new CMS features and power of Optimizely Opal, we help brands move faster, create content smarter, and scale for a world where machines, not just people, are consuming your content.” <h3 id="being-“geo-ready”-from-optimization-to-analytics">Being “GEO-Ready” from optimization to analytics</h3>So how do these new GEO-centric features work? In a nutshell, the suite of functionality allows Optimizely’s CMS to become a sort of “visibility engine,” providing enhanced capabilities across three core areas: page optimization, site-wide optimization, and GEO analytics. Some of these structural concepts will feel very familiar to SEO experts, with a few critical differences that tap into AI agent mechanics. Here’s a breakdown of each component area: <h4 id="page-optimization-">Page Optimization </h4>As previously mentioned, showing up in AI summaries requires content to be well-structured, trustworthy, and machine-readable. To get there, Optimizely delivers enhanced page optimization with Q&amp;A field generation, which auto-generates question and answer pairs based on page content.It also provides GEO-specific metadata that populates titles, descriptions, and EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) elements for generative engines, as well as markdown summary generation, which injects page-level summaries for improved AI scanning and indexing.  <h4 id="site-optimization">Site Optimization</h4>At the global level, AI agents don’t browse. They scan. And having a top-down site structure ensures your content gets indexed, summarized, and surfaced. Optimizely simplifies this site-wide optimization with llms.txt auto-generation, which automatically signals which pages should be indexed by LLMs and bots.Optimizely also leverages GEO topic templates to generate topic-specific pages designed to rank in AI-generated summaries and bulk metadata population to add GEO metadata in bulk, including to existing content. <h4 id="geo-analytics">GEO Analytics</h4>Site performance tracking is a whole new ball game in the age of AI. Much of it has been obscured for brands and marketers, and that “black box” has been difficult to break through. When agents read content, they often do it without triggering a click, but Optimizely is bringing visibility to this hidden layer with a GEO health index that scores pages against AEO and GEO best practices.There’s also a crawl-to-refer ratio that helps measure how often AI bots crawl a brand’s site versus refer to your site, and a crawl rate by model score that indicates which LLMs are hitting a brand’s site most frequently. Taken together, marketers now have better intelligence around their site performance relative to bot activity.<h3 id="the-verdict">The verdict</h3>Optimizely’s new “GEO-Ready” features attempt to backfill the gaping hole left by AI search. By adding these features natively to its CMS, they're overcoming one of the historically persistent challenges with SEO management: a lack of prioritization. It's true. Content operations and marketing teams have long struggled with institutionalizing strong SEO practices (hence why we still have cottage agency SEO services). Leveraging automated tools within content management systems has helped improve outcomes, but Optimizely is proactively addressing this for AEO and GEO – and that’s a potentially huge benefit. In this rapidly evolving era of AI and zero-click searches, marketers need to be more intentional about their content strategies. That includes the foundational approach to AI structure. Having a CMS that helps you establish a stronger position – and to be “GEO-Ready” – could help simplify and accelerate success. This is definitely a feature set worthy of a demo. And while I expect other CMS platforms to adopt similar tools and strategies, Optimizely continues to reinforce its position as a leader with an integrated ecosystem that will benefit from these innovative steps.  <hr /><h4 style="text-align:center" id="looking-for-guidance-on-optimizely?-talk-to-an-expert.">Looking for guidance on Optimizely? <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/contact">Talk to an expert.</a></h4><hr /> <h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:31.83%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/01/cms-connect-2025-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-connect-25"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">CMS Connect 25</a></h4>August 5-6, 2025 – Montreal, CanadaSee Agility CMS at the second annual summer edition of our signature global conference dedicated to the content management community! CMS Connect will be held again in beautiful Montreal, Canada, and feature a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities. Join vendors, agencies, and customers from across our industry as we engage and collaborate around the future of content management – and hear from the top thought leaders at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference exclusively focused on CMS. Space is limited for this event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">so book your seats today.</a>

Welcome to the ‘GEO-Ready’ CMS: Optimizely adds new features to enhance AI-powered search

Conductor AI ‘Revs Up’ Brand Discoverability in Generative AI Answer Engines

<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/critics/dan-drapeau">Dan Drapeau </a>is Managing Director at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://dxpcatalyst.com/">DXP Catalyst Consulting</a> and a CMS Critic contributor. <hr /> Search is changing. Instead of typing keywords and clicking through ranked pages, users increasingly expect fast, relevant answers, often delivered through conversational tools like <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://chatgpt.com/">ChatGPT</a>, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.perplexity.ai/">Perplexity</a>, or intelligent site search. They’re landing on your website “from the side,” bypassing the homepage, and expecting to ask questions in natural language and get immediate responses.This shift, accelerated by the rise of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/">Search Generative Experience (SGE)</a> and the emergence of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://searchengineland.com/what-is-generative-engine-optimization-geo-444418">Generative Engine Optimization (GEO),</a> is reshaping how digital platforms are selected and structured. Traditional SEO practices are no longer sufficient. Content must now be discoverable by both search engines and generative AI systems.To keep pace, organizations are reevaluating their digital architecture. Some are adopting full-featured Digital Experience Platforms (DXPs), while others are building their own solution ecosystems using best-of-breed tools like CMS, enterprise search, analytics, and more. Regardless of the approach, the same principles apply: content must be structured for reuse, delivered intelligently across channels, and trackable at every touchpoint.Here are three key areas I focus on when helping organizations evaluate the readiness of their digital experience ecosystem, which is what a modern DXP truly represents, in the era of conversational search.<h3 id="1.--structured-content-and-findability-by-design">1.  Structured Content and Findability by Design</h3>At the heart of any DXP or composable solution is the content layer, powered by a <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://cmscritic.com/what-is-a-content-management-system-cms">content management system (CMS).</a> It governs how content is created, structured, and published. To support SGE and GEO, this layer must do more than manage pages. It needs to produce structured, reusable content that systems can understand and deliver in context.Generative AI tools require predictable, well-modeled inputs. Content trapped in PDFs, inconsistent formats, or unstructured blobs is unlikely to be surfaced accurately. Structured content models, semantic tagging, and field-level metadata are essential for discoverability.When evaluating a DXP or CMS, look for:<ul><li>API-accessible metadata and structured content elements</li><li>Support for semantic models and content relationships</li><li>Schema markup applied consistently across content types</li><li>Editorial workflows for FAQs, summaries, or step-by-step formats</li><li>Extensibility for AI use cases like conversational grounding or previews</li></ul>Findability starts with how content is modeled. If it cannot be accessed or interpreted by AI, it will be excluded from conversational experiences.<h3 id="2.--search-integration-that-supports-conversational-interfaces">2.  Search Integration That Supports Conversational Interfaces</h3>Conversational search is not limited to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/chatbot/">chatbots.</a> It can be delivered through a standard search bar, as long as the system can interpret natural language, understand context, and return more tailored responses. The interface may look familiar, but the experience is far more dynamic.Delivering on that promise requires search capabilities that extend beyond CMS indexing. Your architecture should support:<ul><li>API-based indexing of structured content and product data</li><li>Multi-source search across support content, blogs, product catalogs (if applicable), and more</li><li>Fine-tuned ranking, filtering, and fallback logic</li><li>Compatibility with conversational UX, such as voice or natural language input</li></ul>Some DXPs are starting to offer search integrations with conversational overlays or even <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://aws.amazon.com/what-is/retrieval-augmented-generation/">RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)</a> frameworks. Even if you’re not enabling full conversational search today, the technical foundation should be ready.<h3 id="3.--governance-and-observability">3.  Governance and Observability</h3>As generative interfaces become the first point of interaction for many users, governance and observability are no longer optional. Teams must control what is published, how it is indexed, and how it performs in real-world usage.Your CMS or DXP should provide access controls, publishing workflows, preview tools, and the ability to manage visibility through scoped indexing, robots.txt, or noindex tags. While you cannot always prevent AI from referencing public content, you can influence how and where it appears.Beyond control, your team needs visibility. Modern platforms should offer analytics that go beyond traffic and conversions to include:<ul><li>User search queries and failed results</li><li>AI interpretation of structured content</li><li>Behavioral patterns that reveal content gaps</li><li>Metadata performance insights and tuning opportunities</li></ul>These feedback loops help you identify what users are looking for, where they are not finding it, and how to improve content delivery. Observability is critical for adapting to shifting search behavior.<h3 id="what-to-do-next">What to Do Next</h3>You do not need to solve for every edge case today. But as SGE and conversational interfaces gain traction, platform evaluations must evolve.Use this checklist to guide your next discussion:<ul><li>Is your content layer structured to support AI-ready delivery?</li><li>Can your systems surface and connect that content across search, personalization, and chat interfaces?</li><li>Do you have insight into how users are interacting with content, including intent signals and discovery gaps?</li></ul>Search is no longer just a feature. It is becoming the interface between your users and your brand. Whether you are investing in a traditional DXP or building a best-of-breed composable stack, choose an architecture that is structured, discoverable, and observable – one that supports GEO from day one. <hr /><h3 id="upcoming-events">Upcoming Events</h3> <img style="width:31.83%" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2025/01/cms-connect-2025-logo.png" alt="" /><h4 id="cms-connect-25"><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">CMS Connect 25</a></h4>August 5-6, 2025 – Montreal, CanadaWe are delighted to present the second annual summer edition of our signature global conference dedicated to the content management community! CMS Connect will be held again in beautiful Montreal, Canada, and feature a unique blend of masterclasses, insightful talks, interactive discussions, impactful learning sessions, and authentic networking opportunities. Join vendors, agencies, and customers from across our industry as we engage and collaborate around the future of content management – and hear from the top thought leaders at the only vendor-neutral, in-person conference exclusively focused on CMS. Space is limited for this event, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.boye-co.com/conferences/cmsconnect25">so book your seats today.</a>

3 Things to Look for in a DXP as Conversational Search Changes the Game

dan-drapeau

Hotjar - Spot what confuses

Spot what confuses your users with Hotjar & AI

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