Last summer at the Paris Olympics, Mack McConnell realized that search had fundamentally changed when his parents independently used ChatGPT to plan their day, with the AI recommending specific tour companies, restaurants, and attractions—businesses gaining unprecedented visibility. This insight inspired Geostar, a Pear VC-backed startup aiming to help businesses navigate the seismic shift in online discovery driven by AI-powered search, an industry projected to grow from $43. 63 billion in 2025 to $108. 88 billion by 2032. In just four months, with two founders and no employees, Geostar nears $1 million in annual recurring revenue. Gartner forecasts a 25% decline in traditional search volume by 2026 due to AI chatbots, with Google’s AI Overviews appearing in billions of searches monthly. Princeton researchers indicate optimizing for AI can boost visibility by 40%. McConnell explains that businesses now must optimize for multiple interfaces—traditional search, AI Mode, Gemini, AI Overviews, plus ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity—each with distinct criteria. This fragmentation disrupts decades of Google-centric SEO strategies, while Forrester finds 95% of B2B buyers expect to use generative AI for purchases, yet most companies remain unprepared. Geostar’s co-founder and CTO, Cihan Tas, highlights the massive shift as lawyers now acquire up to 50% of clients via ChatGPT. The startup champions Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), a departure from traditional SEO focused on keywords and backlinks, requiring understanding how large language models (LLMs) interpret, synthesize, and navigate web data. Every website must act as a “little database” for diverse AI crawlers, each with unique preferences: Google pulls from its search index, ChatGPT prioritizes structured data, and Perplexity favors authoritative sources like Wikipedia. Tas notes that success now depends on being concise and directly answering questions, tuning content to AI decision-making akin to human reasoning. Structured data such as schema markup, used by only 30% of sites, increases the chance of appearing in AI summaries by 36%. Yet many businesses lack awareness or implementation skills for such markup. Geostar responds with “ambient agents” embedded in client websites that autonomously optimize content and technical aspects in real-time, learning from patterns across clients to syndicate improvements network-wide. For example, RedSift, a cybersecurity firm, saw a 27% increase in AI mentions in three months and attained first-page rankings on Google and ChatGPT for key terms like “best DMARC vendors” within days. McConnell compares Geostar’s service to a $10, 000/month agency’s work, but at software-like scale with pricing between $1, 000 and $3, 000 monthly. In AI search, brand mentions without links—once SEO’s bane—now carry significant weight, as AI analyzes sentiment and context across vast text sources including Reddit, news articles, and social media.

McConnell explains a non-linked mention in outlets like The New York Times can positively influence AI recommendations. However, this introduces vulnerabilities: studies from the Indian Institute of Technology and Princeton reveal AI biases favor third-party sources over brand-owned content, making external reputation more influential than a company’s own site. Metrics evolve from clicks and rankings to “impressions”—how prominently and positively a brand surfaces in AI-generated answers, even without user clicks. Geostar competes alongside startups like Brandlight, Profound, and Goodie in the race to dominate AI optimization within the $80 billion SEO market. Unlike many that offer dashboards and recommendations, Geostar’s autonomous agents implement changes directly, leveraging founders’ experience from their previous Y Combinator-backed startup, Monto. They argue that simply adapting old SEO tools for AI misses the point; AI can actively perform optimization work. The stakes are highest for small and medium-sized businesses, which often lack resources for expert consultants but comprise a large market—nearly half of America’s 33. 2 million small businesses invest in SEO, including hundreds of thousands of law firms spending thousands monthly to remain locally competitive. Co-founder Tas’s journey—from a 50-resident Kurdish village in Turkey, through self-taught programming after his mother’s illness, to partnering with McConnell prior to ever meeting in person—embodies the startup’s innovative ethos. He stresses GEO is fundamentally new and enabled by today’s technology. The transformation of search is expected to accelerate, embedding into productivity tools, wearables, and augmented reality, each demanding unique optimization. McConnell envisions multimodal interfaces melding sight and sound as the future of search. Yet alongside technical innovation lie ethical concerns over fairness, manipulation, and transparency in AI-driven recommendations amid a regulatory vacuum—creating a “Wild West” for GEO. The era of merely optimizing for Google is ending, replaced by a complex ecosystem where success depends on understanding how AI systems think, synthesize, and recommend. For millions of businesses reliant on online discovery, mastering this new paradigm is an existential challenge. The key question is no longer whether to optimize for AI but if they can adapt swiftly enough to stay visible amid rapid change. McConnell’s parents’ AI-guided Paris experience foreshadowed this new reality: instead of searching or clicking, users simply ask AI, which decides which businesses to recommend. In this evolving economy of discovery, winning no longer means ranking highest—it means being chosen by AI.