It's no longer a question of if a brand will work with AI but how. As AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity experience explosive growth, GEO has officially entered the chat as a crucial component of a brand’s full-funnel marketing plan. Today’s consumer behavior is fluid, which means brands need to be agile and strategic in optimizing product discovery. In October, BeautyMatter co-founder and CEO Kelly Kovack hosted a webinar with John Morabito, Senior Vice President of Search and Innovation at Stella Rising, and Cole Ingram, Director of SEO and Site Performance at L’Oréal, to help brands crack the code of the new AI paradigm.
1 . Prioritize Social Search, Especially for Gen Z Forty percent of Americans use TikTok as a search engine, rising to 64% among Gen Z. For beauty brands targeting younger consumers, optimizing content for social search through hashtags, captions, and video optimization is no longer optional—it's essential.
A successful social-first approach values the long game over virality, said Morabito. “We want things that are viral and highly searched, but at the same time we don’t want to just show up in someone’s ‘for you’ page in an ephemeral manner. We want to root this in whether or not we are consistently ranking on a search result page for a term that is meaningful to us.”
2. Invest in GEO (generative engine optimization) Now, ChatGPT results overlap with Google results only 8%-12% of the time, and AI search converts at significantly higher rates (ChatGPT: 15.9% vs. Google Organic: 1.76%). Building visibility in AI search engines requires specialized optimization strategies distinct from traditional SEO.
3. Diversify Your Brand’s Search Strategy Beyond Google Search is fragmenting across multiple platforms. With 67% of consumers now searching on social platforms and AI tools like ChatGPT gaining rapid adoption, beauty brands must optimize for discovery across Google, TikTok, ChatGPT, and other emerging channels rather than relying solely on traditional search.
And don’t assume AI scrapes information from your brand’s site, Ingram explained; it’s a common misconception. “The reality is most of it comes from Reddit or beauty editorial.”
4. Recognize that AI + Human Intelligence is the Winning Formula. While 63% of beauty consumers have used AI tools and 30% have been influenced by AI-powered product comparisons, 64% still seek out human reviews after AI recommendations. Your strategy should leverage AI capabilities while maintaining authentic human touchpoints.
5. Optimize Content for AI Retrievability. Ensure AI bots can access and process your content by optimizing robots.txt files; using HTML over JavaScript for critical content; implementing structured data and schema markup; and creating clear, quotable language that AI can easily synthesize.
6. Build Entity-Driven Content. Create comprehensive, well-structured content that establishes your brand as an authoritative entity. This includes using clear headings, maintaining content freshness, ensuring comprehensive topic coverage, and adding unique value through data, media, and expertise signals.
7. Strengthen Your Off-Site Brand Presence. AI engines look beyond your website to validate brand credibility. Build a strong presence through organic brand mentions, link outreach, social media and UGC (especially on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram), and participation in discussions on platforms like Reddit and Quora.
8. Prepare for the Four Pillars of Social Search Implement a comprehensive social search strategy covering: (1) Platform foundations (profile optimization, keyword research), (2) Post and content strategy (hashtag research, engagement best practices), (3) Engagement and growth (trend discovery, influencer opportunities), and (4) Ongoing creative optimization.
9. Adapt Your Measurement Approach. Traditional metrics are evolving. Shift focus from rankings to visibility, clicks to brand mentions, impressions to citations, and conversions to revenue contribution. Use tools like Chatrak and Otterly to monitor brand mentions in AI-generated content, and analyze referral traffic patterns in Google Analytics.
10. Embrace the Complexity of Modern Search with Query Fan-Out. Google's AI Mode uses sophisticated techniques like query fan-out—expanding a single query into dozens of related searches to widen the information net. To capture this expanded search behavior, ensure your content addresses not just primary keywords but the full spectrum of related questions, comfort factors, performance attributes, and comparison points that consumers care about.
Bottom Line: The search landscape has fundamentally shifted from a Google-Facebook duopoly to a decentralized ecosystem spanning traditional search, AI tools, and social platforms. Beauty brands that adopt an omnichannel search strategy—optimizing for SEO, GEO, and social search simultaneously—will maintain visibility and capture high-intent consumers wherever they begin their discovery journey.
GEO is not cannibalizing SEO; they complement each other. And Morabito does not expect SEO to go away, “The concept of optimizing a brand’s visibility in organic landscapes that are algorithmically driven and reward authenticity, expertise and engagement—I don’t think that’s going away any time soon.”
Click here to read Stella Rising’s playbook to learn more about how your brand can crack the code on search, positioning your brand as a leader in the search game.
