The last twelve months in search have been some of the most chaotic the industry has ever seen.
Google has rolled out one destabilising change after another, reducing organic visibility across countless sectors and pushing AI-generated summaries to the top of results.
Publishers, ecommerce brands and small service businesses have watched dependable traffic collapse. It has felt less like an algorithm update and more like a systematic withdrawal of free discovery.
The timing could not be worse. Brands are contending with inflation, recession anxiety, tariff pressure, supply chain instability and shifting consumer behaviour. Free traffic once provided a buffer against market turbulence. Now that safety net is thinning by the day.
And then, right in the middle of this volatility, Adobe made the single most important announcement of the year.
Adobe will acquire Semrush for 1.9 billion dollars in cash.
Adobe is telling the entire marketing industry that the future of visibility is no longer SEO as we have understood it, but something larger and more consequential.
The meaning becomes even clearer when you read Adobe’s own words.
The company states that Semrush and Adobe will:
“deliver a comprehensive solution that gives marketers a holistic understanding of how their brands appear across owned channels, LLMs, traditional search and the wider web.”
In a single sentence, Adobe places LLMs at the same strategic level as search and owned media.
This is a watershed moment.
Adobe also warns CMOs directly.
“Brand visibility is being reshaped by generative AI, and brands that do not embrace this new opportunity risk losing relevance and revenue.”
This is not a soft statement. It is a line in the sand.
And here came one of many mentions of GEO:
As generative AI platforms become a new interface between customers and brands, organizations that invest in GEO alongside their SEO capabilities are poised to keep their brands represented, discovered and trusted across owned and earned channels.
The New Interface: LLMs First, Search Second
For twenty years, SEO has worked on a stable model: humans typed keywords, Google returned links, and websites competed for visibility through technical optimisation, content quality and backlinks.
This was the fundamental machinery of organic discovery.
That machinery is no longer in charge.
Consumers now use large language models for research, recommendations and decision-making. Adobe itself highlights this shift, stating that consumers increasingly rely on LLMs for “information, recommendations and purchase decisions.”
These models intercept the query before search does.
They summarise, interpret and recommend information drawn from multiple sources.
LLMs are now the first interface. Search has become the second click.
Semrush saw this transition earlier than anyone.
Its GEO features were one of the first attempts to quantify visibility in LLM environments. Instead of ranking positions, Semrush began tracking prompts, model responses and the sources that influence those responses. Adobe understood the significance. Semrush had built the early infrastructure for a new discipline.
That discipline is Generative Engine Optimisation, or GEO.
GEO Is Not SEO With New Packaging
A major misunderstanding inside the SEO community is the belief that GEO is simply SEO extended into AI. This is incorrect.
Anil Chakravarthy, president of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, said:
“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.”
GEO is the new growth channel.
The two mechanisms, GEO and SEO operate on different logic.
SEO is based on:
Link authority
Technical performance
Keyword-driven content relevance
LLMs operate on statistical language modelling, entropy, contextual relationships and probability distributions.
They do not “rank” the way search engines do. They construct answers based on patterns, context and information density.
That means four major forces shape GEO.
1. Third-party presence outranks backlinks
Models reward brands that appear consistently in credible external sources. This elevates PR, interviews, reviews, industry commentary and thought leadership.
2. Rich, structured descriptions outperform keyword content
The models favour clarity, detail and directness. A well-written description of a product’s qualities is more influential than a long SEO blog.
3. Brand fitness signals shape recommendation probability
These signals include clear positioning, target audience, functional benefits, distinctiveness and the brand’s overall information footprint.
4. Category entry points replace keywords
People no longer type short isolated phrases. They express situations.
“I run a freelance studio and need a CRM.” “I am replacing my sofa and want something durable with pets.”
Category entry points become prompts.
This is why GEO aligns far more with brand marketing than with technical SEO.
GEO is not about optimisation. GEO is about maximisation. It is about increasing the probability that a model returns your brand in a buying situation.
That probability is what we call AI availability.
AI Availability: The New Mental Availability
Byron Sharp described mental availability as the likelihood of a brand coming to mind in a buying moment.
GEO extends that logic.
AI availability is the likelihood that a large language model recommends your brand during a prompt connected to a buying situation.
The model must know you. The model must understand you. The model must consider you relevant. The model must identify you as a credible recommendation.
And that requires:
a significant supply of high-quality information
strong PR signals
clear product descriptions
well-structured brand stories
active third-party mentions
distinctive positioning
fitness signals that survive model compression
This is the new source of competitive advantage. AI availability becomes the modern equivalent of mental availability.
Why Adobe Needed Semrush
Adobe is not doing this for incremental growth. The company is positioning itself to dominate the analytics layer of generative AI. It already leads in content creation and customer experience. Now it wants to lead in brand visibility in AI environments.
Adobe states that Semrush brings “GEO capabilities and more than ten years of SEO expertise.” This provides Adobe with:
prompt-level analysis
LLM visibility measurement
model-source tracking
enterprise prompt management
competitive comparison inside models
SEO data that still matters for SMEs
It is the full stack for the new interface.
Adobe is not guessing. Adobe is preparing.
The End of SEO as a Technical Island
SEO professionals who have spent a decade refining technical tactics now face a discipline that cannot be gamed or shaped through the same levers. LLMs do not reward technical tweaks. They reward information density, clarity and external validation.
Two groups will emerge:
The future-ready practitioners
These are people who understand brand strategy, positioning, category entry points and real buyer behaviour. They will translate these fundamentals into AI environments.
The legacy practitioners
These are people who try to convert their five-blog-posts-a-month workflow into GEO. They will fail. They will decline. They will eventually disappear.
The winners in GEO will be those who understand that brand has returned to the centre of search.
Search Is Not Dead. It Is Layered.
Traditional SEO still matters for:
SMEs
emergency services
local intent
transactional navigation
short-term queries
These areas are not going anywhere.
But above them sits a new interpretive layer. A powerful one. A probabilistic one. A model-driven one.
LLMs will shape discovery before any keyword is typed. That is the new reality.
GEO Is Now a Multi-Billion-Dollar Category
Adobe states that the acquisition will help brands remain “discoverable in AI search.” That phrase alone is the beginning of a new industry.
This is not theory. It is not speculative. It is now a category with a 1.9 billion dollar price tag attached to it.
The interface has changed. Consumer behaviour has changed. Visibility has changed.
GEO is here.
And the marketers who adapt first will take the lead.
Are you ready to adapt?
Andrew Holland
Originally published on LinkedIn on 21 November 2025.