Pew Research Center’s analysis of Google browsing data found that users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, versus 15% when none did. That gap is why GEO visibility now needs its own budget line. If your plan only funds what drives clicks, you’re underfunding the places where buyers now form opinions. Here is how to reallocate spend, measure it, and defend it.
The click is no longer the unit of value
The citations inside the summary fare worse, since Pew reports that only 1% of visits to pages with a summary involved a click on a link inside it.
Sessions also ended more often. Pew found that 26% of pages with an AI summary ended the browsing session, versus 16% of pages with only traditional results.
So the buyer researches, gets an answer, and leaves. Your last-click report never sees it.
If an AI answer can shortlist your brand without a single visit, then a budget judged only on sessions is blind to a growing share of consideration.
One caution. Pew’s data covers Google in March 2025, and Search Engine Journal’s coverage reads it as erosion of publisher referral traffic. That’s a fair read for publishers. For brands, the more useful question is different: who gets named in the answer?
What AI engines actually pull from
Here the budget logic gets practical. Pew reported that the most frequently cited sources in both AI summaries and standard results are Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit. Together they accounted for 15% of the sources listed in the AI summaries Pew examined, according to its report.
Look at that list. Encyclopedic references, video, and community conversation. None of it is a banner ad.
Pew also found that 88% of AI summaries cited three or more sources, and only 1% cited a single one. That matters because it means visibility is plural. You don’t need to be the only answer. You need to be one of several, consistently.
Longer, more conversational queries trigger summaries far more often. Pew’s data shows that 8% of one- or two-word searches produced a summary, rising to 53% for searches of ten words or more. Those long queries tend to be the comparison and “best for my situation” questions that sit mid-funnel. Exactly where creators earn their keep.
Where to move money: a working allocation
I wouldn’t rip budget out of performance channels. I’d carve out a defined slice and fund it like a program, not a test. A reasonable starting structure:
- Creator video and long-form (largest share of the slice): YouTube creators who review, compare and demonstrate. Video is a heavily cited format, and creator content gives you third-party voice, which reads as more credible than owned pages.
- Community presence: Funded, disclosed participation in Reddit and niche forums, plus customer advocacy programs. Your team’s time counts here more than media dollars.
- Digital PR and earned references: Placements in the publications and reference sources engines repeatedly pull from.
- Owned content restructuring: Clear answers, product specs, and comparison pages that are easy to extract.
- Measurement and monitoring: Tools or analyst time to track brand mentions across ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews.
For most mid-market brands, I’d start with a small, fixed share of the click-based budget (a number you set yourself), then adjust once you have a baseline. That figure is my planning heuristic, not a benchmark from the research above. Treat it as a hypothesis.
For the creator portion, the mapping work in full funnel creator budgets helps you assign spend by stage. And if you’re deciding between channels, the creator budget allocation model shows how to weigh platforms against each other.
Buy once, deploy many times
GEO rewards repetition across surfaces. A single creator review that lives on YouTube, gets quoted in a forum thread, and is cut into short clips adds up to more citable footprint than three isolated posts.
That changes how you pay. Negotiate usage rights up front so one production feeds several channels. The thinking in reuse economics applies directly, and a content atomization calendar keeps the repurposing on schedule instead of ad hoc.
Compliance is part of the budget too. Paid creator mentions that feed AI answers still need clear disclosure, and licensing terms need to cover each reuse. Skip that and you’ve built visibility on a legal liability.
How do you measure visibility nobody clicks?
You build a different scorecard. Clicks stay on it, but they’re no longer the headline.
- Share of answer: Pick 30-50 priority questions your buyers ask. Run them monthly across the major AI engines. Record how often your brand is named, cited, or recommended.
- Branded search lift: Track branded query volume against creator flight dates.
- Direct and dark traffic: Watch for rises that follow visibility pushes.
- Sales-side signal: Add a “how did you first hear about us” field, including AI assistants as an option.
Then connect these to finance language. The earned media KPIs framework is a good template for presenting soft metrics to a CFO without losing credibility.
Be honest about limits. AI answers vary by prompt, by day, and by user. Your share-of-answer number is a directional index, not an audited figure. Present it that way and you’ll keep trust when it wobbles.
Defending the shift internally
Expect pushback. The usual objection: “We can’t attribute it.” True, and it’s also true of most brand spend you already fund.
Frame the slice as risk mitigation. Click-based channels depend on traffic that platforms can reduce at will, a lesson brands learned when link behavior changed on social platforms (see the Instagram link stripping contingency plan). Diversifying toward citation-driven visibility hedges that exposure.
Set a review window of two quarters, define the kill criteria in advance, and report share of answer alongside pipeline. That turns an argument about faith into one about evidence.
FAQs
What is GEO visibility?
GEO (generative engine optimization) visibility is how often and how favorably your brand appears inside AI-generated answers from tools such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It’s measured by mentions and citations, not clicks.
How much budget should go to GEO?
There’s no validated industry benchmark. A practical start is reallocating a modest slice of click-based spend, then adjusting after two quarters of share-of-answer data and branded search trends.
Does GEO replace SEO and paid search?
No. No. In Pew’s analysis, people still clicked traditional results in 8% of visits when a summary appeared, and 15% when it didn’t. Clicks still happen, so keep performance channels funded while adding visibility spend.
Which channels influence AI answers most?
Pew found Wikipedia, YouTube and Reddit were the most frequently cited sources in Google AI summaries. That points toward video, community discussion and credible third-party references as priority investments.
How do creators fit into a GEO plan?
Creators produce third-party reviews, comparisons and demonstrations in formats engines cite, especially video. Secure reuse rights and disclosure terms so each asset can support several channels.
How should we report GEO results to finance?
Combine share of answer, branded search lift, direct traffic and self-reported attribution. Label them as directional indicators and tie them to pipeline over a fixed review window.
Next step: this week, write down 30 buyer questions, run them through three AI engines, and record who gets named. That baseline tells you exactly how big your first GEO slice should be.
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