Ryan Freeman 🇨🇦⚾

I think I finally figured out why the SEO vs GEO thing sticks in my craw so much. The things that would have laid the groundwork for good AI search performance today are the things SEOs have been talking about for 10 years. Next year is the 10-year anniversary of Traffic Think Tank. I know for a fact hundreds of people have been talking about the stuff that’s now making the rounds as “new approaches” for surfacing in ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Claude. (Not Perplexity. Nobody seems to care about Perplexity anymore.) This should be the victory lap. This is when you look at the CMO who ignored your requests and your advice for a decade and say “I fucking told you so.” Instead, loud voices in the SEO community are saying we should repackage it. Call it GEO. Pretend to the CMOs (who didn’t want to listen to their SEO teams) that this is all new. That they haven’t heard it for the last 10 years. That they haven’t been sitting in C-level seats knowing nothing about how the channel actually operates. So instead of telling them we knew better this entire time, the advice is to kowtow. Use the language they want to use. Make believe it’s all new and different, and they’re so smart for finally wanting to do it. “Oh gosh, who could have seen this coming? We better get on this right away.” Say whatever they want to hear, because they control the money. Maybe it’s because I’m lucky enough that I don’t need to close X deals in the next three months to pay my mortgage. I’m good. So maybe that’s my privilege showing. I don’t have to make believe, and other people do, because they decided to run an agency and have full-time salaries to pay. If you have to say the shibboleth to make your bills next month, okay. Fine. But that doesn’t define what’s true. It defines what’s commercially useful. And I’m entirely uninterested in saying things I don’t think are true just because they’re commercially useful. If that’s where you are, I feel bad for you, frankly. Every single time I hear the “new” GEO work explained, I can think of five blog posts from seven years ago that describe exactly the same thing. You’re playing a bullshit game to impress dumb CMOs so they’ll pay you. I get it. Money’s important. But don’t shit a shitter. Don’t pretend when you’re talking to me that this is new or different or revolutionary. It’s the same bullshit you were doing eight years ago. You’re just calling it something else and charging more. And if you can get more money for the same old shit with a new coat of paint, good for you. I’m as staunchly pro-capitalist as anyone. I respect and applaud your right to get money from dumb people. Just don’t expect me to pretend publicly that they’re not dumb. It's still "just" SEO. And if you’ve been saying this stuff for a decade, take your well-earned victory lap.