Matt: Welcome back to Growth Unleashed, the podcast for pet brands that want to grow smarter without relying on paid ads. I’m Matt, the founder of Bubblegum Search.
Louis: And I’m Louis, SEO manager here at Bubblegum. And today we wanted to take a bit of a dive into some of the buzzwords that we’re seeing in SEO in 2025. Things like IO, GEO — all related to kind of optimising for large language models — but all sound quite confusing. So let’s do some myth busting.
Matt: Yeah, let’s bust this myth. So it’s still SEO, right? You know, SEO happens wherever people look for answers. But in short, it’s just not Google anymore. You could just call it “Search Everywhere Optimisation.”
Louis: Yeah, I think that’s the best kind of summary of our take here. So — GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation), AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation), IO (Artificial Intelligence Optimisation) — they all kind of just mean the same thing, basically. I don’t think it’s anything to be too worried about.
Effectively, if you’re still doing good SEO you should still be kind of hitting on all of the points that these new services will reward. So things like producing helpful content, things like third-party trust signals — brand mentions, reviews, that sort of thing — and also just kind of having a strong brand reputation across all of the important and influential platforms online.
Matt: Yeah. So really, in order to be visible in these AI search platforms, you’re just doing a lot of the good old SEO stuff — and particularly the off-site part of SEO more, you know?
Louis: Absolutely.
Matt: But with a bit more fine-tuning, I suppose, isn’t it? Like, whereas previously you could afford to be a little bit more spread thin or perhaps get away with slightly relevant mentions or links, now you have to be just making sure you’re actually on the places that influence your audience and that are super relevant.
Louis: Yeah. I think, you know, if we look to the old days of SEO — off-site was always a factor, but it was way more just about like getting a follow backlink from a website and not really caring—
Matt (interjecting): Yeah, it was— what mattered was just the link.
Louis:
Right, not what the website was or the context…
Matt: Because it worked.
Louis: You’d go jumping on directories — like when you launched a new site, you’d go and submit to every directory out there and hope as many of them linked back to you as possible.
Matt: Yeah, that brings back memories. Yeah, exactly. And so the evolution — and this has been going on a few years now, so it’s not like this just landed last week — the need to be visible across those different search platforms…
Because yeah, I mean, it’s fragmented now, isn’t it? The search. You’ve got Google, YouTube, Amazon, obviously social platforms like TikTok, forums like Reddit, and of course, like we’re discussing today, the AI search platforms like ChatGPT or Perplexity or Gemini.
Yeah. So the game now is to be visible everywhere. And for that, “Search Everywhere Optimization” applies. But as we said, really that is just fine-tuning what we’ve done with SEO — or should have been doing — for a few years now.
Louis: Absolutely. I think— yeah, I love “Search Everywhere Optimisation.” I think it really, really describes our jobs well in 2025.
Like if we take a use case — say I’m a dog owner who has a two-year-old border collie rescue dog, and I’m looking for a good food brand. My first port of call in 2025 might be going on ChatGPT and explaining, “I’ve got a two-year-old rescue dog. These are the requirements. What sort of food should I be feeding it?”
And you know, ChatGPT will spit out some brands, maybe some recommendations. You might go on Google to search those. You might ask ChatGPT directly for the sources and visit the websites. But it doesn’t really end there.
You might find a particular brand and then think, “Okay, well, I’m going to read reviews about this. I’m going to go on TikTok and look for someone that uses it. Instagram — see if there are any influencers I like that recommend it.”
Matt: Yeah, 100%. And all of those different searches have ultimately a different intent. Because like you said — YouTube could be for reviews. You might be reviewing a product and seeing how it works, or just reading the comments to see what people think of it.
But ChatGPT, like the example you mentioned, is a lot more conversational and contextual. So you’re going to be giving it a lot more information — and ultimately talking to it like you would an advisor or a consultant or a vet, in order to really hone in on those exact needs.
So yeah, search is fragmented. It’s everywhere now. And you’ve got to be everywhere serving those different intents.
You can’t rely — like you used to — on a single blog post in Google where all the attention and search once used to be. You could get away with that and drive interest and traffic from that post. Now, you just have to be findable wherever your audience is asking these questions.
Matt: So yeah, I mean SEO has developed beyond what it was. And a more suitable acronym now, at least in our opinion, is that it should be “Search Everywhere Optimisation.”
Louis: Absolutely. And I guess if I’m a pet brand, the question now would be: how do we earn that wider visibility?
And I think for us at Bubblegum, this is where we’ve really taken the idea of digital PR and just baked it into SEO principles. Previously, SEO and traditional PR were separate entities. But now, as traditional PR has become digital PR — and something SEOs can do themselves — it’s a fundamental part of SEO.
It’s not this ancillary feature that you think about afterwards. This visibility across platforms on the internet is something you absolutely need. And there’s no better way of doing it than digital PR.
Matt: Yeah, because ultimately it’s not just about the backlinks, is it? There’s the entity recognition that you get from being in the right places, the brand mentions we’ve talked about, or perhaps even branded anchor text from links — and the trust it drives through.
So it’s all of the signals — branded signals — that benefit both Google and large language models at the same time.
Louis: Absolutely. They’re not just reading your site, these LLMs. They’re literally reading the internet to find out about you. So you need to make sure your presence on the internet is what they want to see.
It’s the same thing we’ve always done for Google.
And I guess my ultimate point is: there’s no need to worry about these new acronyms. Yes, they indicate that search is changing, but I don’t think they represent new services in themselves. They all reward the same things the core SEO principles reward.
Matt: Yeah. And one last thing to say on the digital PR side — up until, I guess it was 2022 — when ChatGPT exploded, there was this conversation in the marketing world about whether or how much value unlinked mentions actually created.
And depending on what side of the fence you were on… We always advocated that it drove value, drove brand awareness, etc.
But now, with the studies that have come out showing how branded mentions — in the right places, in the right publications, on the right platforms — absolutely help you rank within LLMs and AI search… It’s just given digital PR a huge boost.
Because now you get the best of both worlds, right? You still get the links and the benefit that you would for Google — while also getting the benefit for ranking in large language models.
Louis: Absolutely. So I think, to wrap up our episode: GEO, AIO—
Matt:
Whatever it might be—
Louis: It’s all SEO.
Matt: Yeah. That’s the bottom line. SEO is really— Search Engine— sorry, no, it’s not — Search Everywhere Optimisation. Old habits die hard, don’t they?
It’s still about being helpful, trusted, and discoverable.
And look — if you’re making great content already, getting branded mentions in the right places, and putting the audience first — then you’re already ahead of the curve.
So cool. Okay, well that’s it. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. Otherwise, that’s it — and we’ll see you next time.
Louis: Thanks for now. Bye.