For a year I have been in rooms where the question was still what Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is, and whether ChatGPT matters for how customers find you. Those rooms have gone quiet. Not because someone answered the question well. Because budgets moved.
For a large enterprise, that shift is a line item, but for an SME, it is a bet. You are funding GEO instead of something else, and you will know inside two quarters if it was right. The question is the same either way. It just costs you more to get it wrong. Not whether you show up in ChatGPT, but whether that created demand.
