The One Search Compass: How brands gain – and maintain – visibility in the age of AI

The digital landscape is undergoing its most significant transformation in decades, fundamentally driven by AI. In our recent webinar, The One Search Compass, Jellyfish SEO experts outlined how the rise of AI has fractured the traditional marketing model and shared a new, integrated strategy for how brands gain and maintain visibility in the AI Search era.

Here are the key takeaways from the session:

1. Search has split into three new forces

The search experience is no longer a simple, linear path. Instead, it is fragmenting into three powerful forces that shape how users discover, compare, and choose:

1. Generative Search: Machines that provide direct answers.
2. Social Search: Feeds that predict user needs and interests.
3. Agentic Search: Systems that perform actions on the user's behalf.

This shift marks the end of the traditional AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) marketing funnel. It is now replaced by a chaotic, non-linear "Messy Middle" where customers constantly shift between two cognitive modes: Exploration (browsing) and Evaluation (comparing). This new consumer behavior is driven by the desire for "maximum answers with minimum effort," which increases the "Delphic Cost of Search" for users who must click and navigate multiple pages. 

Consequently, search now occurs everywhere - on platforms like TikTok, Amazon, and through new features like Gemini's visual search. The foundations of traditional SEO are eroding, as rankings no longer reliably translate to revenue or traffic when AI answers questions directly.

2. AI Agents are the new customers and they need to remember you

The marketing audience has expanded to include non-human customers: AI Agents. This necessitates a Business-to-Agent (B2A) approach, requiring content to be "parseable, provable, and purchasable by software." This non-human audience is highly influential.

However, this also contributes to a "Big Shift" where:

• 60% of search queries now end without a click.
• 60% of annual search revenue is projected to flow through AI platforms by 2029.

3. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Your North Star in Fragmented Search

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) helps navigate this new reality. While SEO targets getting a brand into search results, GEO aims to get the brand into the conversation - the generative answers themselves. GEO is the essential first step of a comprehensive Generative Engine Marketing (GEM) framework that integrates the GEO strategy with brand, social, and paid media efforts.

GEO updates the four pillars of SEO for the AI age: 

• Technical (ensuring LLMs can read and render content), 
• Content (building semantic, retrievable chunks of information),
• On-page (structuring content with clear language for correct meaning extraction),
• Offsite (leveraging social proof and Digital PR to earn AI Citations). 

Practical Recommendations for Brands

• Implement structured data
• Create multimedia content that is not easily synthesized
• Utilize unique data and statistics to build quotable authority
• Shift measurement "Beyond the Click" to focus on new tools like Share of Model (the probability of an LLM recommending the brand) and Share of Search. 

Watch the full session on demand:

How Jellyfish Can Help

Jellyfish’s Generative Engine Marketing (GEM) brings together creative, media, and data to help brands shape their identity within AI ecosystems and stay visible as search continues to transform.