With the rise of generative AI, the online visibility strategies that businesses rely on are undergoing the most significant transformation since Google's inception. Intuitive observations from the Paris Olympics prompted Geostar, a startup backed by Pear VC, to rapidly emerge in this disruptive wave. The company's founder, Mike McConnell, noticed that his parents independently used ChatGPT to plan trips, with AI directly recommending specific businesses, marking a complete shift in the logic of "discovery."

Traditional search traffic is expected to drop 25%, and AI overviews have become the new battlefield

Geostar was founded at the perfect time. Gartner predicts that due to the popularity of AI chatbots, traditional search engine traffic will drop by 25% by 2026. Google's AI Overviews page appears in billions of search results each month. Research from Princeton University shows that optimizing for these new AI systems can increase a company's visibility by up to 40%.

McConnell pointed out that businesses previously only needed to "please Google," but now they must optimize for "four different Google interfaces" (traditional search, AI mode, Gemini, and AI Overviews) as well as multiple AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, each with different standards. This fragmentation has left companies that spent decades refining traditional SEO strategies in confusion. Forrester research found that 95% of B2B buyers plan to use generative AI in their purchasing decisions, but most companies are unprepared for this shift.

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Geostar drives the new "GEO" model, ARR approaches $1 million in four months

To address this challenge, Geostar focuses on Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Unlike traditional SEO, which focuses on keywords and backlinks, GEO requires understanding how large language models parse, comprehend, and integrate information across the web.

Cihan Tas, co-founder and CTO of Geostar, emphasized that every website must now be a "small database" that can be understood by dozens of different AI crawlers. AI systems have different preferences: Google extracts data from its existing index; ChatGPT heavily relies on structured data; and Perplexity clearly favors Wikipedia and authoritative sources. Tas explained, "The current strategy is to answer questions clearly and concisely, as that is what AI is seeking."

Geostar, with its innovative approach, has become one of the fastest-growing companies in PearX's latest batch, reaching an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of nearly $1 million in just four months, with only two founders on its team.

Autonomous AI agents: continuously optimize content and create new pages

The core solution of Geostar is its autonomous AI agents, known as "environmental agents," which can be directly embedded into customer websites, continuously optimizing content, technical configurations, and even creating new pages based on patterns learned from all customers' data, without any human intervention. This approach helped cybersecurity company RedSift increase AI mentions by 27% within three months. In another case, Geostar achieved ranking for a high-value search term on both Google and ChatGPT's first page of search results in just four days. McConnell noted that Geostar offers the work of a typical agency for $1,000 to $3,000 per month, compared to the usual $10,000 per month charged by agencies.

Brand mentions without links: a new value metric in the AI era

The impact of GEO goes beyond technical optimization. In the AI era, brand mentions without links are more important than ever. AI systems can analyze text on Reddit, news articles, or social media, understand its sentiment and context, and directly influence how AI describes and recommends a company. This makes the weight of a brand's official website on AI perception potentially less than user reviews online.