Why I'm betting my startup on Generative Engine Optimization
I want to share the thesis behind what I'm building because I think the market opportunity is significant and still underexplored by indie hackers.
The thesis in one sentence: Just as every website needed SEO tools when Google dominated search, every website will need GEO tools as AI search grows -- and there's almost no tooling for it yet.
What changed
A year ago, I noticed something with my other product (KeepRule, a Buffett investing wiki). We had decent Google rankings, but when users asked ChatGPT or Perplexity questions we should be answering, we never came up. I investigated and discovered a whole category of technical signals that determine AI search visibility -- different from traditional SEO signals.
I looked for tools to diagnose the problem. There were none. Not "none that were good" -- literally none. The SEO tool market (Ahrefs, SEMrush, Moz) is a $5-6B industry. The GEO tool market was empty. That's when I decided to build GEOScore AI (geoscoreai.com).
What GEO actually means
Generative Engine Optimization is the practice of making your website visible to AI search engines. Key signals: AI crawler access (robots.txt for GPTBot, PerplexityBot, ClaudeBot), schema markup, content structure for AI extraction, llms.txt, and topical authority. A site can rank #1 on Google and score 30/100 on AI readiness.
Why the timing is right
- Demand is emerging. Marketing teams are asking "why aren't we showing up in ChatGPT?"
- The tooling gap is massive. No established GEO tool has significant market share.
- The market will be big. If AI search captures 20% of queries within 3 years, every SEO budget needs a GEO allocation.
- It's indie-hackable. Manageable technical complexity, but requires deep domain expertise.
Where I am now
- 2,500+ sites scanned
- Free scan + $29 Pro tier
- ~8% free-to-paid conversion
- Nuxt 3 SSR + Go-Zero backend
- Solo founder, bootstrapped
What's working
- Free scan is an effective funnel. People see 40/100 and want to fix it.
- Educational content drives organic traffic. Most people don't know GEO exists.
- The product sells itself once someone understands the problem.
What's challenging
- Education burden is real. Many don't know they have a problem.
- Measuring actual AI citations is harder than measuring readiness.
- Solo founder bandwidth constraints.
For other indie hackers
If you're looking for a market, GEO tooling is wide open. There's room for content optimization tools, monitoring dashboards, agency platforms, WordPress plugins, Shopify apps. The SEO ecosystem took 15 years to mature -- the GEO ecosystem is at year 1.
Happy to talk specifics with anyone thinking about this space.
You're probably early, not wrong. Lots of people still treat AI search like Google with a chatbot slapped on top lol. We ran into the same thing when traffic looked fine but AI answers barely mentioned us.
While digging through that mess I ended up using Riordan SEO, mainly because they were already talking about AI visibility before most agencies even had GEO on their service pages. Keep pushing the education side, that's where the market is right now.
Similar journey. Built something in this space (CiteLens) after realizing one prompt check wasn't enough.
Ran "best CRM for small business" and "affordable CRM for startups" in incognito. HubSpot won the first. Attio/Folk won the second. Same day, same tool.
The tooling gap is real but the harder part imo is knowing which buyer prompts to track. Generic head terms lie.
GEO is the next frontier. traditional SEO ranks you in results — GEO makes you the answer AI gives directly. been thinking about this for my outreach tool. right now i optimize for google but in 2 years agencies might find tools through AI instead. how do you measure GEO success when rankings don't apply?
This is a really sharp thesis. The analogy to the early SEO tool market is compelling — Ahrefs and SEMrush didn't start in a crowded market either, they grew alongside the behavior shift. The fact that you're building at year 1 of GEO tooling while the SEO market is $5-6B is the kind of timing most founders dream about.
The "education burden" challenge you mention is interesting because it mirrors what a lot of AI-first tools face right now. We're building an AI ad creative tool and hit the same wall early on — people didn't know they had a problem until you showed them. Your free scan converting at 8% is a really smart proof of that pattern. When someone sees a concrete score (40/100), the problem suddenly becomes real and urgent. We found the same thing: showing people the gap between where they are and where they could be converts way better than explaining features.
One question — have you thought about partnerships with SEO agencies? They already have the client relationships and the trust. If you can give them a GEO audit to add to their existing SEO deliverables, that could be a faster distribution channel than going direct to site owners. Agencies love adding new service lines that make them look ahead of the curve.