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Verbatim text of the video's audio, «GEO: How to get AI to recommend your business». Speaker 1 and Speaker 2 are the two voices in the video. Video: youtube.com/watch?v=NMrwIS_LhwM.

[00:00] Speaker 1: Welcome to this analysis. Today we're diving headfirst into a Varela Insights research piece that, frankly, completely changes our perspective. It turns out artificial intelligence is no longer just an assistant for quick tasks; it has become the new absolute filter, the great gatekeeper of B2B sales.

The rules of the game have already changed, and the most worrying part is that for many companies, the most important conversation about their products is already happening behind their backs, without them. Let's see why.

[00:29] Speaker 2: To size this up, check out this huge number. 89% of B2B buyers are already using generative artificial intelligence to make their purchasing decisions. In other words, almost nine out of 10. Nobody has the time or the patience anymore to click through endless menus or read a supplier's entire About Us page.

They simply open ChatGPT or Claude, ask which supplier to choose, and trust that answer blindly.

[00:55] Speaker 1: And notice that this trust is not superficial at all. A staggering 69% of these buyers have switched suppliers entirely, based purely on what artificial intelligence recommended to them. Just imagine that. Years and years of building brand loyalty, long-standing business relationships. All of it can be displaced in a matter of seconds by an algorithm.

It's a brutal paradigm shift, where algorithmic visibility suddenly weighs far more than tradition.

[01:24] Speaker 2: And the impact of this is already being projected globally. Gartner estimates that traditional search volume, you know, that old model of typing words into Google and getting a list of blue links, will drop by 30% by the end of 2026. But watch out: those searches don't vanish, they simply move.

The vital conversations about what to buy are now happening inside these closed artificial intelligence environments, making businesses that aren't optimized completely invisible.

[01:53] Speaker 1: This evolutionary leap is fascinating when you look at it on a timeline. In 1998, with traditional SEO, the battle was for clicks. The customer searched. Then, around 2019, we moved to AEO, where the customer asked voice assistants. By 2023 we fully entered GEO, optimization for generative engines.

The customer converses and the AI compares. But the real leap, the one that blows our minds, happens around 2026 with the agentic era. Here the customer no longer searches or asks, they simply delegate. They ask their AI agent to carry out complex tasks from start to finish.

[02:33] Speaker 2: This marks an immense transition in the way we do business. Today, let's say AI recommends options and at the end of the day a human makes the decision.

But in the immediate future, the buyer's AI will talk directly with the supplier's AI, it will negotiate, it will verify inventory, and above all it will prequalify absolutely all the options before a human being even finds out.

That's how AI is already starting to prequalify sales prospects, and this is only going to accelerate.

[03:02] Speaker 1: And here we reach the central point of this whole analysis, as Irving Varela defines it. Artificial intelligence is becoming, literally, the ultimate pre-seller. It's very simple: if AI doesn't know a company, it won't recommend it. Period. They'll be invisible.

But if it does recommend it, based on structured, readable data, that AI has already done all the heavy lifting of pre-sales. It has already prequalified the company in front of the buyer in the most objective and reliable way possible.

[03:30] Speaker 2: This prequalification effect completely transforms our beloved sales funnel. Think about it: in traditional selling, prospects arrive cold. It takes, I don't know, five to eight interactions to reach a decision, and they almost always end up fighting over price. In contrast, with GEO-driven sales, prospects arrive warm and extremely well informed.

Since the AI has already filtered and prequalified your company, the customer already understands the real value, and the friction to close the deal drops dramatically. It's a different world.

[04:02] Speaker 1: Now, imagine the exact moment a buyer asks for a recommendation of services for their company in Mexico. The mechanics of the AI's answer are binary and, honestly, pretty ruthless. Either it cites your business as one of the best options, giving you instant credibility, or it lists only your competitors.

There's no middle ground and no consolation prizes. It's the absolute difference between capturing a buyer who already has the budget approved in hand and simply not existing on their radar.

[04:30] Speaker 2: To measure this real visibility, the Varela Insights team runs some very precise audits. And the first key number they get is the appearance rate. Look at this: if a business appears in only 26 out of every 100 AI-generated answers, it's not just a low metric.

It means that in the other 74 cases, the competition is eating up the whole market. That's 74 golden opportunities where the buyer never even found out you existed.

[05:00] Speaker 1: The second factor they evaluate is AI readability, which in this example scored 62 out of 100. And listen, this has nothing to do with how pretty, modern, or video-filled a website looks to the human eye. We're talking about the code, the guts of the site.

If the data isn't logically structured so crawlers can digest it well, virtual assistants won't be able to put together useful answers and will simply pass by, heading to competitors who do speak their same technical language.

[05:29] Speaker 2: But hold on, because here is the most critical failure point of the entire audit. Entity verification. Scoring a zero here is frankly devastating. Today's artificial intelligence models are programmed, and obsessed, with avoiding the so-called hallucinations, or making up data.

So if the AI can't confirm a business's identity by cross-referencing information with highly trusted external sources, it will feel doubt. And when in doubt, the AI doesn't take risks. It prefers to leave out the recommendation altogether.

[05:59] Speaker 1: So, putting all these pieces together, what does this new AI-prequalified sales funnel look like? First, crawlers consume the information on the web. Second, the AI decides whether or not to name the business in its answer. Third, the customer reaches you already well informed and prequalified.

And fourth, the final conversation and the close take place. But watch out, there's a very important distinction to make here. The mere fact that AI reads a website doesn't guarantee at all that it will cite it. Passive presence doesn't generate active demand.

[06:34] Speaker 2: To show this isn't pure theory, the Varela Insights team put its own methodology to the test using ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. They measured their results directly against the competition. And the numbers are wild. Across 72 responses to real buying questions, their business was mentioned 253 times, and all of their competitors combined were mentioned just five times.

We're talking about a completely disproportionate advantage. Optimizing for AI creates a true monopoly on attention.

[07:06] Speaker 1: On top of that, the speed at which these results show up is striking. We're not talking about a multi-year project. By optimizing their digital assets for these AI agents, they went from about 10 mentions a day in June to peaks of 52 mentions a day by July.

It's measurable, fast growth that, again, translates directly into very high-quality prospects who arrive already convinced to buy.

[07:30] Speaker 2: Now, it's really important to pause and clear up a few myths about GEO, generative engine optimization. First, this is not paid advertising. Nobody here is buying clicks or running ads. Second, it doesn't require a visual redesign of your website. The human-facing look and feel stays untouched. Third, there are no promises of guaranteed magic rankings.

And finally, this is not a leap of faith. Everything, absolutely everything, is based on mathematical evidence drawn from real interactions with AI.

[08:01] Speaker 1: Okay, and if we want to adapt to this technology, where do we start? There's a very clear three-month roadmap. The first month is for optimizing those high-commercial-impact pages, adjusting them to what the AI needs to read in order to pre-qualify you.

The second month focuses on something vital: establishing that external entity verification across the web to build unshakable trust. And the third month culminates in a rigorous measurement against the day-1 data, to show with hard numbers that this system is really working and bringing in quality leads.

[08:33] Speaker 2: And all of this brings us to a final reflection we can't ignore. B2B market behavior has already changed, and there's no going back. For those who lead companies, the question is no longer whether your customers are using artificial intelligence to decide what to buy. The data is shouting that they do.

The real question, the only one that matters now, is: what is that artificial intelligence saying about you and your business? Running an audit to find out is the essential first step to taking control of the most critical conversation happening out there right now. Are you going to stay out of the conversation? Think about it.