Generative engine optimization, or GEO, is starting to feel like an unwinnable game. Every time brands think they’ve figured out how it works, there’s a new level to beat.
The latest challenge, according to Will Jack, co-founder of AI discoverability startup Unusual, is less about showing up within AI search and more about standing out.
Unusual, which announced a $3.6 million funding round earlier this month, analyzes how brands appear within AI search and provides suggestions on how to better rank. The company, which launched in September 2025 with two people – Jack and his co-founder, Keller Maloney – plans to spend its new money on expanding the team.
Humble brag
As more brands tune their messaging to match what AI systems want, an unexpected trend is emerging.
For what feels like the first time, journalists and AI chatbots are on the same team: that of objective language.
Large language models typically favor informational rather than promotional language, said Jack, “almost like a scientific research paper.” With that in mind, one tip Unusual often shares with clients is to “give some kudos to their competitors” to highlight their own strengths by comparison.
Not only are LLMs unpersuaded by flowery language; they actually call it out when providing results. If a brand claims to be “the best” or “the only” company providing a specific product or service, chatbots will flag highlight the offending language and basically say, “‘This sounds like marketing speak; I’m going to ignore it,’” Maloney said.
Instead, said Jack, marketers should prioritize earned media and create dedicated AI content that’s designed to be “found by search engines and not humans.”
However, it’s important for transparency’s sake that humans can access this content if they want to, Jack added, which means no “cloaking.”
But SEO should “outrank” your dedicated AI content, he said, since the latter isn’t meant to engage humans. It’s for robots to eat.
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As for earned media, well, brands have to earn it. Unusual identifies the most “highly influential” platforms and voices within a client’s market, so they can try and get more mentions in those spaces. But it’s important that the methods they use are “reasonable,” Jack said.
A brand could hop onto Reddit and start posting its own accolades, but that’s not the way forward. “We’re not really candidates for dishonesty here,” he said.
It’s not unusual to use AI tools …
So, how do brands know which platforms to target and what product attributes to emphasize?
Unusual’s tools, powered by AI, of course, assess how a brand is currently showing up within LLMs and provides advice for how it can improve. Rather than opting for a single AI model, it uses a variety of models and providers, constantly updating its tech as new updates are released.
Clients set goals for how they want their brand to be perceived – for instance, a tech platform may want to market itself as an enterprise solution, rather than just for small startups – and Unusual fires a series of related questions to the leading LLM chatbots.
It then analyzes the responses, determining sources and surmising the back-end reasoning process, and suggests ways that new content can fill “knowledge gaps,” said Jack, like producing new articles that list specific use cases a brand wants to advertise.
Specificity can take a brand from merely ranking in AI search results to standing out among its competitors.
Consumers use chatbots for “a lot more than search,” Maloney said. They’re looking for analysis and specific recommendations, rather than what he called “an unopinionated list of results.”
AI chatbots act more like a “salesperson or an influencer than a search engine,” Jack added.
Which is why showing up in search can’t just be about visibility anymore, he said. “It’s about being the clear recommendation.”
