Summarize With AI
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is the practice of optimising your content and your brand so that AI engines, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, cite and recommend you in the answers they generate. In 2026, when someone asks “what’s the best X company in Lisbon?”, AI answers directly. The question that matters is simple: does your brand appear in that answer, or not?
At Haipe we lived this problem first-hand. That is where Semantika came from, the Portuguese AI brand-monitoring platform we built and that ECO/+M covered at launch. In this article we explain what changed in search, what works in 2026, and we tell the full story: why we built Semantika, how it works, and where it is going.
What changed in search in 2026?
The numbers speak for themselves:
- ChatGPT passed 900 million weekly users in early 2026, double the previous year.
- Google AI Overviews reach around 2 billion people a month and, depending on the study, appear in between 25% and more than 48% of searches.
- When an AI Overview appears, organic clicks drop sharply: 8% of clicks with an AI summary versus 15% without (Pew), and a 2026 field study measured a 38% drop.
- In Europe, almost 60% of searches end without a single click to an external site.
- Gartner forecast a 25% drop in traditional search volume by 2026, as people migrate to AI assistants.
And there is one figure that changes everything: traffic that comes from AI converts better. Adobe measured conversions 31% higher among visitors coming from AI in the 2025 Christmas season, and Similarweb data points to 11.4% conversion on AI referrals versus 5.3% on organic in e-commerce. Fewer visits, but visits from people who already arrive half-decided.
In other words: being on the first page of Google is no longer enough. You have to be inside the answer.
Is SEO dead?
No. SEO remains the foundation: around three quarters of AI visibility depends on solid SEO foundations, and pages at the top of Google are far more likely to be cited by ChatGPT. But it is no longer enough. In 2026, only 38% of the pages cited in AI Overviews are also in Google’s top 10, when seven months earlier it was 76% (Ahrefs). In other words: you can be well ranked and still be invisible to AI. That gap is where GEO works.
What actually works to appear in AI answers?
After months of applying this first to our own brands and then to clients, this is the method that delivers results.
1. Answer first, explain later
AI engines do not read entire pages; they extract passages. Every section of your site should stand on its own: an opening sentence that clearly defines the subject, followed by verifiable facts. Write the way people ask. “How much does a restaurant website cost in Portugal?” is a better heading than “Our digital solutions”.
2. Exact numbers instead of adjectives
AI discards empty phrases such as “market leader” or “innovative solutions”. It prefers facts it can verify: prices, timelines, dates, concrete results. “We automated 12 hours a week of administrative work in a clinic in Lisbon” is worth more than any slogan.
3. Structured data (Schema.org)
JSON-LD (FAQ, Product, LocalBusiness, Organization) gives AI a version of your company that it understands without errors. Add real update dates to this: in 2026, new content enters AI citation sets in a few days, and stagnant content loses priority without updates.
4. Brand consistency everywhere
AI builds a “profile” of your brand from your site, LinkedIn, directories and the press. If your business description changes from place to place, the model’s confidence drops, and brands with little confidence are not recommended. Define a clear description and use it everywhere.
5. Talk about yourself on sites that are not yours
A 2026 Muck Rack study shows that 84% of citations in AI answers come from editorial coverage in third-party publications, not from the brand’s own pages. Appearing in the press and in publications in your sector teaches AI to trust you. We felt the effect ourselves: coverage of Semantika’s launch in ECO is today one of the signals AI engines use to identify us.
6. European Portuguese for real
For PT-PT prompts, models go looking for PT-PT content. Content translated in a rush or written in other variants loses relevance for searches made in Portugal. Write for your market, with the terms your customers use. This detail is so decisive that we made it Semantika’s main differentiator, as you will see next.
The Semantika story: the product we built because we needed it
Semantika was not born in a product brainstorm. It was born from an uncomfortable question we asked internally: how do AI engines interpret and recommend us, and which brands occupy that space when we do not appear? When we looked, we realised two things. First, that there were prompts where we simply did not exist. Second, that this problem was not only ours: it was common to many organisations and agencies that did not even know they were becoming invisible.
We looked at the international platforms and the numbers did not add up: thousands of euros a year, focused on English-language markets, without understanding the Portuguese context. So we built our own. We tested it internally for 6 months, applied the recommendations to our own brands, and started receiving clients who found us through AI answers. Only after that proof did we open it to the market.
In July 2026 we presented Semantika publicly, with coverage in ECO/+M, which described it as a Portuguese AI Search Intelligence and GEO platform. As our CGO, Pedro Patrício, summed it up in the interview, what sets us apart is the ability to “turn the data collected into useful, actionable information”.
What Semantika does, in concrete terms:
- It monitors, on a recurring basis, the questions relevant to your market in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, and analyses your brand’s positioning, the sentiment of mentions and the sources cited.
- It compares your visibility with that of your competitors (share of voice by engine) and identifies the gaps: content that does not exist, that does not answer the question directly, or that does not yet have the authority to be cited.
- It turns each gap into a recommended action, with its own detail page and prioritised by impact and effort, so you know where to start, instead of receiving an undifferentiated list.
- It natively supports European Portuguese, analysing the national linguistic and commercial context, unlike international solutions focused on English.
- It was also designed for agencies: managing several brands at once and white-label reports.
Still in beta, Semantika is already used by companies in telecommunications, tourism, entertainment and consumer goods. Subscriptions start at €49 a month, with plans for brands, multi-brand organisations and agencies. And the ambition does not stop at Portugal: the plan includes Spain, France and Portuguese-speaking markets, including Brazil, with the goal of making Semantika a European reference in AI Search Intelligence.
You can try it now at beta.semantika.pt. We also have a free WordPress plugin, “Semantika AI Discovery Surfaces”, available in the official WordPress directory, which validates on your site the basic signals AI looks for.
Where to start this week?
- Do the truth test: ask ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity the 5 questions your customers would ask before hiring you. See whether you appear and who appears in your place.
- Write a one-sentence description of your company (what you are, for whom, where) and use it on the site, on Google Business Profile and on LinkedIn.
- Rewrite your main page in answer format: questions as headings, concrete facts, an honest FAQ at the end.
- Install FAQ and LocalBusiness schema.
- Start measuring. Create a Semantika account and define your baseline. What you do not measure, you do not improve, and AI answers change faster than Google rankings.
Frequently asked questions
What is GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)? GEO is the practice of optimising content and brand signals so that AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews cite and recommend your company in the answers they generate, instead of only ranking pages in a list of results.
Does GEO replace SEO? No. SEO remains the foundation that makes your content findable and considered reliable. GEO builds on top of that so you can earn citations in AI answers. In 2026 you need both.
What is Semantika and who created it? Semantika is the AI Search Intelligence and GEO platform created by us, at Haipe, Buzzvel’s artificial intelligence unit. It monitors how your brand appears in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews, compares you with competitors and recommends concrete actions, prioritised by impact and effort. The launch was covered by ECO/+M in July 2026.
How much does Semantika cost? Subscriptions start at €49 a month, with plans for individual brands, multi-brand organisations and agencies, including white-label reports. It is in beta at beta.semantika.pt.
How long does it take to see GEO results? Well-structured new content can start being cited in a few days, but a consistent share-of-voice movement against competitors typically takes 60 to 90 days of continuous work.
Can a small SME compete in GEO with large companies? It can, and in 2026 still with an advantage: most Portuguese companies have no GEO strategy. Specific, local and verifiable content from an SME often beats generic content from a large brand in answers to local searches.
