Generative Engine Optimization — AI Search

AI can't create
information gain.

Buyers now start their research inside AI.
I supply the judgment that gets your brand mentioned: which bets to make, and how to mine your experts for information gain that AI can't create.

25+ years in marketing & growth leadership
Founder of a GEO practice · Ex-CMO · Yale MBA

Optimizing for  ChatGPT · Claude · Perplexity · Google AI Overviews

Richard H Roberts

Selected Work

Results I've led

Engagements I led at Active Ingredients, across very different categories.

B2B SaaS · Microsoft cloud

Nerdio

GEO · led a team of four · 50+ pages

  • +1,394%brand mentions across top LLMs
  • +1,266%Google AI Overview mentions
  • 25%GEO share of voice (200%+ ahead of competitors)
  • +602%leads YoY · 2.1× conversion vs. baseline
"Active Ingredients are true pioneers in GEO. The results have been outstanding — a completely new, high-efficiency funnel for our sales team." — Lane Cauley, Nerdio
Enterprise analytics

Qlik

SEO · led a team of six · 90+ pages · 10+ yr relationship

  • +1,152%unbranded organic traffic YoY
  • +477%leads from organic search
  • Top 5Google ranking, primary Gartner keyword
  • +35%Gartner Magic Quadrant conversions
"A critical partner for 10+ years — they transformed our website into a truly powerful growth engine. Great strategy, design, content, tech, and service." — Susan Nishimoto, VP Global Digital Marketing, Qlik

The method travels beyond B2B

Consumer / CPG

Chicken of the Sea

+44% organic traffic while cutting paid dependence, and +871% brand mentions across top LLMs.

Finance / Asset management

Hennessy Funds

+139% organic growth and +226% digitally-sourced deals in a compliance-heavy category.

Approach

Why some brands get mentioned and others get penalized

AI slop can spike metrics for a few weeks, then get you buried. In one controlled experiment, two sites of 1,000 AI-generated posts each were silently deindexed by Google, one falling from 2,426 daily impressions to 15 in four days. Long-term success comes from giving the models something they can't already generate. That's what my work manufactures: information gain.

REFRESH & OPTIMIZE 01 / PRIORITIZE The right bets 02 / INTERVIEW Expert insight 03 / CREATE Net-new content 04 / ENGINEER Findable & trusted 05 / MEASURE Tied to revenue
01 / Prioritize

Strategic guidance

I start with an audit of what the AI models already say about you, including where they're generic, wrong, or missing your perspective. I then generate a shortlist of prompts and prioritize them based on strategic value, competitiveness, and volume.

02 / Interview

Get expert insights

I interview your subject-matter experts and pull out the data, perspectives, and details that aren't already on the internet.

03 / Create

Make it net-new

That expertise becomes original copy, data tables, and diagrams engineered to be the most useful source on the topic, not a rewrite of what already exists.

04 / Engineer

Make it findable and trusted

Technical SEO and content architecture make it easy for search engines and LLMs to find and parse. I also build consensus with presence across the high-trust third-party domains, including your partners, which I supply with GEO-optimized posts for their own blogs.

05 / Measure

Tie it to revenue

I report share of voice, mentions, citations, and sentiment across the major LLMs and Google's AI results, alongside traditional rankings and clicks. Then I connect all of it to leads and deals in your CRM, so the program is judged on pipeline, not vanity metrics.

The result is information gain, the difference between lasting visibility and being penalized.

Writing

Ideas on the
AI-search shift

The data and thinking behind the method: making the case against AI slop, and how to build content that earns mentions and doesn't crush your SEO.

Essay · GEO strategy

AI Slop Is Doomed. Here's Why.

Why "GEO at scale" gets a short-lived spike, and why content built on genuine information gain compounds as the models tighten.

Essay · GEO Methodology

How to Stop the Slop: The AIG Framework

A measurable, six-dimension method for engineering content that AI engines cite instead of ignore.

About

GEO, AI-Search, and Marketing Leader

I've spent 25+ years on the front edge of platform shifts: e-commerce, mobile, SEO, and now AI search. Each time, I built the capability to own the shift before it was obvious.

I've led marketing as a CMO and VP at venture-backed companies (Fuze, EQO, ZipRealty, CNET, Zing.com) and driven growth for global brands including HP, NetApp, Honeywell, Equinix, and Dell. In 2025 I founded a Generative Engine Optimization practice, building the tooling, the "information gain" method, and the team to deliver it. I started it after seeing LLM answers begin to replace the blue-link search results brands had relied on for twenty years.

I'm equally comfortable as the strategic north star on an engagement and as the hands-on builder shipping the work. Yale MBA; BA in psychology and economics from Emory.

I'm also a novelist: the award-winning Tuning In series. It's the same instinct as the day work, understanding how people think, and creating something genuinely new rather than more of the same.

Career at a glance

  • Founder, GEO PracticeActive Ingredients
    2017–Present

Selected prior leadership

  • Chief Growth OfficerBOL Agency
    2009–2015
  • Chief Marketing OfficerFuze
    2008–2009
  • Chief Marketing OfficerEQO Communications
    2006–2008
  • VP MarketingZipRealty
    2005–2006
  • AVP MarketingCNET.com
    2002–2005
  • VP Marketing & Co-FounderZing.com · acquired by Sony
    1997–2001
  • DirectorGrey Interactive · launched Dell.com
    1996–1997

Focus · GEO · AEO · technical SEO · LLM visibility & citation strategy · content architecture

Education · Yale University, MBA · Emory University, BA