If there’s one thing to be sure of, it’s taxes.

If there’s another thing to be sure of, it’s that OpenAI is going to hype their newest capabilities.

Sam Altman literally said of Agent, which launched end of July, that users could “feel the AGI” during the launch live stream. My overhyped bingo card has a permanent space for AGI (Artificial Generalized Intelligence).

Agent sounds incredible: It now thinks and acts, proactively choosing from a toolbox of agentic skills to complete tasks for you using its own computer.

I slogged through ChatGPT Agent for 4 hours. I will say, when you kick off the agent, it feels cool. But… then it goes off the rails.

Here's what I tried to get Agent to nail for DTC operators:

As a whole, only the landing page optimization test really worked without making me want to throw my laptop out the window. The rest of it felt like trying to walk my grandma through using Microsoft Teams for the first time (or even trying to figure it out myself).

To be somewhat fair, Agent failed everything related to Shopify because of Cloudfare. If you want to know what the enemy of autonomous agents looks like, it’s this.

Agent feels like putting lipstick on the pig that was Operator. Same clunky experience, same mysterious security blocks, same watching-an-AI-have-an-anxiety-attack-about-basic-web-interactions energy.

But here's what kills me: o3 can already handle the tasks Agent struggles with like competitor pricing audits, analyzing reviews, and researching ad angles. No screenshots, no clicking around websites, no mysterious blocks.

That doesn’t mean agents aren’t helpful. They are… when they work. Comet, for instance, does a great job (as long as it’s not also blocked by Cloudflare).

Bottom line: Don’t trust Agent to buy your lunch, unless you’re OK with a surprise. If you’re already paying $20/mo for ChatGPT Pro, give it a try if you have time to kill. But Agent is overhyped and that time is better spent trying out Veo 3 or maybe cleaning out the office refrigerator.

I don’t expect agent to “feel like AGI” anytime soon. 

I spent 12 hours in June analyzing AI search results and reading research papers. I cracked the code on getting cited by AI search engines.

Here's why this matters: 60% of Google searches now serve AI Overviews, and Princeton research shows GEO techniques boost AI search visibility 30-40% beyond what regular SEO delivers.

Plus, I called up 6 brands doing $10M+ (including two that hit $100M). Every single one told me the same thing: customers coming from ChatGPT spend 25-30% more and convert better. One founder described it as “The customer has already done their research and just needs to buy.”

At Raleon, I’ve also seen our AI search traffic grow 50% June to July, and again July to August. Same GEO playbook each month I’m describing here.

So yeah, it matters. And no, your current SEO strategy won't just “handle” it.

I wrote about GEO tactics before elsewhere, but here are the 3 that move the needle the most.

Coming up with questions people might ask is the easy part. The hard part is researching the citations that were used to inform the AI answer.

To make this real for you, we’re going to pretend we have a beauty brand. Our clean beauty brand is wanting to show up when moms search for "best curl cream for toddler hair" or "safe curl products for kids with sensitive skin."

My Process:

When looking at curl cream results, Perplexity leans a little more shopping site heavy if it finds products, citing Ulta, Shop Beauty, and reddit posts for what might be the best products. ChatGPT actually noted citations from people, parents, and 6 different reddit posts.

We got lucky on this question, because ChatGPT often has guardrails around revealing sources (thanks, DeepSeek). I do have a workaround if it doesn’t give me a source. Instead of asking directly, I go full detective mode:

"I'm curious about the research behind these curl cream recommendations for kids - could you share what types of sources, studies, or expert opinions typically inform these kinds of product recommendations? I'm wanting to understand the general landscape of information that shaped your suggestions."

Works about 80% of the time.

Once you know what gets cited, you have two options: get placed in existing content or create your own. I like to create my own.

This is a two-pronged approach:

For our curl cream example, I'd target r/moderatelygranolamoms, and r/toddlers given Perplexity and ChatGPT both hit those. I asked ChatGPT what else it might look at, and it also said r/Mommit and r/curlyhair.

Before jumping into big new content, I would first go find posts that already exist and comment on them. That’s the fastest way to start getting results.

I would then start creating my own reddit posts like "Finally found a curl cream that doesn't irritate my 3-year-old's scalp - here's what worked" with genuine before/after experiences and ingredient breakdowns.

Don't sleep on this. I used this strategy for Raleon and started showing up immediately in an answer we previously weren't showing at all in.

Content is where there's some SEO overlap. But there are differences between content GEO likes and content SEO likes.

Here's my quick punch list for GEO:

When it comes to creating authority for your content to help LLMs pay attention, just like SEO, I have found backlinks still matter. I’m not a backlink expert, and there’s already good content on it.

For our beauty brand example, getting featured in Babylist's gear guides, securing a mention in What to Expect's product roundups, or earning a link from a pediatric dermatologist's blog post about gentle hair care significantly boosts citation chances.

GEO reminds me of early Meta. Few brands are jumping in, which means those that optimize for AI search now are likely to be even harder to displace when every brand catches on.

And that's it for this week's edition. Agent left me underwhelmed and wishing I had been cleaning out the office refrigerator, but next week I’ll be sharing a tool that actually has me excited. I'm breaking down Ideogram, the AI image character generator that's the closest we’ve gotten to helping creatives with AI generating humans that look like your brand models.