What this means
Visibility of entities, brands, pages, products, or information in AI-mediated discovery.
Historical record
ChatGPT launches Shopping Research
Product visibility now includes machine-readable product data, reliable attributes, merchant data and recommendation eligibility.
Research paper formally introduces Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
GEO became a named research problem with explicit visibility metrics rather than only an informal marketing practice.
Google announces Search Generative Experience (SGE)
The dominant search platform formally entered generative search, making AI-mediated source selection a core visibility issue.
Microsoft launches the new AI-powered Bing
Generative answers and citations moved into a major search engine, accelerating the need to understand visibility beyond traditional rankings.
Perplexity launches its answer engine
It helped establish the answer-engine model that later drove GEO, citation tracking and AI visibility measurement.