There is a strong case on each side: invest in a rich brand website, or put the money into technical optimization. Valtech’s view is that both have a point. The real question is how much of a website should be brand experience, and how much should be a machine-readable layer, today and in five years.
We’re being asked the same three questions by the marketing leaders: Why is our search traffic falling? How do we measure GEO visibility? How much should we invest in it?
The case for a strong brand website
In an era of AI, a strong brand carried through your digital ecosystem has never mattered more. It sets you apart, builds memory structures and enables you to connect with new audiences.
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Brand differentiates and connects. Creating an emotional connection is seven times more effective than leading with rational benefits, according to Jon Lombardo of the LinkedIn B2B Institute.
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Experience is more than a chat window. 63% of consumers would rather learn about a product through short video than through text (Wyzowl, 2026).
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A website captures data for retargeting. Retargeted visitors are 70% more likely to convert than non-retargeted visitors (Invesp/Spiralytics, using AdRoll data).
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A website gives control over messaging. 62% citations never name a brand. (source: SEM Rush)
The case for GEO: is there still a need to brand anything?
Search has always been about meaning. Since Google’s Hummingbird update in 2013, the job has been to help machines understand what a brand is saying, who it is saying it to and when to surface its content. Now the machines are holding the conversation. Even robots.txt files, which simply tell bots what they can access, have been decorated with ASCII logos from Nike, Nvidia and Airbnb. The machines do not care about these embellishments. So as the web becomes more agentic, is there still a need to brand anything?
Pushed as far as it will go, the case for a machine-first website comes down to five points:
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People aren’t visiting. 68% of US Google searches ended without a click in the first four months of 2026 (SparkToro), so a website is becoming a source rather than a destination.
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Agents are the new users. Bots account for around 60% of web page requests (Cloudflare Radar), and they don’t care about creative or brand.
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Bots don’t run JavaScript. Over 75% of AI crawlers don’t fetch content beyond the raw HTML, and none of those that do execute JavaScript (Vercel). Fast, simple pages matter more than heavy creative.
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Plain language wins. Bots reword what they find, so branded phrasing never reaches the customer. Plain writing is cited more often than denser writing.
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Citations are key. Gartner predicts that 90% of B2B buying will be AI-agent intermediated by 2028, so brands need citations, GEO groundwork and new protocols such as Google and Shopify’s UCP.
Where the two sides meet
The GEO case above is deliberately pushed to an extreme. But GEO isn’t a hack. Organic traffic isn’t coming back, and if AI can’t read a brand, it can’t recommend it.
Still, a distinct brand matters more than ever in a world of AI slop. A strong brand story and a technically sound website are both essential.
Treating machine-readable content and brand content as separate is a mistake, as is assuming brand content will work as is. The industry has been spoiled by Googlebot, and the other bots we have to serve today may not be as capable. Content has to work for agents and users alike. The machine-readable layer extends beyond a brand’s own domain to the third-party sources that help a machine build a reliable picture of that brand. The hard part is the balance: accepting trade-offs and deciding where to upweight or downweigh brand expression.
Measuring the new world
Measurement needs a mindset shift. Search is moving from a performance marketing channel toward a brand visibility channel, where ROI is not easily traceable and SEO metrics do not simply carry over. Reporting should focus on:
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Prompt sets that define important journeys tied to business goals, rather than thousands of keywords.
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Technical performance.
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Understanding how bots and agents crawl and understand the site.
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Performance against the brands competing for the same prompts.
Train and upskill your stakeholders on data that matters.
Key takeaways
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Brand matters more than ever. Stand out in a world of AI slop, and build citations and trust signals.
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Balance is key. Both the brand story and a technically performing website matter, so expect trade-offs. Think about your ecosystem as a whole and where to dial your brand experience up and down.
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Content supply is the real blocker. AI makes dynamic experiences possible, but organizations need a system to operationalize content production.
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GEO isn’t a hack. Organic traffic isn’t coming back, and if AI can’t read a brand, it can’t recommend it.
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Measure differently. SEO metrics don’t simply carry over, so be clear on the value of GEO and how it is reported.
