By Anthony Shop and Kristina Saccone

Imagine this: your organization has spent months producing high-quality research on a critical public issue. You publish, promote, and brief your stakeholders. Then something remarkable happens—people start repeating your message. Community leaders cite your findings. Advocates reference a key stat. Journalists paraphrase your conclusions.

It’s working.

But when you check your web analytics, there’s… nothing. No traffic spike. No referral lift. No trace that your work is behind the understanding that’s spreading.

Instead, the journey looked like this: someone typed a question into Google or ChatGPT, skimmed a summary pulled from your content, and walked away better informed—without ever clicking your link. Or worse: a generative engine shared a misleading answer from a source with lower standards and no fact-checking, simply because its structure was easier for machines to summarize.

So we must ask a new strategic question:

Is influence without attribution still influence?

For public-interest organizations—think tanks, advocacy groups, foundations, academic centers, coalitions, and mission-driven nonprofits—the stakes are especially high. We don’t sell products. We sell ideas. And in today’s digital environment, truth no longer spreads through clicks alone. It spreads through summaries, snippets, and answers—many of which never link back to us.

That is why search itself has changed, and why communicators who shape public understanding must evolve from Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).

To explore this shift and its implications for leaders who inform public opinion, The National Digital Roundtable and The Aspen Institute convened leaders in public affairs, communications, and digital technology to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing those who are charged with influencing public opinion and public policy. What follows is not a recap of that conversation but an evergreen guide for the new reality: one where the goal is no longer just being found—it is being understood and trusted, even when attribution disappears.

What Changed? From “Search and Click” to “Ask and Summarize”

For more than two decades, the web followed a simple pattern:

1. Users searched
2. Engines ranked links
3. People clicked
4. Websites educated, persuaded, or converted

That era is ending.

Today, people increasingly ask questions instead of searching keywords, and engines increasingly answer instead of linking. Generative engines—ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google SGE, and others—now sit between the question and the original source. They summarize, paraphrase, and package content into instant responses, creating a “zero-click” environment where visibility no longer relies on pageviews.

In this world:

• Being present in the answer matters more than being first in the rankings
• Content must be summarizable as much as search-optimized
• Influence must be measured beyond referral traffic

This shift doesn’t make SEO obsolete, but it does make SEO incomplete. GEO expands the mandate.

What Is GEO—and Why Does It Matter for Public Awareness?

Search Engine Optimization helps machines find your content.
Generative Engine Optimization helps machines summarize your content accurately.

SEO asks:

“Can people find us when they look?”

GEO asks:

“Do people understand us when they’re shown a summary?”

For organizations that work in policy, research, and public affairs, this distinction is existential:

In Commercial Marketing

In Public Awareness

Success = conversion

Success = comprehension + trust

Optimize for clicks

Optimize for clarity and credibility

Sell a product

Shape public understanding

This is why SEO tactics borrowed from brand marketing fall short for mission-driven organizations. We are not trying to be the catchiest or most clickable. We are trying to be the most accurate, trusted, and clear source when the public—and now AI systems—ask questions that shape opinion and policy.

AI Is the New Browser: Visibility Without Visits

Generative engines are rapidly becoming the first-touch interface with knowledge, especially among younger audiences and busy professionals. Increasingly, users:

• Paste URLs directly into ChatGPT and ask for summaries
• Screenshot content and ask AI to explain
• Read AI answers instead of visiting primary sources

This introduces a hard truth: influence can now happen without a website visit.

That means:

• A successful communication strategy can look like failure in Google Analytics
• Engagement quality matters more than volume
• “Invisible influence” is still influence—but only if the message is correct

This is why attribution can no longer be our north star. Understanding must be.

Trust and Authority Are the New Ranking Factors

In GEO environments, generative engines reward signals of authority, clarity, and credibility, not just backlinks or keywords. Three forces are reshaping what earns visibility:

1. Third-party validation is now a ranking signal
   Earned media, academic citations, credible partnerships, and community mentions tell engines: “This source is trustworthy.”
   
   
2. Voice and clarity differentiate expertise from noise
   Neutral, vague, or overly cautious language is easily washed out by AI summarization. Distinct voice—grounded in evidence—helps content retain its meaning when condensed.
   
   
3. Structure is kindness—to both humans and machines
   The clearer your structure, the more faithfully AI can summarize your message.
   
   

Thus, PR, thought leadership, and structural clarity are no longer separate strategies. They are GEO strategies.

Structure Is Strategy: Designing Content for Humans and Machines

In a summarize-first environment, well-structured content is a competitive advantage. Organizations should:

• Use question-based headers (mirroring how people ask engines)
• Break up text with bullet points and summaries
• Include transcripts for video and audio
• Write with “micro-answers” in each section
• Use myth-vs-fact pages and explainer formats for sensitive topics
• Test content by asking AI to summarize it, then rewrite until the summary matches your intent

In this new era, if an AI cannot summarize your page accurately, the page is the problem, not the AI.

Measurement Must Evolve: From Traffic to Understanding

Many organizations are panicking about declining traffic—but traffic is no longer an accurate proxy for influence. GEO reality requires new success indicators, such as:

• Time on page and scroll depth (instead of raw visits)
• Newsletter sign-ups and quote requests
• Citations in media, AI answers, and community forums
• Share of voice in generative platforms
• Accuracy of AI summaries when users test your content
• Evidence of comprehension, not just “awareness”

Funders and boards will need education on this shift. Communicators must lead that conversation, not wait for it.

Misinformation, Misquotation, and the Accuracy Imperative

In GEO environments, misinformation moves faster than corrections. We heard examples of:

• AI-generated “news” sites inventing sources
• Journalists leaning on AI summaries and repeating errors
• False information outpacing truth in moments of crisis

To counter this, organizations are adopting misinformation playbooks, including:

• Clear correction workflows
• Public “Corrections & Clarifications” pages
• Proactive myth-vs-fact content
• Faster crisis-response protocols
• Monitoring AI summaries of their own work

When accuracy becomes optional, clarity becomes an act of leadership.

Ethical Optimization: Influence With Integrity

Public-interest communicators must be both savvy and responsible. That means:

• Allowing AI to learn from our work, but protecting sensitive data
• Being transparent about how we use AI in our content pipelines
• Avoiding “gaming the system” with tactics that erode trust
• Designing for comprehension, not manipulation

The goal is not just to “show up.” The goal is to deserve to be summarized.

What’s Next: Agentic AI, Local GEO, and the Coming Wave

The landscape will keep shifting. Three trends will define the next chapter:

1. Agentic AI — Tools that don’t just write, but act. Communicators will need governance models before automation outpaces policies.
   
   
2. Local GEO — Search and summaries will vary more by geography, language, and community context. Public awareness strategies must adapt to local trust signals.
   
   
3. Summarization UX — Interfaces will evolve; what appears “above the fold” will be an AI-crafted narrative, not a list of links.

Those who experiment early will adapt fastest.

A Playbook for GEO-Ready Public-Interest Communication

To shape opinion in a summarize-first world, mission-driven teams must:

1. Write for summarization (questions, structure, clarity, micro-answers)
2. Invest in authority signals (earned media, partnerships, citations)
3. Measure comprehension, not clicks
4. Adopt a misinformation defense plan
5. Test content using generative engines and refine
6. Educate leadership and funders about GEO realities
7. Experiment continuously; the playbook is still emerging
   
   

This is not “extra work.” It is the work.

Conclusion: Influence, Trust, and Leadership in the Summarize Era

We convened this discussion because we believe the future of public awareness demands a new mindset—one rooted in clarity, credibility, and adaptability.

If generative engines will increasingly shape what the public sees, then mission-driven communicators must shape what generative engines learn.

We can no longer measure our impact solely by who lands on our website. The more important question is: “Did our message reach the public clearly, accurately, and in time?” When influence happens without attribution, reputation must be earned through trust, clarity, and consistency—again and again.

The summarize era is here. We cannot out-code the machines. But we can out-communicate them.

Special thanks to the communicators, strategists, and leaders who joined us from: The Aspen Institute; Social Driver; Bainum Family Foundation; CivicAI Strategies; Society for Science; AAAS; Embassy of the Republic of Poland in the U.S.; Healthcare Leadership Council; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; NEA Foundation; Migration Policy Institute; American Association of Immunologists; Greater Washington Partnership; The Brookings Institution

Kristina Saccone is director of creative services at The Aspen Institute.
Anthony Shop is chairman of the National Digital Roundtable and co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Social Driver. 

Editorial Transparency Note: In the spirit of this topic, we used AI tools to help us turn our detailed roundtable notes—including contributions from participants—into a clear, structured piece. We wanted to follow our own advice: making the content digestible for both humans and generative engines, while keeping the thinking, judgment, and final writing in human hands.

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