Freshpet's experience with generative engine optimization (GEO) offers a glimpse into a new challenge for brands: being recognized by traditional search engines is no longer enough when consumers increasingly receive answers directly from AI systems.

Intero Digital shared new results from its work with Freshpet during a recent Search Engine Journal webinar focused on improving brand visibility in AI-generated search results. The digital marketing agency reported that Freshpet increased its appearances in Google AI Overviews by 645% over six months, while traffic from major AI search platforms increased 46%. Key events generated from AI referrals rose 44%.

The Aug. 20 webinar, titled From Invisible to Cited: The 3-Part GEO Strategy That Put Freshpet in AI Overviews, brought together Intero Digital executives Brittni Ratliff and Cosima Compton with Freshpet Senior Director of Digital Marketing Steven Elwell.

The results illustrate how GEO is developing beyond conventional SEO. Instead of optimizing solely for rankings and clicks, brands increasingly need content that AI systems can discover, interpret and cite when generating answers.

From Search Rankings to AI Citations

Intero Digital said Freshpet's earlier AI visibility problems were not primarily related to a lack of brand recognition or content volume. Some content was written in a magazine-style format that made it harder for AI systems to extract concise answers, while review material rendered through JavaScript was reportedly inaccessible to AI crawlers.

The agency used its RASE framework, evaluating AI search visibility through four dimensions: relevance, authority, structure and engagement.

The approach reflects an important difference between traditional SEO and GEO. A page can perform well in conventional search while still failing to provide the machine-readable, directly answerable information that generative search systems need.

Intero Digital said it now tracks 475 individual prompts for Freshpet every day across major large language models, organizing those prompts into more than a dozen categories. The objective is to identify where Freshpet is being cited, where competitors appear instead and which visibility gaps are closest to commercial outcomes.

That level of prompt monitoring points toward a more granular form of search measurement. Rather than tracking a fixed set of keywords, marketers can examine the questions consumers ask AI systems and measure whether their brands become part of the resulting answers.

Market Landscape

The rise of AI Overviews and conversational search from companies such as Google, Microsoft and other AI providers is changing how brands think about search visibility. Traditional SEO remains important, but generative interfaces introduce an additional layer in which content can influence an answer without necessarily producing a conventional organic click.

Intero Digital's Freshpet findings suggest that technical accessibility and content structure can directly affect this new visibility layer. Short, self-contained passages, expanded schema markup and accessible content can make information easier for AI systems to retrieve and interpret.

The recommendations also extend beyond technical SEO. Intero Digital advocates pursuing relevant niche and trade publications because third-party credibility can contribute to the signals AI systems use when determining which sources and brands to surface.

For enterprise marketing teams, the implication is significant: GEO cannot be treated solely as a content-writing exercise. Technical SEO, digital PR, structured data, reputation management and conversion analytics increasingly intersect in AI search optimization.

Strategic Outlook

The Freshpet case suggests that GEO is moving toward an operational discipline built around continuous measurement. Tracking a defined prompt set can show marketers where competitors are winning AI citations and where optimization could have the greatest commercial impact.

The broader shift is from optimizing pages for search engines to optimizing information ecosystems for AI interpretation. Brands that can combine authoritative sources, technically accessible content and clear answers may have a stronger chance of appearing in AI-generated responses.

As AI search becomes more prominent, marketers will likely need to monitor not just where their pages rank, but whether their brand is present in the answers consumers receive.

Top Insights

• Freshpet's 645% increase in Google AI Overviews illustrates how GEO can materially change brand visibility within emerging generative search experiences.
• Intero Digital's RASE framework connects relevance, authority, structure and engagement to the practical challenge of earning AI citations.
• JavaScript-rendered reviews and narrative content created accessibility and extraction barriers that conventional SEO performance may not reveal.
• Tracking 475 daily prompts gives Freshpet a granular view of AI visibility gaps and helps prioritize opportunities closer to conversion.
• Enterprise GEO increasingly combines technical SEO, structured content, digital reputation and third-party authority rather than relying on content volume alone.

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