Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry.
I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us this week.
For nearly 20 years, the internet — and those trying to build businesses on it — were essentially playing one game: search. If you wanted to be found, you had to play by Google’s rules. That meant optimizing your site, your headlines, even your recipes and product descriptions — all for a faceless algorithm. It wasn’t just smart strategy. It became a $75 billion industry: Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
But now, the rules have changed — and fast. With the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, the internet is no longer just being searched. It’s being summarized. Users aren’t clicking links. They’re asking questions — and getting direct answers.
The result? A massive disruption to the very foundation of how online content gets discovered. Marketers call it GEO — Generative Engine Optimization. And it’s changing everything.
GEO isn’t about climbing to the top of a search results page. It’s about being included in a chatbot’s answer — ideally, with a citation. If SEO was about pleasing Google’s crawlers, GEO is about being digestible to language models. Forget the wordy, keyword-stuffed posts. Now it’s about clarity. Authority. Citable chunks. Bullet points. Original research. Rankings. Things an AI can summarize, remix, and cite — because that might be your only shot at visibility.
Some brands are adapting. Others are struggling. Entire content teams have been laid off. And the rise of AI-generated summaries at the top of Google search — ahead of links, ahead of ads — has sent some websites into what’s being described as a “traffic apocalypse.”
It’s a difficult reality for tens of thousands of professionals who built careers around optimizing for search. And for the companies that rely on search-driven traffic, it’s an existential moment. What happens when the user no longer arrives? When the chatbot gives them everything they need — without ever sending them to your site?
To fill the vacuum, a new industry is forming: startups focused on chatbot optimization, analytics tools that track mentions inside LLMs, and venture capital flowing into platforms that promise brands they can still be noticed — even if that means being mentioned, not visited.
The new goal? Position zero. Not just topping search results, but becoming the very answer AI offers.
And here’s the twist: To get there, you still need to write for humans. AI systems, like ChatGPT and Gemini, are increasingly tuned to behave more like people — scanning, summarizing, judging tone and authority. So, in a strange full circle, the best advice now is to publish high-quality, useful content. Just… do it in a way that a machine can quote.
Meanwhile, AI companies — from OpenAI to Google — are hinting at tighter partnerships. Some speculate that ChatGPT’s growing dependence on search may bring it closer to Google, despite its high-profile link to Microsoft. Already, ChatGPT is starting to say the quiet part out loud: “Let me Google that for you.”
But even if Google is still Google — and even if the lines between chatbot and search engine are blurring — the numbers don’t lie. The traffic is down. The stakes are up. And the entire internet is being rewritten — not just for people, but for machines, and the people who chat with them.
SEO isn’t dead. But it’s evolving. Say goodbye to Search Engine Optimization. And say hello… to GEO.
So, with that, let’s transition to Our Companies to Watch.
Every week we highlight an interesting company in the automotive technology space to keep an eye on. If you read my weekly Intel Report, we showcase a company to watch, and we then take the opportunity here on this segment each week to share that company with you.
Today, our new company to watch is RockED.
RockED is the premier people development platform for the automotive industry.
Dealerships struggle with lost revenue, OEMs face brand reputation challenges, and vendors see reduced adoption of their solutions. Worse, turnover costs the industry billions annually.
RockED aims to change that.
Onboarding through career progression—RockED is strengthening the automotive industry with a new approach to people development.
RockED dealers invest as much into their people as they invest into their inventory. Accountability comes from enablement.
The RockED product is designed for Your Frontline Employees, Managers, and Owners.
If you’d like to learn more about RockED, you can check them out at www.RockED.us
So that’s it for this week’s Future of Automotive segment.
If you’re an AutoTech entrepreneur working on a solution that helps car dealerships, we want to hear from you. We are actively investing out of our DealerFund.
Don’t forget to check out my first book, “The Future of Automotive Retail,” and my new book, “The Future of Mobility”, both of which are available on Amazon.
Thanks (as always) for your ongoing support and for tuning into CBT News for this week’s Future of Automotive segment. We’ll see you next week!
