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Parachute Design Group on GEO: How AI Visibility Actually Gets Built Inside Agencies

As generative AI continues to reshape search, many agencies are still defining what GEO means in practice. While the concept is widely discussed, the reality of how it is structured, delivered, and scaled remains less clear.

In this edition of The GEO Series, Jay Eckert, Founder and Creative Director at Parachute Design Group, offers one of the most detailed and operational perspectives yet. Rather than framing GEO as an emerging concept, his approach breaks it down into a clear, repeatable system.

Based in Toronto, Parachute treats GEO as a core growth driver, with demand coming frequently from clients who are actively exploring how AI-generated answers are influencing visibility and decision-making.

GEO Strategy & Services

At Parachute, GEO is embedded within a broader strategic framework that connects SEO, content, and brand authority. What stands out is not just the integration, but the level of intentionality behind it.

GEO is positioned as a structured extension of search strategy, designed to align how brands are discovered, interpreted, and surfaced across AI-driven environments.

This is also reflected in client demand.

GEO is approached as an increasingly central component of digital visibility, with clients actively seeking clarity on how to operationalize it.

How Parachute Structures GEO Services

Parachute’s model reflects a high level of operational clarity. GEO is coordinated across teams, with SEO leads playing a central role in guiding execution.

Across the dataset, GEO ownership most often sits with SEO leads, supported by cross-functional teams.

This closely reflects Parachute’s model, where GEO is coordinated across disciplines to ensure consistency and execution.

According to Jay Eckert, the agency structure focuses on:

• Aligning GEO with existing SEO and content workflows
• Integrating technical, editorial, and strategic outputs
• Ensuring consistency across owned and external signals
• Continuously refining performance based on real-world feedback

This creates a system where GEO is an integrated part of how visibility is built over time.

The GEO Framework: A Layered Approach to AI Visibility

What makes Parachute’s approach particularly valuable is the clarity of its internal framework.

Rather than treating GEO as a single discipline, Jay Eckert breaks it down into a set of interconnected layers, each contributing to how a brand is surfaced within AI-generated responses.

At its core, the framework focuses on four key dimensions:

• Visibility
  Ensuring that a brand appears across relevant AI platforms and queries, forming the foundation of presence.
• Structure
  Designing content in a way that is easily interpreted, extracted, and reused by AI systems, making information accessible and usable.
• Authority
  Building trust signals through brand consistency, citations, and external validation, increasing the likelihood of inclusion.
• Measurement
  Tracking how visibility translates into presence, positioning, and impact, even within environments where attribution is still evolving.

What makes this model effective is how these layers work together. Let’s take a closer look at the layers below;

• Visibility without structure limits usability.
• Structure without authority reduces trust.
• And without measurement, optimization remains incomplete.

This interconnected system reflects a broader shift in how search operates.

To sum up, GEO is a multi-layered process, where success depends on how well each component supports the others.

How GEO Actually Works

Jay Eckert’s perspective reinforces an important idea;

Generative AI systems do not simply retrieve information, they interpret and assemble it.

This changes how content is evaluated.

Rather than focusing only on keywords or rankings, AI systems prioritize:

• How clearly information is structured
• How relevant it is to the prompt
• How credible the source appears

What emerges is a model where content is designed not just to rank, but to be understood and reused.

Measuring GEO Performance

Measurement within Parachute’s model reflects both ambition and realism. The agency tracks a combination of visibility and influence metrics, including:

• AI Share of Voice
• Inclusion and citation frequency
• Positioning within AI-generated responses

However, what stands out is the recognition that measurement is still evolving.

Parachute focuses on directional signals that indicate how a brand is being represented across AI systems.

At the same time, familiar challenges remain.

• Defining and communicating GEO KPIs
• Limited transparency from AI platforms

These challenges do not only prevent measurement. They shape how it is interpreted and communicated to clients.

Generative Engine Optimization Tools & Platforms

For Parachute, GEO operates across a growing ecosystem of AI platforms.

Today, ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, and Perplexity are all considered critically important, reflecting how distributed AI visibility has become.

To support this, the agency uses a mix of:

• Traditional SEO and analytics tools (SEMrush, Screaming Frog, and Surfer AI)
• GEO-specific platforms (Semrush AI Visibility Toolkit)
• Internal processes designed to test and refine outputs

However, as with many agencies, a key limitation remains: limited transparency from AI platforms.

Without clear visibility into how AI systems select and prioritize content, optimization requires a combination of testing, observation, and interpretation.

The Future of GEO

Looking ahead, Jay Eckert sees GEO becoming a structured layer of digital strategy.

As AI continues to reshape search, GEO will move beyond an emerging capability and become a defined, repeatable component of how agencies deliver visibility.

In that context, the differentiator will not be whether GEO is offered, but how well it is structured, integrated, and executed.