Field Note 12: A small GEO result, a week after publishing

As this article goes out, my session at ContentED FOUNDation has just finished.

FOUNDation is a mini-conference on generative engine optimisation (GEO) for education, and I recorded a walkthrough for my session – in which I showed how to collaborate with a custom GPT to create user-focused and authoritative articles.

During the recording, I created an actual article for English Express, an English language school in Singapore and Alex, the school owner, published it shortly after.

Now, a week later, Google is already using it in its AI Overview for the (admittedly long-tail) search query “how to choose an english class in Singapore”.

Here’s a screenshot of how it looked for me in an anonymous browser window, with my VPN set to Singapore:

If you can’t see the screenshot in your article, here is what happened.

Google’s answer includes multiple sources, as it always does. But it leans heavily on the English Express article created in the video – and as a bonus, the article itself is featured as the first search result, right below the AI Overview.

Why it matters what AI Overviews say
Like most of us, English Express faces the challenge of zero-click search. Increasingly, people search (in Google, ChatGPT and elsewhere), read the answer they get right on the page and don’t click through to the website.

So the goal moves from getting people to click through to your wonderful article, to influencing the AI generated summary. The AI overview above includes a lot of English Express’ talking points, such as:

 

• Small class size
• CELTA certification
• Flexible schedule