Eight in ten buyers now ask an LLM before they Google.
The first research pass for any commercial query has shifted from a search engine to a chat interface. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude do not surface ten blue links. They synthesize an answer and cite a small set of sources. If the brand is not in that cited source set, the buyer never sees it.
This is a different surface from Google SEO. LLMs ground answers on a different citation graph: directories, listicles, comparison pages, parasite SEO posts, structured FAQ schema, third-party endorsements. A brand can rank position one on Google and still be functionally invisible in ChatGPT. The checker is the read tool for that surface; Generative Engine Optimization is the write tool.
forkoff.xyz dog-foods this. Self-audit 2026-05-04: 3 LLM hits across 24 commercial queries. Outcome-priced GEO sprint kicked off the same week.