Daily Mail Runs GEO Tests for Brands Across Three Countries

The Daily Mail is running generative engine optimisation, or GEO, tests across the US, UK and Australia, Digiday reported in the week of November 2, 2026, via the FutureWeek week-in-review. Carly Steven, Director of SEO and Editorial Ecommerce at the Daily Mail, speaking at a Digiday event, said the publication is testing an advertising proposition built around how often a brand appears in AI tools, describing it as a potential revenue opportunity. It is one of the clearest signs yet that major publishers are trying to sell AI visibility itself as a product.

Selling appearances in AI answers

The core idea is simple to state and complex to deliver: instead of selling impressions on a page, sell a brand's presence inside AI-generated answers. If a user asks an AI tool for a product recommendation and a brand appears in the answer, that appearance has value, much as a top ranking once did. The Daily Mail's tests explore whether that value can be packaged, measured, and sold to advertisers as a proposition in its own right.

Running the tests across three countries, the US, UK and Australia, is a deliberate choice. AI tools behave differently by market, with different model availability, different query patterns, and different competitive sets. A GEO proposition that works in one country may not transfer cleanly to another, so testing in three markets at once gives the Daily Mail a much better sense of whether this is a scalable product or a local curiosity.

Why a publisher is the one testing this

Publishers are natural candidates to pioneer GEO advertising, because they sit on both sides of the AI visibility problem. Their own content is cited by AI tools, so they understand how citation works, and their advertisers are asking how to appear in AI answers, so they have a ready market. A publisher that can demonstrate it moves the needle on brand appearances in AI tools has something most agencies cannot yet offer: evidence, at scale, from a trusted content brand.

There is also a defensive logic. Publishers have watched AI answers absorb traffic that once came to their pages, and selling GEO services is one way to monetise the new landscape rather than merely losing to it. If AI tools are going to summarise publisher content anyway, publishers would rather be paid for helping brands navigate that world than watch the value flow entirely to the AI platforms.

What brands should ask before buying GEO

For brands tempted by a GEO proposition, the right questions are about measurement. How is an appearance counted, across which tools, and for which queries? How stable are those appearances over time, given that AI answers change with model updates? And most importantly, do appearances convert into visits, sales, or brand lift, or are they merely visible? The history of digital advertising is full of metrics that looked impressive and meant little, and AI visibility could easily become the next one if buyers are not careful.

Brands should also ask about the mechanism. Is the proposition based on editorial content that genuinely earns citation, on technical optimisation, on advertising spend, or on some combination? The answer determines whether the effect is durable or rented, and whether it survives the next model update. A GEO product built on real content and real authority is an investment; one built on gaming a particular model version is a gamble.

What it means for SEOs and link builders

For SEOs, the Daily Mail's tests are a signal that GEO is moving from conference topic to commercial product, which means clients will soon ask about it with budgets attached. The practitioners who can speak concretely about AI visibility, with measurement frameworks and honest caveats, will win that work; those who dismiss GEO as a fad, or who promise guaranteed AI placements, will both lose credibility.

For link builders, there is a complementary opportunity. The content that earns AI citations, original data, expert voices, clear structure, is often the same content that earns links, and a campaign built around genuinely useful assets serves both goals at once. GEO and link building are not competing disciplines; they are two ways of monetising the same underlying asset, which is content worth citing.

Sources

Sources: Digiday, week of November 2, 2026, via the FutureWeek week-in-review.