When GEO becomes the consensus, the value of operational personnel is just beginning to be recognized.

Over the past two years, more and more people have been talking to me about GEO, which is also due to GEO's growing popularity.
These people include veteran peers who have been in SEO for more than a decade, as well as friends who work in content, branding, and operations. Their questions may seem different, but they all boil down to the same core anxiety: Is GEO really a "technology-driven" endeavor? If you don't understand SEO or technology, do you still have a chance?

To be honest, I've thought long and hard about this question myself. Because I don't look at this from a single role perspective—I've worked in technical SEO, and also been deeply involved in content and operations for a long time.

For example:

• I've been building websites for years, with practical experience in everything from showcase websites to marketing-focused sites, and even SEO-focused website development projects;

• I've run multiple SEO projects, covering small and micro enterprises, large corporations, and listed companies;

• I spent 2 years researching Baidu Bid Ranking on my own, reducing the cost per lead from 2,000 CNY to 50–100 CNY. This ratio may seem staggering, but that's because I was a complete beginner at first—I was really inexperienced and knew nothing about bid ranking, so I spent a lot of money on testing first.

• I did operations on Zhihu and successfully signed a client with an annual budget of 600,000 CNY through it.

• I also opened a Xiaohongshu store in my spare time, earning over 8,000 CNY in three months before closing it due to being too busy;

• At the same time, I've been writing for a WeChat Official Account and have been involved in the actual operations of multiple clients.

Precisely because these experiences have given me a multi-dimensional perspective, I have a clear judgment on what users want to see and what content is most effective. When I really break down GEO, the conclusion I reach is a bit "politically incorrect"—in GEO, the ones most likely to get ahead are actually the operations teams. This is not to deny technology, nor is it an emotional judgment; it's a trend that has become increasingly clear after repeated verification across multiple projects and industry scenarios.

1. Technology is not obsolete, but is moving to a "foundational role"
From a traditional SEO perspective, the importance of technology has never been in doubt. Crawling, indexing, site structure, performance optimization—these things have determined whether you "can be seen by search engines" over the past decade-plus. If you didn't master them, you weren't even qualified to sit at the table.

But in the GEO era, you can clearly feel one thing: the role of technology is changing. It is no longer the "core competitiveness" that determines success or failure, but has become a basic ticket to enter the game.

Poor technical execution means you won't enter AI's field of vision; but even the best technical execution can't guarantee you'll be selected by AI as a "source of answers".

What determines whether your content is used and repeatedly cited is no longer technical details, but whether the content is truly useful and whether it really understands the user's question.

2. The logic of GEO is closer to "operations" than "technology"

Many people's current understanding of GEO still boils down to one sentence: "It's about creating content for AI to read."

But if you truly understand how AI generates answers, you'll find that it's not "selecting websites"—instead, it's doing something much more human-like: assembling an answer to a question that seems the most reasonable, complete, and human-like. In other words, your content needs to look authentic, and ideally, it actually is authentic.

In this process, AI repeatedly judges three things:

• What is the real intent behind the question;

• Which information is most helpful for answering the question;

• How to organize this information into a smooth, credible answer.

You'll find that these three things are almost entirely about user understanding, scenario judgment, and content expression—not technical implementation. This is why I've become increasingly clear that the main battlefield of GEO is shifting from "technical optimization" to "question understanding".

There's another very interesting phenomenon here. Because I also run GEO training services, I've trained 131 enterprises, including website building companies, advertising agencies, SEO firms, and some end users.

The results are clear: when it comes to GEO lead generation, many SEO companies are actually outperformed by custom website development firms—and even by end users themselves.

This doesn't mean SEO companies are incompetent; it's just that they rely more on technical logic and are used to depending on systems and rules. In contrast, custom website development firms face all kinds of demanding requirements from clients on a daily basis:

• "This part of the website doesn't look good and won't attract users"

• "The experience here is poor—here's how it should be done, our clients care about xxx"

• "Our industry doesn't work like this—'users are like xxx'"

• Custom website development firms are closer to users and have developed a sensitivity to user pain points.

After training, end users also typically have their own operations teams execute GEO optimization—they understand their products better and know which questions are the real pain points plaguing users.

So in the GEO race, whoever understands users better is more likely to get ahead. People with rich operational experience and close proximity to real scenarios often achieve tangible results faster than teams that rely solely on technology. Technical teams are better suited to handling tough problems and exploring new tactics.

3. Operations teams are closer to real user questions than technical teams

In terms of daily work, technical teams mostly deal with pages, rules, structures, and systems; while operations teams interact with real user feedback every day—consultations, comments, private messages, complaints, hesitations, and decision-making obstacles.

In GEO scenarios, the way users ask AI questions is not through keyword-based expressions, but through colloquial questions. For example: "Is this worth buying?", "Is this suitable for my situation?", "Will beginners encounter pitfalls?". These questions can't be dug up with tools—they're "heard" through long-term communication with users.

This is exactly the daily work of operations.
Operations teams know better than technical teams: at which stage users get stuck, why they hesitate, and what they're really worried about. And AI search is essentially simulating this scenario of "being asked questions directly by people".

4. GEO is never just about "optimizing the official website"

When many companies talk about GEO, their first reaction is: Should we rebuild the official website? Should we launch another round of technical optimization? But the reality is that the sources of information crawled and cited by AI are far more diverse than just websites.

WeChat Official Accounts, Zhihu, Xiaohongshu, industry platforms, tutorial documents, case studies, Q&A content—all of these can become sources of AI information. And operations teams are already consistently producing content across these channels.

From this perspective, GEO is more like a battle of content density than a technical project. Whoever can consistently output stable, credible, and insightful content across multiple real scenarios is more likely to enter AI's "answer candidate pool". In this regard, operations teams have a natural advantage.

5. Operations teams are better at "writing content for people"

Over the years, I've seen far too much technology-driven content—it's logically correct and structurally clear, but it has one common flaw: it doesn't sound like a human being talking.

Yet the core requirement of GEO is exactly the opposite:
In some industries, AI prefers content that "looks like a person carefully answering a question" rather than cold, manual-like descriptions or specification documents.

Through long-term practice, operations teams have been repeatedly guided by metrics like read completion rates, user feedback, and conversion effects—naturally, they actively avoid meaningless jargon, clichés, and self-indulgent content. This "instinct to write for real people" has become a scarce skill in the GEO era.

6. GEO is a long-term project, not a one-time optimization

Technical teams are more accustomed to phase-based work: a single site upgrade, a structural adjustment, a rule adaptation. But GEO is more like content operations—it's a continuous process of output, revision, and covering new questions.

AI will observe over the long term:

• Do you repeatedly answer the same type of questions?

• Do you continuously add new details?

• Do you consistently "speak like a human being" in this field?

This isn't something that can be completed in one go—it's the result of long-term accumulation. Operations teams are more patient and methodical in this kind of rhythm.

7. In the GEO era, operations teams have the chance to surpass technical teams

Note that I use "surpass", not "replace".

Technology is still important, but its role is shifting from "leader" to "infrastructure". In many projects, I've already seen this change: after technical teams complete basic adaptation, their contributions stabilize; while operations teams continuously improve AI citation rates and brand trust through ongoing content coverage, scenario expansion, and question breakdown.

Whoever is closer to the "source of answers" will have greater say.

8. What is the real threshold for operations teams in GEO?

It's not technology—it's three things:

• Whether you truly understand the industry, not just content packaging;

• Whether you are willing to polish content around a single question over the long term, rather than chasing hot topics;

• Whether you have a long-term perspective and treat content as cognitive assets to accumulate.

GEO does not reward "empty operations"—it only rewards those who truly understand users.

I'm more and more convinced of one thing:

Technology determines the floor, while cognition determines the ceiling.

In the GEO era, the real competition is not about "who understands algorithms better", but about who understands users better and who is more like someone who seriously answers questions. And in this regard, operations teams are standing center stage for the first time.

If you've been earnestly focusing on users, content, and understanding over the years—this time, you don't need to take a backseat to technology anymore. It's your turn to step forward.